We visit places, take home souvenirs and often times never bother to check for their authenticity or meaning. Maybe we doze off as the tour guide provided the commentary or were too busy taking photos; whatever it is, I now have this need to jog my memory.
This wooden paper weight has sat on my desk for the longest. It’s labeled “From the yew tree Stoke Poges Church”. Not having seen one, I decided to look up the significance of the yew tree.
Check this out. Most parts of the tree are toxic. No wonder I’m getting occasional memory lapses and brain freeze and as a result, often I just stare and suffer from blogger’s block. Thanks to yew!
Ironically it is also the source of a potent chemotherapeutic cancer drug (Taxol). The alkaloid or bioactive chemical can be extracted from the bark of the tree. We might recall how Al Gore and other environmentalists were strongly opposed to this since it will end up killing the trees. The yew is associated with Wales and England and commonly found in the church yards. They can live as long as 2000 years and have become a symbol of life but sometimes also referred to as the “tree of death” because it is poisonous. The only part which isn't is the fleshy part of the seed.
It is all coming back to me now, after nearly two decades. We visited this very old tiny church Stoke Poges is the name, in the countryside of England. According to the literature, in 1750 it is in this church graveyard that the poet Thomas Gray wrote his masterpiece Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Remember the phrase – "Far from the madding crowd"? He later was buried beside his mother also in this churchyard. Related to this are the spin-offs taken from the famous line - Far From the Madding Crowd, an 1874 novel which is a portrait of English rural life, by Thomas Hardy and later in 1967 a film production where Julie Christie played the central character Bathsheba. It’s good to learn that even in those days when it was not fashionable for a woman to be independent there was Bathsheba who broke the mold.
The photos I took (before the days of digital cameras) were a reminder of how beautiful and tranquil this place was. The church pews were made of thick wooden planks that have shown their age. The place, peaceful and truly an ideal breeding ground for churchyard poets. Far from the maddening crowd, indeed. Below is the Litch Gate entrance to the church and graveyard.
All these and more. Amidst this frenzied society, Long live the yew tree! 
