When In London...

…discover bluebells in graveyards.

I learn new things about the flora of England on a daily basis. In March, it was daffodils. Now, in mid-May, it appears to be bluebells — but only in graveyards.

The Jewish Cemetery in the middle of campus.

Bunhill Fields Cemetery, the final resting place of William Blake.

I fondly remember the moment someone first taught me what the “macro” mode on my digital camera was for.

Some people are afraid of cemeteries. I actually find them rather aesthetically fascinating.

And there’s so much history to be learned there. Reading these grave stones is really moving in a way no textbook can ever be. It’s one thing to know the statistics of infant mortality in the 1700s, another to see a family gravestone listing the deaths of more than five children who never lived to see their third birthdays.

Sometimes I wonder about gravestones — who reads them, and what use they can be, whether they can ever reflect the lives of the people they represent. Sometimes I think the confined space of a grave marker is such a restriction. But sometimes it produces moving simplicity. Two daughters in this family died within 2 days of each other; what remains is their name and an inscription: “Lovely and pleasant in their Lives, and in their Death they were not divided.”