Because my father was a reporter and a writer for the Buenos Aires Herald in the 40s I believe I may have always had some black ink in my blood.

For about 23 years my Rosemary and I read the New York Times (hard copy delivered to the door) for breakfast with the Vancouver Sun. I have now been enjoying the NYTimes on my own since Rosemary died on December 9 2020.

Sometime in the early 80s I started getting photographic assignments from the Georgia Straight and contributed for many years to the Globe and Mail and the Vancouver Sun.

It was around 1994 that I started contributing both photographs with my essays for the Sun.

Shortly before Editor-in-Chief John Cruickshank left the Sun for the Chicago Sun Times in 2000 I remember that he called me up and that he wanted to talk to me. I knocked on the door of the newsroom and he opened the door. With his arm on my shoulder he took me to his office. The next day many reporters and columnists called to find out what had transpired.

At that time, former Mother Jones writer David Beers was editing and putting together the finest Vancouver Sun Saturday section called Mix. I wrote quite a few articles for Beers. Cruickshank told me that because Beers’s Mix was so successful he was going to have him “Mix” the rest of the paper and that I would be getting more work.

That was not to be as Cruickshank soon left for Chicago. It is my belief that the Vancouver Sun started its decline then.

Now they do not publish on Monday (that happened on October 17 but months before they had stopped having an editorial page on Mondays).  They unilaterally changed most of the comics. For me this means that a habit I had since 1975 is no longer one. I can now read the Sun in a record short time.

For many years the Sun and the Straight competed in having original illustration and photography. With the Straight gone there is no competition.

I have since found out that in the summer the almost empty Sun news room has the air conditioning turned off and in the winter ditto with the heating. This is to save money.

The writing is on a digital wall that soon newsprint will be history and the sale of budgies and canaries will decline.

But there is a tad of hope. David Beers is the editor of an on-line newspaper with lots of opinion and cultural essays called the Tyee. I have made a few contributions.  While I miss getting my fingers dirty with black ink, the Tyee is a splendid newspaper.   

   The Tyee       

Rosa 'Darcey Bussell' 30 September 2022

Today, 30 September 2022, the pickings in my garden for scanning are all but gone. But there was this lovely red English Rose, Rosa ‘Darcey Bussell’.

I decided I would scan it and then find a poem that would accompany it. I placed in Google rosa colorada, Jorge Luís Borges.

First on the list was a blog of mine in Spanish. It is this one:

Las Rosas de las Rosas.

I do not believe I can improve that blog with that lovely poem by Borges where he indirectly states that a red rose is a Platonic essence.

But I believe I can add to that blog by bringing in the memory of my Rosemary. 

When we moved to our Kerrisdale garden in 1986 she did not like a hybrid tea rose that was there called Rosa ‘Alexander’ which was orange/red. It was named after the British general who was a hero in Africa in WWII. It did not make any difference to Rosemary that I was Alexander, too.

But years later she began to appreciate red roses and we bought many varieties.

Because she died on December 9, 2020 she never saw, what is, now, one of the most reliable red roses in our Kits garden. And that is Darcey Bussell.

With it getting darker earlier and my two cats clinging on to me all day I have this melancholy of missing Rosemary every day at almost every moment. I take a plate out to eat. She chose our Villerory & Boch set because she said our Mexican dinnerware was losing its shine in the dishwasher.

In my bathroom I have a little soap dish. There are three that she brought from our hotel in Buenos Aires. I look at my razor and I still have blade cartridges she bought at our nearby Shopper’s.

When I look at my cats I wonder if they remember her. Are they clingy because they miss her? Am I the only human they have?

And so on all day. In the car I feel that empty presence of that empty seat next to me.

And so I look at this lovely red rose and it may have, as Borges says, that essence that makes a rose more than a rose.

I would add that this red rose also has in it the essence of my Rosemary who in the end learned to love the colour red.

Buphagus africanus africanus

The symbiotic relationship between the oxpecker (Buphagus africanus africanus) and the hooved host is known as mutualism. The birds have a steady supply of food and the host benefits from the removal of parasites from its body. The tiny oxpecker is tolerated because of this win/win relationship.

In my career as a magazine photographer in Vancouver beginning around 1977 and ending a few years ago when magazines and newspapers in Canada all but died I understood that these publications were like the African rhinoceros.

People bought magazines and newspapers not only for the news they contained but also for their cultural content. In Vancouver we could read about dance, theatre, film and music in our dailies and in the (alas! now gone) Georgia Straight.

 Georgia Straight - R.I.P.

I now understand that this was a form of symbiosis. Now with little media coverage of cultural institutions it is my guess that these institutions are hurting and not only because of Covid.

As endangered as all the above is the profession (once ubiquitous and powerful) of the publicist.

Social media, TV and radio is what is left in our Vancouver. I have noticed that the media like the CBC does not seem to understand its power. I placed this old blog into Twitter in which Nini Baird explains that densification in Vancouver is caused by the remoteness of access in the interior to transportation. My tweet was seen by 75 people. I further placed it into the CBC Vancouver & Vancouver Sun sites and viewers were no more that 3 or 4.  

Would our Vancouver Sun gain lost readership with more cultural content? 

Before the pandemic the audiences in theatre, music and dance were aged like yours truly. How can youth become interested?

Perhaps our media and our cultural institutions should ask a little bird for help                                               

The Georgia Straight - May 1967 – 27 September 2022

The paper was founded as an underground newspaper in May 1967 by Pierre Coupey, Milton Acorn,] Dan McLeod, Stan Persky, and others, and originally it operated as a collective.

In April 1967: "The proposed paper was christened the Georgia Straight over beer at the Cecil Hotel. The name aims to play on the fact that the weather forecasts will offer free publicity: they're always issuing gale warnings for the Georgia Strait."

Wikipedia

As a freelancer photographer and then writer in Vancouver since 1977 I never felt that I was part of anything. The only job I ever held was washing cars for Tilden-Rent-A-Car on Alberni Street from 1975 to 1976.

Both Vancouver Magazine and the Georgia Straight gave me a feeling that I belonged. I started contributing to Vancouver Magazine in 1977 and to the Straight from 1980.

Sometime in the beginning of 1987, punk rocker John Armstrong (Buck Cherry of the Modernettes) showed up at our corner table at the Railway Club where we had a group of writers, photographers, poets, illustrators, publishers, exotic dancers, etc. We met on Thursdays at noon.

Armstrong did not know what to do with his life. The punk era was over. I told him, “The Bay is around the corner. Buy a Harris Tweed jacket, a shirt and tie and go and see Charles Campbell (then editor at the Straight).” He did.

His first assignment was to interview a visiting Vincent Price. I took the portrait. In his second job we drove to Seattle to interview and photograph Dennis Hopper. From the Straight, Armstrong landed at the Vancouver Sun. He has subsequently written novels and an autobiography.

In the beginning of April 1989 writer John Lekich and I showed up at Campbell’s desk. Access to the Straight was easy and you never needed an appointment. 

We told Campbell that we wanted to do an Intro (a feature started by Campbell that was about local people on their way up) on an intelligent and beautiful woman. We were dispatched to work on Karen Campbell. I was never given directions on how to take my portrait. But I did know that most had to be verticals.

Until the Straight became a square-shaped paper I contributed. Then it all was evident that the weekly was moribund.

Thanks to the Straight I was pleasantly subjected to dance, theatre and musical performance of all varieties.

The Georgia Straight has an incredible value in its name. It has been purchased. The new owners say they are going to bring it all back to its former glory. They must believe in Santa Claus.

I would only give them one piece of advice. If they are to publish a hard copy they should switch from the Straight’s Thursdays to Monday. As of October 17 the Vancouver Sun will not print their paper on Mondays.

Thank you Charles Campbell and Charlie Smith for all the good times and the fact that you made us able to dream of something on one week and see it printed on the next.