How were Rosemary and I to know that all those Mexican curios, pottery, dresses, etc would one day surround us to the point that we knew that we could not get rid of them because of our joint memory of where we got them, why we wanted them and how in our many movings from one house to another they all survived?
Now alone in my Kits house surrounded by them I think of that nasty word (for me) legacy. What will happen to my thousands of negatives? Will my daughters and granddaughters have room in their houses for all the framed photographs on the walls and the ones in storage?
I have the opinion that the Vancouver Archives are where photographs and documents go to die. I am aware that the digital links to Vancouver Sun and Georgia Straight to important articles are not being stored. We live in a city with a poor memory for its past.
My 6726, (not including this one) blogs contain lots of memories of Vancouver events. Few know that I am the most prolific photographer in Canada. Besides Bev Davies I documented the punk movement in Vancouver that began in the late 70s.
I have a lovely old book El Legado de San Martín, that Juan Domingo Perón made sure all students in school in 1950 would have a copy. I think of this great patriot’s legacy as that of a man who had all the power to become a strongman in his country but opted to exile himself in France.
I think of what my friend Abraham Rogatnick told me a few months before he died, “I am not long for this world and I am glad.” With all the turmoil affecting our 21st century I am beginning to think like him.
There are little things,(not important?) like the garden aprons, IDS,etc that Rosemary had as a master gardener and when she worked in the Shop in the Garden at UBC. Can I just throw them into the garbage? They would have no meaning for my daughters.
These are the thoughts that consume me and keep me awake. Sometimes I must take those London Drugs sleeping pills that manage to not give me a hangover in the morning.
Legacy is for the birds.
