Down, in the book, I read this:
"I was intrigued to learn of a novel Swedish solution to human burial. In a country where cemetery space is at such a premium that older bodies are dug up and reburied more deeply so that second- and third-story tenants can be installed in the same plot, the practical Swedes have now developed a system for composting human remains.
"They start by freezing the corpse in a vat of liquid nitrogen. Once solid, it is easily shattered into tiny frozen pieces, nugget-sized, by ultra-sound waves or, somewhat less palatably, a hammer mill, a process likened by one proponent to that of making chipped beef. The nuggets are then freeze-dried and placed, with a starter of bacteria, in a biodegradable box to be buried as fertilizer for whatever plant you place above your still-serviceable 'loved one.' In my view, this is as about as close as we're ever going to get to reincarnation: our very atoms coursing through the venous leaves of, for example, a long-lived oak." -- Hold Still by Sally Mann, page 419
II
Then up, I saw this.
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