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| Maria Callas & Toy |
Today Rosemary had a quiet day. She puttered making our
little garden look its best when plants are really wanting to retire until the
next year.
I spent my day slipping glassine envelopes for my hundreds of
printed (in my darkroom by yours truly) 11x14 and 16x20 black and white prints.
There were around 100 11x14s in colour which Chris Dahl at Vancouver Magazine
had me have printed at Professional Colour Prints (now gone for years). I have
no idea and Dahl (when I called him) did not remember why it was that so many
of my photographs were made into those prints.
The whole idea is to file stuff (with where possible I write
who these people on the photographs are) so that someone who might be
interested in my output once I push the daisies.
I barbecued some chicken breasts and Rosemary made a nice
salad. We sat to watch CNN and to our pleasant surprise we were able to see the
whole two hour program on the Notorious RBG (Ruth Bader Ginsburg). Because both
of us are liberals we have a fondness and respect for this woman.
I was waiting for a moment during the film when they might
mention something about the Bader Ginsberg that is dear to my heart. Yes they
did cover her love for opera but not my experience.
It may have been some 20 years ago that I was driving on a
Saturday to shoot some photographs for Canadian Pacific Limited somewhere by
the Queensborough Bridge. I was on Marine Way in Vancouver listening to Saturday Afternoon
at the Opera on CBC Radio. I know it was that many years ago because the
segment out of New York was sponsored by Texaco. That sponsorship has been no
more for some time.
During one of the intervals of the opera the person being
interviewed was US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She was so good I
stopped the car, parked and listened.
It seemed it was at an early moment in her career after she
had graduated from Columbia Law School and she found herself as a young
attorney in Washington, D.C. She was waiting for the elevator in the Willard
Hotel. She was nervous as this was one of her first cases. The elevator stopped
in another floor and Maria Callas stepped in with her poodle. Bader Ginsburg
then told her interviewer, “I knew I was going to win right then!”
When asked if there was an opera that she knew about that
featured a lawyer she was quick to reply, “Johan Straus II Die Fledermause in which an
incompetent lawyer Dr. Blind does not save his client from going to jail.”
I have never forgotten that afternoon and it all came back
as we watched the Notorious RBG on TV.