Tom Jones -Vancouver - October 1981 -

One big reason I am on social media is that I like to chronicle the trends. I know there is a huge cloud in the sky that has who was born on the date of the day. So you will see in Twitter/X or Facebook, “Tom Jones was born today June 7. What is your favourite song of his”. These people then put a picture of the person (preferably in their 80s or 90s) and you can barely recognize them. This is seen as content with no real personal contribution. Another favourite is to put a picture of a beautiful young actress next to one in her 80s.

I will add here my small personal contribution that I believe is genuine content even if it is not my best.

When Rosemary, our two young daughters and I, were living in Mexico City in the Arboledas neighbourhood we had a neighbour, Felipe Ferrer Junco (he eventually became the chief of the federal police in Acapulco) who said he looked like Tom Jones. He would loudly sing It’s Not Unusual.

Felipe Ferrer Junco in Acapulco

 

We moved to Vancouver in 1975 and by 1977 I was working as a freelancer for Vancouver Magazine. Les Wiseman, who wrote a column called In One Ear, became my mentor for a musical education I lacked in what was then called popular music. In October 1981 he interviewed Jones and I photographed him. Why do I know the close date? Because I shot 35mm Kodachromes and in those days Kodak (it was processed in Vancouver) would stamp the date on all the mounted slides.

I was awfully green and it never occurred to me to get really close and just do his face. I used that easy to use but flat flash lighting with an umbrella. I was learning my ropes. I certainly failed.

I can claim one important piece of information. I got the nerve to ask him, “Sir I have been told that you wear socks.” He smiled at me and just after a quick glance of his crotch he said to me, “No I don’t.”

George McWhirter & Homero Aridjis

Griffin Literary Prize 2024

George McWhirter, Canada/Northern Ireland

Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence winner

translated from the Spanish written by

Homero Aridjis, MEXICO

New Directions Publishing, USA

We know that these two men, almost the same age (Aridjis, born in 1940 is 6 months younger than McWhirter), have just won the Giller Prize that is worth $130,000 (Canadian). What is not explained  well is that the prize money is shared by writer and translator.Sixty per cent goes to the translator and the 40% to the writer (poet).

Because I know both men well, they are my friends, I have a feeling that they are going to go 50/50 on this.

I have discovered that here in Vancouver if you ask just about anybody to tell you who was the first Vancouver Poet Laureate few will know that it was George McWhirter in 2007.

While McWhirter was able to go this past Monday to be present in Toronto for the prize announcement, Aridjis had some stomach problems and had to be hospitalized. I hope that by now he is home.

Since both Aridjis and McWhirter are poets and both have written novels I find that reading their novels has me re-reading paragraphs and lines that are so poetically lovely that I want to go at them again.

I have a phone conversation almost every week with McWhirter whose Spanish is pretty good. I like to test him for fun. Recently he gave me a lovely excuse for not being able to talk with him on the phone. "Alex we just got back from Sook and we are unpacking. I cannot talk with you now."

In the photograph that I took of Aridjis back in October 2023 at his home, I was able to share an interesting piece of sort of Canadian trivia. When I read for a third time Julio Cortázar’s Rayueala (Hopscoth), a difficult novel, his protagonist is feeling the cold during a Paris winter. He buys a flannel shirt much like the one being worn by Aridjis. Cortázar calls it “una canadiense”.

Because Aridjis is from the town of Contepec in the state of Michoacán, for years he knew something we Canadians knew nothing about. This is how Aridjis put to me in his poetic way, “Alex we did not know where those monarch butterflies were coming from. But we knew where they were going. They were going to my town and they would spend our winter on the Oyamel trees (a kind of fir tree). And you Canadians did not know where your monarchs were going.”

Self - portrait - reflection on deck window - 6 May 2024

My friend Jim Tiner, who was an underclassman of mine at St. Edward’s High School, commented how he liked the photographs of my garden. He suggested I take a selfie.

Today as I was recording my garden late afternoon in preparation for my opening of the garden to the Vancouver Rose Society I noticed that my reflection was on the window on my deck that is the one of my dining room. The reflection also had the pattern of the curtain. I kind of like it. So Mr. Tiner, thank you for suggesting this and here is my selfie.

Rosa ' Westerland' 6 June 2024

Dependability is often seen as something that because it is that, then it must be boring.

I met three people in my life that were dependable but not in the least boring. One of them was awfully sexy.

Sean Rossiter was one of the best columnists for Vancouver Magazine. He wrote about city hall (column was called 6th & Cambie) better than anybody. In those days as soon as the magazine was out our city politicians would rush to buy it so they could read Rossiter’s column. From politics he branched out into architecture and he is the sole reason I why I photographed Arthur Erickson so many times and I was forced to learn to shoot architecture. Best of all Rossiter and I loved airplanes so we went to as many air shows as we could find. Our favourite was in the Whidbey Island US Naval Base in Washington State.

Rossiter had a way or talking (he had a radio voice but with little inflection) and never talked down to you. His opinions were balanced and he was well mannered. We both agreed that Carole Taylor looked best in her little red dress.

Mark Budgen was an adopted child born in England. We travelled together to Peru, Uruguay and Argentina on magazine assignments. He was a man of principle not much different than Rossiter but he was a bit more to the left. It was Budgen who served me hardboiled eggs accompanied by Maldon Salt.

He was assigned by Vancouver Magazine’s Mac Parry to interview Pat Carney. Budgen turned down the job saying, “I don’t like her and I don’t agree with her politics.” I still had the job and the writer assigned was a very good one called Robert Hunter. He was a dependable person but he was known to have shot his rifle to the ceiling if his home dining room.

That third dependable person (the sexy one) was my wife Rosemary. Nothing could be ever wrong when she was in charge. In many ways our family kind of collapsed when she died on 9 December 2020.My two cats Niño and Niña are dependable. Niña is kind of sexy.

The rose I am using to illustrate this blog is the extremely dependable Rosa ‘Westerland’. It was the first rose that Rosemary accepted in our Kerrisdale  garden even though she had banished anything orange. This rose became the cover of Canadian Gardening and I believe that since they used one of my early scans (scanograph) it may have been the first one anywhere in the world.

It is a lovely rose as lovely as my Rosemary was. I scan the rose every year (since 2001) many times. I have a good record of its dependability.

When I saw it today (getting the garden ready for the Vancouver Rose Society people who are coming tomorrow) I had conundrum of a problem. Should I leave it (there are 4 other blooms) or should I cut it and scan it?

My Rosemary rarely used perfume, never wore anything for long in one day, and she took daily baths (sometimes we were together in the tub). For my acute sense of smell her scent was lovely. I can report here that Rosa ‘Westerland’ to me smells of synthetic apricot jam. When I first told this to Rosemary she smiled and made me go to Safeway to buy French Bonne Maman apricot  jam.

To Rosemary’s dependability & sexiness I can add she had class.

Unamed (lost the label) blue delphinium - 5 June 2024

 

This blog is about my preparation of my Kitsilano garden for visits by the members of the Vancouver Rose Society in a few days.

In our old Kerrisdale corner garden house Rosemary and I opened it for visitors such as the Vancouver Rose Society, and other local garden clubs. Our garden made it to an article in Better Homes and Gardens so we soon got bus-loads of Americans coming to see it.

When we moved to our little house with deck garden in Kitsilano, Rosemary became depressed  because we lived in a double duplex . This meant we had to get along with our neighbours who weren’t gardeners. She disliked the fact that the back lane was a mess and I was commanded to weed-eat the weeds. Our duplex neighbour complained to me and used four letter words to protest that my huge Rosa ‘Complicata’ overhanging from my garden made is (slightly) difficult for him to deal with his garbage containers. I explained that the situation would only happen for about three weeks and then I would prune it.  It made it all worse.

With all that nasty stuff out of the way, today Wednesday I went to Phoenix Perennials in Richmond. Why?

Rosemary would have said, “Alex those four Mexican terracotta planters are empty because the plants in them died because of the bad winter. We need to buy something for them." And we would have gone together and any money spent would not have made us guilty in the least.

I went alone but I was in a happy mood knowing that Rosemary was close to me and would go along to make our garden as lovely as we could for the folks of the Vancouver Rose Society.

At the Phoenix I was looking for plants that Rosemary liked that had blue flowers. I bought two delphiniums. Each cost $26. When I arrived home taking out one of them from the car the whole stalk broke off. I swore in my best Argie Spanish!

But my depression dissipated when I realized that I could scan the flowers even though it ended up being an expensive scan.

With Rosemary so near me today in a garden that is lovely with all the roses in bloom I know that she and I would be proud when our visitors show up.

I realized driving back home today, that the reason I am willing to be alive and the purpose that I have within me is to celebrate the existence of my Rosemary who somehow pressured this fool (in a nice way ) to love my hostas and my roses. Plus, of course, her snobbish perennials.

My youngest granddaughter Laure,(a tradition it is) will bring a sign she will paint that we will put out on the street to point our visitors in the right direction. I will be making my signature cucumber sandwiches and iced tea (I use Russian Caravan ) and Hilary will be making Rosemary's favourite pineapple squares.

They are not predicting any rain.