Planning Ahead - Laurie Powsner

Laurie Powsner represents The Funeral Consumers Alliance of Princeton (FCAP) It  is a volunteer-run, not-for-profit organization that is not associated with the funeral industry. They provide objective support, education and advocacy. They offer tools to empower us to make informed, thoughtful decisions about funeral and memorial arrangements before they are needed.

Laurie spoke to us about planning our funerals and referenced funeral homes and NJ laws in our area.

Funeral arrangenments are something that most people leave to their survivers. The survivors are then under the pressure to make decisions at a very streeful time. FCAP can help, if we plan ahead.

Some points that Laurie made:

• Prices vary enormously from one funeral home to the next. Even for the same thing!
  • Direct cremation ranges from $550—$5,065!
  • A plain cardboard cremation box can cost you $20—$671! 
  • Driving the body from the place of death to the funeral home? $175—$785! 
  • A graveside service? $100—$1,295!
• You shop online for almost everything, but good luck here because only 6% of NJ funeral homes post their prices online.
• We recently asked every funeral home in NJ for their price list. 28% sent them right out (yay you!). 14% needed two asks and another 14% needed three to seven asks! A whopping 30% didn’t respond or outright refused! What? Aren’t they trying to sell something? Can you imagine calling a restaurant and asking them to send you a menu and being told “The menu is really too complicated for the layperson to understand” or “we don’t give out the menu unless you come in person to get it.” Yikes! What are they thinking?

For more information and to donate to FCAP, got to their website, shown below.

https://fcaprinceton.org/

Authoiring a Religiuos Book - Carmen Viola

Carmen Viola wrote a book on religion.

He told us about the events in his  life that lead to the write of his book.

The book is baesed on a collection of illustrations that came to Carmen over a period of time. The illustrations were completed by another person, Travis Hanson, that he be became aware of via the internet and had never met.

The illustrations involve the reader in the ongoing conversation and narrative of what it means to follow Jesus. It is designed to be used for personal reflection, group study, or in facilitating family discussions. The book contains many layers of meaning achieved through the use of light, color, symbols and so much more...including hidden "Easter eggs" to find!  

Carmen told of some of the other  events that happened during the writing of this book, in addition to the find of his colla borator artist. One was the bonus his wife received just in tim eot pay for the set up for the printing of the book, another was the gift that came 'out of nowhere' for the actual printing of the book and then his boss volunteered to help produce online webinars about the book (called God Talk).







For more information on the webinar about this book, visit:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC78CCEVqZnan8RG9tD3zMuw