Snail Scott on thu 3 may 01
At 08:41 AM 5/3/01 +0100, you wrote:
>"No cremating pets below ^5"
> -Snail
>As my local pet crematorium fires at 1100C, and I then use the ash, coul=
d
>Snail please explain the origin and background of this particular rule.
>
>Irrespective of the answer, it is one further rule that I will ignore, u=
ntil
>someone can convince me otherwise:-)
>
>Martin Howard
I never said it was necessary, only that it
was the rule in my old college studio. I
didn't write it, I just quoted it!
(Unless you are secretly an undergrad
student at my old alma mater, it would
scarcely apply to you anyway. It was an
administrative regulation, not a law of
physics.)
The historical origin of the rule is thus:
When I was a studio monitor in college, I
heard via the 'grapevine' that a certain
student whose cat had died was heartbroken
that she couldn't give it a proper burial
(lived in an apartment) so she decided to
cremate it in the raku kiln, which was the
only kiln that someone could sneak in and
use after-hours. It didn't get nearly hot
enough, and she told this sad story to Jack,
not knowing we lived together! I had some
sympathy and held my tongue, though.
When another student (a friend of the first)
lost her cat, she rakued it also, and I
accidentally walked in on the firing. The
head had rolled off the kiln shelf and
gotten stuck underneath, making it impossible
to hide the evidence until the kiln had
cooled off, and the effect was more like
barbecue than cremation. Nasty.
I decided that this was not a good trend,
and without naming names, informed the
acting department head that this was going
on. She was sympathetic to the plight of
these students who didn't have a plot of
ground to call their own in which to bury
departed pets, and thinking (as I did) that
firing the 'dear departed' was going to be
a rising trend among students (word had
spread rapidly to everyone but faculty), she
made a new rule:
"All pets must be fired to at least ^5, and
a clay urn must be made for the purpose."
(No more rolling heads!)
I don't know why she picked ^5, except that
it was a fairly common temperature choice in
that studio. All upper-level students fired
their own work, but typically filled up any
space in the kiln with other students' work.
It would have been fairly simple for any
student to beg space in a ^5 or higher firing,
even if their own work were not in that range.
Bisque firings (^08-06 or so) would have been
too cool, and firings between ^04 and ^4 were
not common. Firing a whole kiln for one cat
would have been a waste of critically limited
kiln resources, if no other projects were
going to that temperature. Finding a little
extra space in an already-scheduled firing was
far more efficient, even if the temperature
was somewhat higher than necessary.
And that's the rest of the story.
-Snail
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