From now on, if you want to fill the seats at your funeral and you live in Detroit, you won't want to die on the wrong day. People may never get word that you're gone.

That's because, starting next month, the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press will be offering home delivery just three days a week. So, readers who've made a daily ritual of perusing obituaries with their morning coffee -- and who won't go out to buy the paper or go online -- aren't necessarily going to learn about the deaths of their acquaintances.

"We'll have to go back to word of mouth," says David Techner, funeral director at Ira Kaufman Chapel in Southfield, Mich. "We'll try to condition people: 'Make sure you call all your mom's friends to say she died.' "

In so many ways lately, our daily routines are under siege. Sure, change always has been part of the human experience. But given the economic freefall and the transformations brought on by technology, countless rituals that once defined and comforted us are disappearing in a flash. Researchers say we're now living in an age of "accelerated change" -- and to cope, we should spend less time lamenting and more time adapting.

Some rituals may return when the economy rebounds; in a survey last month, 60% of Americans said they've cut back on their daily trips to "fancy coffee" outlets, which explains the 69% drop in Starbucks's latest quarterly profit. Other rituals we can feel disappearing for good. Fewer of us collect record albums or CDs to line the walls of our living rooms; now our music has been reduced to a scrolling list of song titles on our iPods or computers.