Footnotes to a Conversation, February 17, 2025
βIt is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.β β Sydney Smith
An Otter Love Story
This is my kind of love story! A man grieving the loss of his parents comes across a hungry, orphaned otter and ends up building a house for the otter and ordering toys for it online. "To take this otter that was cute and cuddly, but in desperate need of help, and to feed her and nurture her through adolescence and help her develop into a fully-grown adult, then off she went and hung out with her own family β observing that circle of life happening but also being a part of it was incredibly rewarding," he says. [BBC]
Quiet Revelations
This is why I appreciate housesitting and the opportunity to spend time in one location, and perhaps even return there: βTo know a placeβto really know a placeβto understand the people, the culture, and the food more than a tourist requires courting its contradictions; the polished and the crumbling, the music and the silences. It requires time spent wandering, unhurried, with moments clocked not in itineraries but in quiet revelationsβthe lingering gaze at a cracked fresco, the unexpected warmth of a bakerβs smile at dawn β¦ A placeβs true rhythm is never found in its grand monuments or bustling streets. It reveals itself in the spaces in between, in quiet alleys and dawn markets, in the sound of footsteps fading into mist. Itβs only when we slow down, when we let ourselves linger in those silences, that we begin to truly see. And itβs there, in those fleeting moments, that a place leaves its mark on usβechoing long after weβve left, like a song we never quite forget. We leave places behind, but their whispers stay with us.β [Of Tides and Thyme]
National Pride
When you have visitors, what do you take them to see? Is it the newest office building or airport extension? Probably not. I expect itβs a heritage site or a beautiful park. A character in Rose Macaulayβs novel, The Towers of Trebizond, writes, βWe did not like to tell the Turkish students, whom we liked very much, that the most interesting things in Turkey were put there before it was Turkey at all β¦ how people have got on is actually only interesting to the country which has got on. What foreign visitors care about are the things that were there before they began to get onβ. [Bedside Companion for Travel Lovers, Wikipedia]
Iβve Been Reading
Iβve been reading two mysteries that are not new but that I have only recently discovered. Judith Flanders has a series of mysteries about a book editor, her police officer partner, and their friends in London, England. I particularly recommend A Cast of Vultures to people like me who are slightly obsessive about a place for everything and everything in its place (i.e. mugs with dots in one row, striped mugs in another) as in this case, the obsessive behaviour helps solve a murder. It doesnβt surprise me to discover that Flanders has also written a book called A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order.
Faith Martin has written in 4 different genres using 4 different pen names. Iβve just read A Fatal Obsession partnering a distinguished elderly coroner with a probationary female police officer in 1960s Oxford, England. The characters are well developed and the book provides insight into the working lives of women police officers when they were first permitted entry into an all-male force.
Footnotes to a Conversation is a weekly Monday feature covering an assortment of topics that Iβve come across in the preceding week β books, art, travel, food, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I also post occasional articles on other dates, including frequent book reviews and travel tales.
If you share my love of nature, check out EcoFriendly West, an online publication encouraging environmental initiatives in Western Canada, and Nature Companion, a free nature app for Canadaβs four western provinces.