Footnotes to a Conversation, March 17, 2025

“I don’t go out of my way to be outrageous; I just go out of my way to look at things.” – Dave Allen

Women, Power & Politics

Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue by Sonia Purnell spans over 70 years of world history through the life of one woman whose political astuteness and impact went unacknowledged for most of her life. She faced tremendous odds as women were expected to marry politicians, not become one. And so she worked behind the scenes, using her beauty and charm to bring powerful men together and to have an impact on their political decisions. As Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law, she was encouraged to influence US journalists and politicians as their country’s help was desperately needed if Great Britain was to successfully combat Hitler. As a wife and lover, she supported powerful men, enabling them to accomplish so much more than they would have on their own. And finally, in her later years, she was able to play an independent role in bringing the Democrats to power in the US and served as the US Ambassador to France. She believed strongly that the United States had a responsibility in ensuring global peace and in providing for those less fortunate. [Sonia Purnell]

Lest We Forget

Victoria’s streets are lined with flowering cherry trees at the moment. It’s a joyful sight, and every tree brings a smile to my face. In 1937, the local Japanese community entered a float in the Victoria Day parade with bows and blossoms crafted from papier mâché as a tribute to the many beautiful gardens the Japanese had established in Victoria. They won first place and used the prize money to purchase 1,013 cherry trees that they donated to the City of Victoria. Four years later, during World War II, many of the Japanese who had been so generous in donating trees were stripped of their possessions and sent to internment camps. [Capital Daily]

Toxic Preconditions

I may put a lot of words down on paper, but I’ve never felt like a “real” writer because I don’t write fiction. Over the Christmas holidays, I challenged myself to write a short story – and it was fun. Why not keep going and write another story? But that’s where I hit a roadblock. I felt that writing a story would not be an effective use of my time if I didn’t publish it and/or become a successful writer. An article this week helped me to identify some of the toxic preconditions that were poisoning my fun. Here’s just one example.

“A more wide-reaching form of toxic precondition is what Anne-Laure Le Cunff, in her brilliant just-published book Tiny Experiments, calls ‘the tyranny of purpose’ – the oppressive idea that the activities with which we fill our days must be leading up to something, to some final and finished state of having arrived at our destination in life, if they’re to be worth doing in the first place … Imagine the projects you could launch, the hobbies you could explore, the ways you could conduct your social life or parenting, and much else besides, if you needed no reassurance that the new way of doing things was ever going to become a permanent feature of your life! Wouldn’t you suddenly feel much, much freer to act? [The Imperfectionist]

Smartphone Mania

A series of photographs capturing tourists and their smartphones in Barcelona made me laugh. If you don’t have a photograph, did it even happen??? [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.