User:StaceyHamilton/BlogEntry: 2009 May 15 16:27:41 EDT

From sasCommunity

You may have noticed that we took a brief hiatus from blogging. But in the coming weeks watch this space for new posts from SAS Press Editor in Chief Julie Platt and Marketing Specialist Shelly Goodin, who will relate some fun and interesting experiences she has had recently on Twitter.

But this week you are stuck with me, stuck in a post-vacation haze. I spent a week in Paris, where I almost ate pig intestines, drank a 10-Euro thimble-full of champagne at the top of the Eiffel Tower, consumed all the Salade Niçoise I could handle, and visited where Marie Antoinette spent her last hours. One of my favorite spots was Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris's largest. Cemeteries are beautiful and (obviously) peaceful, but the residents of Père Lachaise didn't necessarily lead peaceful lives. We saw the Communards' Wall, where in 1871 147 holdouts of the Paris Commune were lined up and shot. And a visit to Père Lachaise wouldn't be complete without braving the crowds to pay your respects to Jim Morrison.

Aside from the famous graves, I was also struck by those who at some point were disinterred and moved there after Napoleon I opened the cemetery in the early 1800s. Why, I wondered, would they move Molière there? He died in 1673. And Abélard and Héloïse, who were long gone by 1200? When I returned to my room that night, I did a quick Internet search, only to discover it was all a marketing campaign! Apparently the cemetery was so far out of town at that time that no one wanted to be buried there. So what do you do? Dig up some famous people, rebury them there, and voilà! Suddenly Père Lachaise is the place to be buried. Today the graves number in the hundreds of thousands--residents famous, infamous, and not famous at all.

You might be asking by now: What does all this have to do with publishing? Nothing, really, but it does show the enduring power of celebrity. Maybe the story of Père Lachaise is an early example of the Oprah effect.

As always, I welcome your comments, whether they be on publishing, travel, cemeteries, or even tripe.