Happy Thanksgiving! If you’re dreading spending the day with your family, the good people over at the Oxygen Channel have come with with six Thanksgiving Day meals that ended even worse than that time your Uncle Mac you told those awful stories about his time in Nam, or your Aunt Louise cooked the turkey without unwrapping it.
If you’re stressed out about the holiday, you’re not alone. We usually agree with the maxim that misery loves company, but for many people, having company is part of the misery. At the Boston Globe, they think this year’s holiday is going to be so tough, they’ve dubbed it the “Thankspocalypse.” Even Twitter is getting in on the act, with with some trying to push #Thanxiety into a trending topic. (And stop trying to make “Thanksmageddon” a thing, Gretchen. It’s just not going to happen.)
We’re all familiar with the story of the first Thanksgiving, where the Wampanoag Tribe treated the Pilgrims to a harvest feast and showed them how to farm the land. Someday soon, it might be possible to actually help with a harvest even after you’re dead. Scientists in Washington State University in Spokane are looking into the possibility of composting human remains. Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, an associate professor of Crop and Soil Sciences, tells the Spokesman-Review she is seeking approval for a pilot study on the feasibility of using human bodies for compost. She already has experimented with livestock, and has been very successful. She doesn’t see why humans wouldn’t work just as well, if not better. The biggest hurdle, she says, is overcoming the “instant yuck factor.” But if a company can name their product “Soylent,” and not have people running in the other direction with images of Charlton Heston dancing in their heads, how long can it be until restaurants start telling their customers that “your carrots came from Pinehurst Farms, with Charles and Louise providing the compost”?
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