Monday, May 03, 2010


In many respects this blog is a dishonest one. It is a Monday blog written on a Tuesday night about something that is going to happen (tomorrow) on Wednesday.

On Wednesday I am driving to Hope to lecture (with a 6x7 cm slide projection show) to the Hope Garden Club and the Hope Photography Club. They are going to dine me around 5 and on the way I am going to stop at Fort Langley to have lunch with Paul St. Pierre who is 88 years old. I wrote about him here. He has been much in my thoughts today. I now make it a habit to Skype, once a week, my first cousin and godmother Inesita O’Reilly Kuker in Buenos Aires. She is 86 and like Paul St. Pierre she is completely here in every respect and probably even a bit more mobile than yours truly.

It was two years ago that while visiting my former religion teacher and St. Edward’s High School Band leader, Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. that my granddaughter Rebecca (10) asked him, “Brother Edwin, why is it that you and my grandfather seem to get along so well?”

Brother Edwin answered (he has an Masters in mathematics) that it had all to do with ratios. “When your grandfather was 16 I was 26 and he and his classmates thought I was an old man. The ratio of 16/26 is equal to 0.61. When he was 36 I was 46 and the ratio is 0.78. Now that he is 65 I am 75 and the ratio is 0.86. As you can see the age difference between us is diminishing and at infinity it will be equal to 1 or, in other words the difference will be gone.” It took me a while to grasp what Brother Edwin was saying but Rebecca Immediately understood.

Brother Edwin has thus made it clear to me why I have suddenly so many friends who are much older than I am. I am looking forward to sitting down with Paul St. Pierre (he is ordering in Chinese food) on Wednesday. It will rapidly be evident that we will have so much in common, including an interest in blogging. St. Pierre wants to pick my brain as he wants to start one. I cannot think of a better thing to do than to discuss blogging over lunch with an old man who is not as old as he would have once seemed to be.

The picture you see here is a scan of a print (Ilford FB Warmtone) that I made in my darkroom, from the original negative, on Monday night. The scan cannot do justice nor could a desk top inkjet, to the beauty of this print. Perhaps it is the pleasure of having printed it. But there is more. It is like looking at a French-polished walnut Victorian table. There is a depth to it that an image on your monitor will never be able to get close to. Or it could simply be the magic of an old man to whom I am catching up awfully fast.