The Wonders Of Image Degradation
Saturday, September 13, 2014
 |
| Caitlin Legault |
Yesterday I took my
venerable Dresden-made (when Dresden
was in the Russian Occupied Zone) Pentacon-F to be repaired by Horst Wenzel. He
looked at the camera tested the functions of the 50mm Zeiss Tessar lens and
informed me that the shutter just needed to be cleaned and re-lubricated.
As I wrote here,
repairing the camera, a waste of money in Wenzel’s opinion, has something to do
with my allegiance to inanimate objects that have served me well. I felt guilty
looking at it on my den bookshelf knowing that it had a faulty shutter and that
unlike in other countries here we have in Vancouver
a stellar repairman.
Its beautiful Zeiss
Tessar f-2.8 lens probably could not compete in sharpness with my new Fuji
X-E1s exotic aspherical zoom lens. Nor could it compete with a early 80s
vintage Pentax M 20mm wide angle that I have kept because of its remarkable
lack of apparent distortion. It is as rectilinear as a wide angle gets.
Since the early 80s
the main lens in my working collection has been a floating element 140mm Mamiya
lens for my Mamiya RB-67 Pro-SD. I have two of them. Some years ago when I was
about to take pictures of Raymond Burr the mainspring went. I was forced to use
a less sharp 90mm that made Burr look fatter than he was. I vowed never again
to have this happen to me so I purchased a second 140 lens. Wenzel has a spare
main spring spirited away in his repair shop.
For years I have
maintained that all photographs (and particularly portraits) have to be sharp. If
you cannot see individual eyelashes, throw the negative or slide away. The
exception of course is when the photographer intends for the picture not to be
sharp for some particular motive. Another fine exception is the look of old optics, even optics that were sharp in their time. I used a 1953 Leica IIIF for these pictures that have a look unmatched and different from anything that I might use now.
 |
| Horst Wenzel |
To this day I question
autofocus lenses and the idea of an automatic follow focus lens does not apply
to me as I never shoot basketball, hockey or football.
I know that the
sharpest f-stop of almost any lens is somewhere (usually halfway) between its
minimum and maximum aperture. I know that bracing the camera with a tripod is a
sure way of maintaining the inherent sharpness of a good lens. I know that the
flutter of a reflex camera’s mirror can degrade the image at a slow shutter. With
my Mamiya I always use its lens mirror lock mechanism.
So much for sharpness
via the camera.
In my fridge I have 30
rolls of the sharpest most detailed film ever made. This is Kodak Technical Pan
in 120 format. So much for sharpness via film.
I also know, and this
is increasingly a decreasing factor for
most photographers that the best test for sharpness is the detail of an actual
print be it a darkroom printed photograph or a well executed digital giclée or
light-jet print. Looking at pictures on a monitor (to me) is a waste of time.
How fast will that car
go? Don’t give me numbers. Drive it. I think that applies to photography, too.
It was a few days ago
that a tweet by my friend Tim Bray caught my eye. In his tweet he linked it to
a man who writes about the wonders of a medium format camera that has an aftermarket
digital sensor attached. There are even more expensive dedicated digital Hasselblads.
I read the article,
obsessive, by a man (Zack Arias is his name) obsessed with detail, sharpness, colour
saturation and the ability to crop minute parts of an image and still render it
all in close perfection.
I read the article and
I smiled as I seem to be headed into the opposite direction with my Mamiya
RB-67 Pro-SD described as a tank by someone in the comments section of the
essay. He further says that at the end of the world only cockroaches and RB-67s
will survive it!
Case in point in my contrary ways is the
story behind the image here and its almost identical but not as dramatic
companion negative which was shot one click before.
My goal was to attempt
to imitate the wonderful (paradoxically very sharp) wet plate portraits taken
by Mathew Brady in his New York City
studio in the early 1860s. His lighting consisted of a very large skylight.
Having some idea of the fact that sensitized plates (like all film, video tape,
and even modern digital sensors) were more sensitive to the blue light coming
from skylight, Brady tinted his skylight glass blue.
Since I no longer have
a studio with a high ceiling I mounted a large softbox light that is five ft by
6 ft on a boom light stand. This meant that I could suspend the light high and
pointing down on my subject (Caitlin Legault) to give the feel of skylight. Generally
I use a 3 by 4 softbox very close to my subject’s face so half the face is
always in some shadow. Behind Legault I put up a red backdrop (the colour
unimportant as I was going to shoot it all in b+w). I had all this in a shady
part of the garden and I set my camera shutters to expose the existing light to
one stop under the correct exposure. The flash was set at f-16 both with two
rolls of Ilford FP-4 Plus IS0 100 and two rolls of Kodak T-Max 400 (the images
you see here are the T-Max).
I was able to keep the
f-16 exposure with the two different rolls by controlling the output of my
stable Visatek monolight flash.
The less dramatic
image is almost a straight scan (an Epson Perfection V700 Photo scanner). I
scanned it dark and in the warmish tone on purpose.
For the second image, I
placed the negative emulsion down on the glass with no holder. This means that
the negative curled on the sides and it was not completely flat. On top of the negative
I placed a sheet of my letterhead stationery. I left the scanner top open and I
scanned the negative from the bottom as I would scanning a 8x10 print. The
resulting image I then reversed (as it appeared as a negative) in Photoshop.
The paper adds to
measures of degradation. Because the paper was in close contact with the
negative, the scanner “sees” some of the flaws and texture of the paper. The
light of the scanner, instead of penetrating the negative fully it bounces off
the paper and back to the scan. That reduces the contrast.
It seems to me that so
mush emphasis this day in photography lies with the technical aspects of the
gear used and there is less on the wonder of an image and how it affects us
when we see it without having to delve on all those pixels and MOS sensors,
etc.
Helena Brandon de González-Crussi
Friday, September 12, 2014
 |
| Helena Brandon de González-Crussi - Archivo Casasola 1915 |
One of my favourite
essayists is Mexican-born Federico González-Crussi. He is a retired pathologist.
He began his
career in 1967 in academic medicine in Canada,
at Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario), and moved to the United States in 1973. He was a
Professor of Pathology at Indiana University until 1978, when he relocated to Chicago; there to become Professor of Pathology at
Northwestern University School of Medicine and Head of Laboratories of
Children’s Memorial
Hospital until his
retirement in 2001.
Gonzalez-Crussi, writes in precise English
(his books are then translated into Spanish) and I have three of them: The Day
of the Dead and Other Mortal Reflections, On Being Born and Other Difficulties,
and On the Nature of Things Erotic.
González-Crussi was born in 1938. His father
was friends with pioneering Mexican photographer Agustín Ignacio Casasola (1874-1938).
Casasola started what really was the first ever photo agency and recorded and
catalogued the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). Perhaps since one of Casasola’s
sons was called, Federico (Casasola Zapata) González-Crussi was named Federico.
Last year when I visited Mexico I ventured to Pachuca
in the state of Hidalgo
to the Fototeca Nacional at the Exconvento de San Francisco. While pouring through the Archivo Casasola I spotted this strange
photograph of a woman who did not look Mexican. Her name in the files was
Helena Brandon de González-Crussi. Attached to the photograph was the date 1915 and nothing more.
I have in my memory that wonderful
photograph taken by Mathew Brady in the 1860s called Mrs. Brandon. There is no
other information on who she was or why she would have posed for Brady in his New York City studio. It would be too much of a coincidence to
connect her to Helena Brandon González-Crussi. I am also curious as to how Helena
was related to the retired pathologist/author. Perhaps I will never know. In
the museum of the Fototeca I was able to purchase a nice sepia-toned print of
the woman and here she is. Note the eyebrows on both women.
 |
| Mrs. Brandon - Mathew Brady circa 1860-1865 |
Arthur, Arthur, Art & Arturito
Thursday, September 11, 2014
 |
| Arturito's girl |
The idea for what
promises to be a long blog came to me last Sunday. Both
Randy Rampage and
birthday boy Zippy Pinhead kept calling Art Bergmann, Arthur.
It struck me that his real friends call him that and for the rest of us Art is enough.
I then wondered how many Arthurs had gone
through my life, who I not only photographed but somehow had left something of
themselves in me.
Arturito Durazo Díaz (33) showed up in Vancouver in 1982. At the
time I had some dealings with the unofficial Mexican Tourism Director in
Vancouver, Carlos Hampe. I visited Hampe and noticed Durazo sitting behind a
desk that had nothing on it in a room that was virtually empty of furniture and
decoration. I was introduced to him. He was affable, friendly and interested in
the fact that I was a photographer and that I spoke Spanish.
During his stay in Vancouver which was around two years he often
came to my house for dinner. He had a passion for jig-saw puzzles. He often stayed
for hours with my daughters fitting the pieces to 1000 plus puzzles. Durazo
told me he had helicopter pilot’s license and wanted to learn to hang glide. I
accompanied him to many of these lessons in Langley. He was brave and he tried to convince me to
try. I told him I had no life insurance and since I was a free lancer, any
accident would leave my family with no financial support.
My daughters liked him as did my wife
Rosemary. One day he showed up with a box full of beautiful Florsheim shoes. He
told me that inmates of several Mexican prisons made them and he was starting a
business to import them to Canada.
 |
| Arturito's 2005 police mug shot |
Any questions I directed to Hampe about his
“assistant”, who seemed to do nothing at the office, only resulted in the rolling
of his eyes and silence.
All I knew was that Durazo’s father, Arturo
Durazo Moreno had been the chief of police in Mexico City, between 1976 and 1982 during the
6-year rule of President López Portillo.
During those 6 years Durazo Moreno’s
underlings had to pay their quota of contributions. There was an organization
that arrested promising thieves who were protected and of course had to pay
their quotas. In some cases these trained thieves and the policemen robbed
banks. One of the biggest scandals was the appearance of 13 Colombians in the
city’s main sewer. Some had their heads missing; others had been mutilated and
tortured.
López Portillo’s successor, President
Miguel de La Madrid initiated an investigation and the murders were linked to
Durazo who fled the country.
That would explain why his son, also left
the country and why Carlos Hampe could do nothing about having the man appear
in his office and get a salary for doing nothing. I remember that Arturito had
a better car than Hampe. It was a very large Pontiac.
Arturito was a handsome young man. His
father was quite ugly and because he was dark-skinned he was called El Negro
Durazo. Durazo died in 2000 after having served 6 years (he had been extradited from Puerto Rico, and given a 16 years sentence
but because of “good behaviour” and delicate health he served those 6 for drug
trafficking, corruption and extortion). At his funeral a police mariachi played
a famous song about El Negro Durazo.
As soon as Durazo Moreno died the army
generals rescinded his lofty rank of General de División. They had been furious when
President López Portillo had
celebrated the man with the rank.
But what perhaps riled
the usually patient Mexican populace were the many mansions that the Police
Chief built. The most famous one La Partenón in Zihuatanejo was said to have
gates that had been stolen from the storied Chapultepec Castle
(where young Mexican cadets had fought back with heroism but in futility by
well equipped American Army). You might know that U.S. Marine Corps song "From the halls of Montezuma..."
 |
| La Partenón |
In the late 80s a
Mexican cumbia band, La Sonora Dinamita recorded a song by its then singer
Juliette called El Africano (The African) in which one of the lines “Hey mom,
what does El Negro want?” to which then Juliette answers, “Could it be another
Parthenon?” Of interest to readers here is the fact that Ray Conniff did an
instrumental version of the song called African Safari.
This was my Arturito’s
father. In 2005 Arturito was imprisoned for unlawfully taking over a large
property. He is now probably out and is on Facebook.
If you look for images
of Arturito you will only find one through Google. The Mexican newspapers
announcing his arrest have blank squares where his picture should be.
I was never allowed by
Arturito to take his picture but he did ask me to photograph his lovely Mexican
girl friend who had brilliant bleached blonde hair. I have lost the colour
pictures and I have forgotten her name but I did find some negatives which I took
with Kodak b+w infrared film.
If I were to run into
Arturito I would invite him for dinner and I would take out a box with a 1000
plus piece puzzle.
Will My Pentacon-F End Up In A Shoe Box?
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Do you have film in
your camera? Your flash did not fire. You have your lens cap on.
The above are three complications
(and there were many more) that might have prevented a photographer from taking pictures
in the last century.
In this century the chief
culprit of such an event is that scary, “My card was corrupted.” In banking
terms something like, “Our computers are down so we cannot help you,” would be an
equivalent dénouement.
Yesterday Saturday as
I got ready to photograph three men, Art Bergmann, Zippy Pinhead and Randy
Rampage wearing, one at a time, my mother’s red shawl I turned on my camera. My
camera lit up to advise me, “No card.” I panicked. I then remembered that for
the scenario of a corrupted card I had packed an extra one and an extra battery
(you never know) in my camera bag. I relaxed and took my photographs.
In that last century I
often told young photographers that competition for jobs in magazine and
commercial photography was such that if you made a mistake you would never be
hired again. I advised them to pack two of everything.
I may have been wrong
because on the way to the end of that last century I met up with Horst Wenzel
who kept repairing my equipment. Those two extra Mamiyas, that second 140mm
lens, that extra Minolta Flashmeter, those three Nikon FM-2 and that Nikon F-3
have been in good shape thank to Wenzel. What does one do with three Mamiyas in
this century? They are worthless and mine even more so because they look like
they have been used. And they have.
All that, brings me to
consider my Pentacon-F with its Zeiss Tessar 50mm f-2.8 lens. I bought it in 1957.
I used it lots and well. I now have it on a shelf in my den with a Pentax S-3,
a Pentax S-II and a Canon rangefinder camera from the mid 50s. All work well
except the Pentacon. It has a sticky shutter.
I asked Wenzel if I
should have it repaired knowing I will never use it. He told me, “As soon as
you die your relatives will put it in a box or simply throw it away. It would
be silly to spend a couple of hundred Dollars to repair it.”
My wife simply said, “We
don’t have the money for that.” She simply echoed Wenzel who further added, “Now
if you win the lottery you might want to fix that Pentacon.”
I have no idea why it
is that something inside me says I should have a camera, that served me well in
my early career, repaired and that not to repair it is tantamount to abandoning
a faithful companion. Even though it is a metallic object (with a faulty cloth
focal plane shutter) with lovely German glass, I should treat it with respect.
Must guilt follow even
if my Pentacon-F is an inanimate object?
When Dreams Are Broken
Tuesday, September 09, 2014
 |
| Lathyrus odoratus September 6, 2014 |
Afterglow
Jorge Luís
Borges 1923
Siempre es
conmovedor el ocaso
por
indigente o charro que sea,
pero más
conmovedor todavía
es aquel
brillo desesperado y final
que
herrumbra la llanura
cuando el
sol último se ha hundido.
Nos duele
sostener esa luz tirante y distinta,
esa
alucinación que impone al espacio
el unánime
miedo de la sombra
y que cesa
de golpe
cuando
notamos su falsía,
como cesan los sueños
cuando sabemos que soñamos.
Afterglow
Sunset is always
disturbing
Whether theatrical or
muted,
But still more
disturbing
is that last desperate
glow
that turns the plain
to rust
when on the horizon
nothing is left
of the pomp and clamor
of the setting sun.
How hard holding on to
that light, so tautly drawn and different,
That hallucination
which the human fear of the dark
Imposes on space
And which ceases at
once
The moment we realize
its falsity,
The way a dream is
broken
The moment the sleeper
knows he is dreaming.
It is patently obvious
that poets have a knack of telling us things that should be self evident. They
are not. In the last few months I have been in turmoil thinking about that line
(look it up in the English version above) so beautiful in Spanish:
como cesan
los sueños
cuando
sabemos que soñamos.
Dreams and dreaming
have been especially with me in the last couple of years when old age finds
ways of often interrupting my sleep. Going back to bed before that (after an
occasional visit to the bathroom) I would think, “Death cannot be like sleep.
The pleasure in sleeping is waking up or waking up in the middle of the night
and knowing that I will sleep again, to wake again.” Death cannot thus be like
sleep. It is terminal.
Consider Phillip K.
Dick’s short story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? One step further from
that is, “Do we dream when we are dead?”
As an aside before I
continue here is one of my fave sentences from Dick’s story:
“I like her; I could
watch her the rest of my life. She has breasts that smile.”
That reminds me of my
friend John Lekich once saying about Anne McAuley who worked at the Dianne
Farris Gallery, “She is the only woman I know whose breasts blush.” We often
visited the gallery but not to see the art on the wall.
My dreams are now more
visceral. I remember more of them because I wake up more often. When I turn off
the light at night I feel like I am in a film theatre. The lights fade, the
curtain opens and who knows what will be projected?
I have nagging
suspicions (not confirmed by research in the internet) that my dreams indicate
an encroaching Alzheimer’s.
I sometimes wonder if
looking back at memories, imagining the smell of sweet peas, or reading a book
read more than once is not some variation of a dream.
As a little boy I
lusted over Susan Stone. I was 9 so I had no idea what lusting was or meant. I
would go to sleep and attempted to put myself in dreams where Susan was ever
pleasant to me. These attempts never went anywhere because I invariably fell
asleep. I learned then that dreams were random even though some of them
happened after events of note and replicated them in some way.
I could tell you that
last night I dreamt that I was listening to Schmelzer’s Trio Sonatas as played by
the London Baroque Orchestra while scanning Rosemary’s sweet peas. I could tell
you that before that, when I knew I was going to scan the sweet peas that I went
to my William Carlos Williams – Selected Poems to look for this one:
Smell!
Oh strong-ridged and
deeply hollowed
nose of mine! what
will you not be smelling?
What tactless asses we
are, you and I, boney nose,
always indiscriminate,
always unashamed,
and now it is the
souring flowers of the bedraggled
poplars: a festering
pulp on the wet earth
beneath them. With
what deep thirst
we quicken our desires
to that rank odor of a
passing springtime!
Can you not be decent?
Can you not reserve your ardors
for something less
unlovely? What girl will care
for us, do you think,
if we continue in these ways?
Must you taste
everything? Must you know everything?
Must you have a part
in everything?
But no. I would be lying.
To dream all of the above would be a dream that upon waking would vanish as only
Borges knew, and so now, do I.
But all that does not prevent me from daydreaming about the smell of a sweet pea and why it is that although it does not have the complexity of a rose or a Southern Magnolia, they (the sweet peas) trump them all in reality and in that memory of my nose that Williams Carlos Williams so well defines.
Happy Birthday Zippy!
Monday, September 08, 2014
 |
| Sitting: Zippy Pinhead, Kathy Larkin, Susanne Tabata, Randy Rampage, Sherri Decembrini, Art Bergmann, Standing: yours truly and John Tanner |
Drummer/musician Zippy
Pinhead knows something about friendship. Talking about
Randy Rampage, he told me, “These guys are like my brothers. I have known and
worked with them for many years.” As he said this to me he beamed at me with
his trademark Zippy smile. Perhaps his wife Kathy Larkin is the only human
being on earth (besides his old musician-working-friends) who might have seen
the man scowl and not smile. Perhaps it was the fact that tomorrow Monday (I am
writing this Sunday night) is his birthday so that he was extra happy and extra
funny. His imitation of songs being played (his singing along with his deep
baritone) would guarantee this man a stand up gig anywhere if there were a God.
In fact my proof for the non-existence of a deity
is that his friend Art Bergmann is not rich and extremely famous. The same
might be said of another buddy, Randy Rampage who plays the meanest electric
bass anywhere.
Where were these three men? They were in
the home of filmmaker Susanne Tabata who lives dangerously close, but not
quite, to Burnaby.
Her friend John Tanner, former broadcaster and expert in astronomy (he works at
the Vancouver Planetarium) was the fourth man there. Tanner who may be six foot four has a fetish for getting into and driving very small cars.
The chef at the barbecue (mean ribs they
were) was Randy Rampage. Skewered fruit was served with other goodies.
For reasons that escape me I was the
interloper and yet I felt at home, especially when Zippy told me, “We're still
alive so that should count.”
Many years ago my Rosemary wanted us to
build a deck by the kitchen. We never could afford it. So we never had a deck
party. Two of the best deck parties I have been
fortunate enough to be invited to were at Tabata’s. Today's was that second one.
One of my secret pleasures is that I am
lucky enough to know Art Bergmann when he is not performing. When you talk to
him in the light of day you can understand where his brilliant lyrics come
from. This is a man who observes, reads and digests. And he does all that
silently.
Before he left he kissed his Sherri (I was
told not to call her his wife) and I asked, “Is she staying behind?” Sherri
answered, “No we just kiss all the time.”
All of who know Art Bergmann know he has a
heart.
I would like to point out here that if you
look carefully at the two snaps you might note two salient details. One is
Sherri’s dog Charlie and the other is the rubber bulb that Zippy is holding in
his left hand, with his left in the other picture. By the rules of photography when he pressed on that bulb he
tripped the shutter of the camera. So with some pride I can boast that the
photographs were taken by Zippy Pinhead. There is something else you might observe in the white edge of one of them. It is brown. Bergmann has his funny moments so he decided to slip the Fuji Instant print (Fujiroid, I call it) into Zippy's chocolate birthday cake. When I sort of scolded Bergmann he licked most of the icing off.
Should you ever run into Zippy on the
street be sure to ask him, “Why was your fuck band (a Vancouver institution in the late 70s) called
Sgt. Nick Penis? Did it have anything to do with the fact your father was a cop
(RCMP)?
Navigation - Origin Unknown
Sunday, September 07, 2014
 |
| Lauren Stewart in front of Robert Studer's sculpture, September 3, 2014 |
Last Wednesday I was told
to take care of my younger granddaughter Lauren, 12, for the afternoon.
I remember as a boy
being taken by train to the cavernous Retiro train station with my father and
hopping on a subte (the Buenos Aires
underground) to take us to Plaza Lavalle where all the movie theatres were.
There was something special in traveling with my father (who as a journalist
for the Buenos Aires Herald was hip on our city’s activities and machinations)
to the downtown core. These trips laced
with the smell of my father’s jacket of tobacco and Old Smuggler Whiskey and the
smell of rusted brake linings and urine in the underground have left an
indelible wave of nostalgia in a corner of my soul.
In a way I attempted
to do something like that with my Lauren.
 |
| Robert Studer & Page 1993 |
We drove to town and
because of my municipal license plate I parked in back alley between what used
to be the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library and Duthie’s main store.
This back alley is between Burrard and Hornby (I often confuse this street with
the other Hs, Homer and Howe). From that back alley if you look up you can see
the Hotel Vancouver with architect Henry Hawthorne’s swimming pool addition. In
the opposite direction, years ago, there was a Murchie’s where I would begin to
read my Duthie Books purchases.
 |
| Back cover of American edition of Neuromancer featuring Robert Studer's sculpture | presently in my dining room |
|
With so much of that
downtown core that was important to me I knew that I could find relevant stuff
to show Lauren. We walked past the hotel and crossed West
Georgia to where The Georgia Medical Dental Building used to be.
We entered the building’s lobby and I plunked Lauren facing the wall. She
immediately told me, “That looks very much like the sculpture you have in the
dining room.” She was right and I told
her a bit about Robert Studer and how he had this marvelous project of
inventing and building sculptures with glass and found metal. He made what
looked like long lost apparatus of a long lost civilization. The sculpture (which interacts with bystanders) is called Navigation - Origin Unknown.
 |
| Lauren & Alan Storey's pendulum |
We crossed Hornby and
entered the Hong Kong Bank. I showed her the pendulum which somehow she had
never seen. I asked her, “Do I have a pendulum in my house?” She answered,
“There is a pendulum in your mantle clock in the den.”
We talked to the
security guard who told us that the pendulum was powered by an electric motor
and that in quiet moments of the day one might hear a whoosh as the pendulum
swings.
 |
| Alan Storey |
We talked about the
fountain across the street in front of the Vancouver Art
Gallery. I informed the
guard and Lauren that in mentioning this fountain to architect Arthur Erickson
he would invariably lose his cool and say, “Fu..” Lauren agreed that the
fountain was uncommonly ugly.
We then took a picture
by Douglas Coupland’s chewing gum head. Some day when Lauren is older I will
tell her how Coupland once assisted me in a photo shoot as a stylist.
We entered the gallery
and Lauren told me that she had been in the Gallery Café only once before. I
mentioned that her sister Rebecca used to love going to it as, “They have
better music here than at Starbucks.” As they were playing the inevitable
Vivaldi Lauren said, “Rebecca is right you would never hear violins at
Starbucks.”
After our cinnamon
buns we walked down Robson. Lauren remembered that my studio had been on the second
floor of the Farmer’s Building (now gone) on the corner of Granville and
Robson.
 |
| Arthur Erickson at 1983 opening of Vancouver Art Gallery |
I had lied to Lauren
(who had believed me) that we were going to Jap-A-Dog to eat a hot dog with sea
weed. We both hate them. As we walked past Lauren indicated that we had walked
past. It was then that I told her that the Vancouver Public Library was our
real destination. Lauren loves that library as much as I do.
In something that is
beginning to worry me Lauren only picked movie DVDs and no books. I am going to
have to find some way of breaking this habit.
We left the library
and at the door I asked the Russian security man (we have talked often) if Roy was well.
 Roy was a scruffy old man (he looked old 25 or
more years ago when I first met him at the Railway Club). Roy was an obsessively avid reader of
esoteric books. We often exchanged our book picks from across the table. In
later years (the last 7 or so) he was a regular patron of one of the tables in
front of the Blenz inside the atrium of the Vancouver Public Library. He would
have a pile of books and a copy of the Globe & Mail. I would ask him what
he was reading and we had longish chats. I introduced him to both my
granddaughters. At a later stage Roy
began to look like a homeless man. The last time I talked to him four months
ago he told me he had survived a cancer scare and he was doing well.
The Russian told me
that Roy had
passed away a month ago. He was only 65.
Perhaps some day Lauren will feel an indelible wave of nostalgia in a corner of her soul when she passes by these places in the city where she was born..
|
