Footnotes to a Conversation, June 2, 2025

“What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.” – Gertrude Jekyll

The Secret Life of a Cemetery

I enjoyed reading The Secret Life of a Cemetery by Benoît Gallot. The child of funerary stonemasons, Gallot didn’t expect to enter the funeral business, but he’s glad he did. And he’s now in charge of one of Paris’s largest cemeteries – Père Lachaise. He and his family live in the cemetery, and during the pandemic, his children helped him locate unused grave sites. There are many celebrities buried in Père Lachaise so it’s frequented by tourists on a daily basis. But there are other inhabitants as well. Since Paris stopped using pesticides, the wildflowers have come back. There are bee hives and grape plants, woodpeckers, and foxes. Gallot says, “Since we have such a palpable need to reconnect with nature – especially those of us living in metropolitan areas – and since nature is so vital to our well-being, why shouldn’t cemeteries do their part?” [Greystone Books]

Treasuring Diversity

The Zhuangzi, an ancient Chinese Daoist text, “tells the story of a wondrous tree, so large that its canopy provided shade for thousands of oxen. The tree only became this large because its wood was deemed to be ‘useless’ for any human project. As a result, it was left alone and allowed to grow into its magnificent size … the story makes us turn the tables on our own assumptions, and challenges our thinking on what ‘normal’ and ‘useful’ means … The Zhuangzi’s point is not that we cannot celebrate excellence. Instead, it champions the richness of life by showing that people can be excellent in many different ways. Its aim is not to tell us how to fix people’s medical and physiological conditions. Rather, prompts us to reflect on the shallow attitudes of those who see others as ‘disabled’, who want to draw attention to what some people lack, rather than what they might have.” [The Guardian]

Festival of Ideas

I’m intrigued by the range and depth of topics being discussed during York’s Festival of Ideas from May 31 to June 13. The 200, mostly free, events include performances and films (women’s voices in Finnish a capella, bioscience: the musical), talks (God and AI, a history of scandalous dance, how statistics are changing sport), walks (York’s hidden history of flooding, stained glass restoration and conservation), and family fun (hunt for medieval masons’ marks, the filthy, beastly tour of York). [York Festival of Ideas]

A Marked Decline

“Do not use semicolons … All they do is show you’ve been to college.” – Kurt Vonnegut

Do you use the semicolon in your writing? I suspect not. I know I only use it rarely. “As defined by the Oxford Dictionary of English, the semicolon is ‘a punctuation mark indicating a pause, typically between two main clauses, that is more pronounced than that indicated by a comma’. It is commonly used to link together two independent but related clauses, and is particularly useful for juxtaposition or replacing confusing extra commas in lists where commas already exist – or where a comma would create a splice.”

I’m delighted to report that I got 10/10 on the semicolon quiz. Check it out and see how well you do. [The Guardian]

Footnotes to a Conversation is a weekly Monday feature covering an assortment of topics that I’ve come across in the preceding week – 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 Canada’s four western provinces.