Friday, February 12, 2016




One of my pleasant plans that were to happen in life in our new little house in Kitsilano was the prospect of cycling to Limelight Video on Broadway and Alma. That is not to be as Limelight is closing shop in a few weeks. While many of the DVDs that they carry are available in our Vancouver Public Library system (and some are not!) it’s the British series that I found on the Limelight shelves that were the real attraction.

I have been visiting my framing friends Bruce and Jim Macadam of Magnum Frames. They do blockbuster business even though I believe that the concept of framing a photograph or a piece of art is on its way out. Why would anybody of the more recent generation opt for a unchanging image (boring!) when a flickering image of constant change can replace it? Somewhere in the innards of my soul I believe that art galleries will also go the route of the dodo.

Of late I have been listening to my over 12 CDs and (yes!) records featuring Gerry Mulligan. I believe I might visit Sikora’s and see what other Mulligan CDs I can find. I wonder of this attraction of mine for obsolescence which includes playing some of my cassettes, shooting film and not being subscribed to Netflix. My hard copy NY Times is outside the door 365 days of the year and reading it (and the Vancouver Sun) have been a constant routine (breakfast in bed with Rosemary) for over 15 years.

My Rosemary and I in spite of living in smaller quarters are preparing to have an outstanding small garden this spring. Nurseries are hurting as gardening is dead. Replacing it we have large (but short) fat scented candles and amazingly life-like plastic flowers that need not be watered or fertilized. No I am just being an unreliable narrator here. It will be a real garden.

And  we have books.

Yes, and books. We are surrounded by them even though I know I have little time nor little inclination to re-read any of them. Do I really want to tackle my Gore Vidal novels? Will I ever read my P.D. James again? Could it be that these hard covers look nice inside the antique lawyer’s bookcases? Is this show-off vanity on my part? Luckily time is short to reflect on any of the above.

In one way I have come to be part of this 21st century. In our Athlone home we had a perfectly serviceable Sony Trinitron TV. Our moving company friends from Nicaragua took it to the dumper. We now have a 43 inch Vizio 4K that sports outstanding sharpness, particularly with comparison to the fading memory of the Trinitron. A flat-screened TV presents a problem in a small house. This is the case when I refuse to have any such contraption in the bedroom. The only place left is the inevitable mantle. That 43 inch TV is ugly over the mantle. My friend Robert Friedman told me our 43 inch is too small. “You have room for a 50,” he said.

My friends at Magnum Frames designed an executed a most elegant solution to the ugly and black TV. They sandwiched between two pieces of Plexiglas (the front one is a special UV blocking version) my portrait of my older granddaughter Rebecca. Then they framed it with a narrow black wooden molding. It fits snugly over the TV with two little metal brackets on both top corners. You swing the TV forward and slip the frame. When you push the TV back the frame sits just right and the black TV becomes the matt.