Just about everybody that may follow my blog is aware that my Rosemary and I have been getting a daily delivered (at the door) NY Times. The best moment of the day happens with our ritual (every day with few exceptions) of breakfast in bed with the Times and the Vancouver Sun and with the added comfort (now) of our brother and sister cats, Niño and Niña.

Until recently the Sunday edition was delivered on Saturday evenings. But beginning about two months ago we now get the Sunday paper on Sunday.  Can I complain? I don’t think so.

The pandemic has led me to look in my phone at 9PM (12AM in NY) and read the next day’s opinion columns.

This past Sunday our daughter stayed with us in a short visit from her home in Lillooet. This meant that we read our Sunday NY Times in the evening.

I hit astounding pay dirt, which parallels my thoughts these last months, as I contemplate my impending disappearance into the inevitable mortal coils.

The fine essay by Bill Shapiro in the Sunday, The NY Times Magazine is called Other People’s Snapshots. You can find a link to it here.

It was the last paragraph fulminated me into deep thought and inspiration. I knew exactly last night how I was going to illustrate this blog.

Here is Shapiro’s last paragraph:

The neuroscientist and author David Eagleman has written that we all die three deaths: “The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.” I would say there’s a fourth: the moment the last remaining picture of you is seen for the final time. These found photographs not only remind me of this delicate thing we run toward and away from – time – but they also hold something else. The humbling, steadying truth that, one day, that’s all we’ll be: a photo.

The Stone Boy is a 1984 American drama film directed by Christopher Cain and starring Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest, Glenn Close, Wilford Brimley, Linda Hamilton, Dean Cain and Jason Presson. It is based on the 1957 short story "The Stone Boy" by American author Gina Berriault.

For me it is a mystery why when actors die they are remembered for obvious films. Thus Wilfred Brimley’s death was accompanied by accolades to his performance in Cocoon.

For me The Stone Boy is one of the finest films I have ever seen. A lot of the action happens in a kitchen and to watch Brimley, Close and Duvall is a performance that I like to label as virtuoso.

Of my moments facing Brimley with my camera in the early 90s, with my receding memory I remember little. But I do remember him saying something like this,”Robert Duvall is our contemporary Spencer Tracy.”

One of the particularly special and wonderful aspects of portrait photography is to photograph your subject more than once. It is even better when lapses of time have occurred between sessions.

On February 8, 1968 a judge in Coyoacán Mexico married my Rosemary and me. This was our third attempt. The two previous judges had told us that since Rosemary was Canadian and I was Argentine we needed permission from the Secretaría de Gobernación. This third time my mother did not show up. My good friend Raúl Guerrero de Montemayor was one of the witnesses, the other one, we flagged on the street. The judge had no opposition to the ceremony as I had shown up a few days before with a good bottle of French cognac.

April 1969 - University of Mexico Botanical Garden - Photographs - Andrew Taylor

On all the three occasions Rosemary wore the white bird dress. I personally cut it short (and hemmed it) so I could show off her splendid legs.

Lauren Stewart - 2016 - Fuji Instax print

Some 52 plus years later, last Thursday, July 30, our granddaughter Rebecca (22) came over to make Rosemary up. Rosemary had her hair done the day before.

I made the request that she wear the bird dress. While it was a tad tight around her chest the dress fit nicely.

With Rebecca - self timer - I was about to close my eyes

Perhaps someday I may be able to persuade the hosta gurus of the American Hosta Society not to ignore what for me is the inherent beauty and elegance of hosta flowers, and particularly before they open.

One hosta in particular, Hosta 'Invincible' has fragrant white flowers which it inherited from the August Lily, Hosta plantaginea. It has thick and dark leaves with a special glossy shine to them.  I asked its hybridizer, Paul Aden at a hosta convention many years ago why he had named it like that. His answer was a short one, “I named it after my mother-in-law.”

I have a particular liking for its flowers because before they open in August to me they resemble the Klingon Bird of Prey ship from my fave , the original Star Trek.

Hosta 'Invincible' 26 July 2020

In this the age of instant communication, my daughter who lives in the interior British Columbia town of Lillooet, has only one way to leave town (for example to visit us in Vancouver) and this is with her SUV.

In his wisdom, former BC Premier, Gordon Campbell sold BC Rail to CNN. They almost instantly dissolved train service to the interior. Lillooet has a lovely train station. The train never stops there and Greyhound and other bus companies ended their service, too.

For bad medical problems citizens of Lillooet have the choice of driving (or being driven) to the bigger Kamloops or to Vancouver.

And there is something else. My daughter Ale is renovating her house that sits almost on a one acre piece of land. She was going to re-floor it when she realized that any company that had the adequate material would not ship to Lillooet. Ale bought her flooring ( a metric ton of it) at Windsor Plywood in Chilliwack.

Enter here into this story, her 78-year-old father, who volunteered to drive a large truck with the flooring. Fortunately going, I had the pleasure of my younger daughter Hilary who wanted to spend a week with her sister. With both of us wearing our facemasks we drove by Canada Highway 1 to Chilliwack, then past Hope and then took the turn off to Lytton. From Lytton there is curvy road to Lillooet. I managed, as I did, driving back the same way on my own.

Lytton (vies with Lillooet as the hottest place in Canada in the summer) has a special significance for me:

The Blood Mixes Inside my Heart 

Kevin Loring 

The Pleasure of Seeing Her Again 
Stopping a train at Cisco Bridge

In Lillooet we found Ale in the midst of removing the old carpeting with her deft assistants Kio and Makiyah. They unloaded the flooring and some plants my Rosemary had sent along. By the time we had taken a portrait of all of us with the Dodge Ram, my Rosemary had already nagged that we take the photograph.

I sat with my two daughters for an hour and a half. I marvelled at that bond that sisters have that I will never understand and enjoy. But knowing that it exists and being aware of my enjoyment is what counts.

I drove home enjoying the hot (30 Celsius) air and I had plenty of time to count my chickens and to realize how lucky I am.