Saturday, June 21, 2025

Rosa 'Zéphirine Drouhin' - 21 June 2025

 

No matter where I go in my home everything reminds me of my Rosemary. Another way of saying this is that I see her face everywhere. Of late I have enjoyed scanning roses past their prime. This one today, Rosa ‘Zéphirine Drouhin’ with its delicate mauve colour (it originally was red) somehow was Rosemary in elegance. Not the woman I met back in December 1967, but the woman who grew old with me.

This framed Polaroid that I took sometime around 1976 in Burnaby was one that ended in a shoebox. More recently I noticed it had a special charm. I had it framed. It is the first photograph I see when I enter our ground floor guest bathroom.

Combining what to me are the two faces of Rosemary, then and recently, before she died, felt something I was compelled to do.

Friday, June 20, 2025

Brother Edwin Reggio,C.S.C. &  María de los Dolores Reyes de Irureta Goyena

 

In that last century I was not only a photographer. I was a writer, too. It was frustrating to write as I was often told not to get too personal and to stick to my subject.

Now my daily blog is my personal magazine. I am the publisher, editor (not a very good one I have been told), writer, art director and photographer. I can do as I please and I relish doing just that.

I often write here that what makes us human is our ability to associate disparate subjects. I will do that, lots here.

Because my mother, for most of her life when we left Buenos Aires in 1952 for Mexico City, and even before then, was a busy teacher trying to make ends meet. My grandmother was the person who educated me. My father had voluntarily left the house in Buenos Aires in 1950 as he was a serious alcoholic.

 I will write about her and Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C.  They were the two responsible for whatever small amount of wisdom I may have.

My abuelita never told me, “Alex, don’t do that.” It was always, “Alex, if you do that, you will have these consequences.” Even though I adored her she often told me that you inherited a family but chose your friends. She was a devout Roman Catholic so she was able to inspire me to the teachings of that doctor and evangelist that was St. Luke. Believing in religion or not does not diminish the wisdom of “Nobody is a prophet in their own land” or “Do this in remembrance of me.” She quoted lots from Don Quijote and from the Argentine prose poem Martín Fierro. One of my fave of her suggestions was when I complained I was bored. "Chúpate el codo." That translates to, "Suck your elbow."

I find it astounding that before my abue died in 1970 she met my Rosemary. And of course my Rosemary met Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. whom I had first met in 1958.

Brother Edwin taught me many things but there is one day in our religion class (it should have been called Thomistic Theology) that will be forever with me. We liked to waste time (so we thought) by asking Brother Edwin silly question to get him off his lesson plan for the day. We asked, “Brother Edwin, did Hitler and Judas go to hell?”

His answer, in this age of hate and criticism, is an apt reminder for me to moderate my criticism and stay away from politics and religion.

He said, ““Class, when we are born, part of us is an indelible and inherent quality I call human dignity. It is part of our distinct soul. We are born and die with it no matter what we do or not do with our life.No I don’t know if Hitler and Judas are in hell."

The Man that Was Brother Edwin 

I will never while I am alive ever say, “I hate so & so.”

Wisdom imparted by two important mentors of my life.

 

Marc Destrubé

 Concert at St. Anselm's Tomorrow June 21 at 1 PM

 

Our Vancouver has many gems that are mostly hidden to us if we depend on media now that journalism is as dead as Béla Bartók and  Heinrich Ignaz Frans van Biber.

Some of us are lucky to be in email lists that inform us of these gems.

It was around 1991 that I first met violinist Marc Destrubé. Besides being a stellar performer he has that charm to be able to educate and inspire us to listen to music of all genres.

Few might know that Destrubé is the leader of the Axelrod Quartet that is based in the Washington DC’s Smithsonian. They play on a beautiful set of Stradivarius instruments. Best of all Destrubé lives in BC.

Destrubé not only plays baroque and early baroque music but his local group the Microcosmos Quartet plays much more modern music, some if it never played before in Vancouver. Some of these concerts are in intimate house locations.

Microcosmos Quartet 

Listening to Béla Bartók in Intimate Surroundings 

In the last two years Destrubé played Bach’s magnum opus his Sonatas & Partitas for Solo BWV 1001-1006 at St. Anselms Anglican Church close to UBC.

Because I am 82 I calculate that statistically my being at those performances will not be repeated in my lifetime.

Now here is the good news. Tomorrow at St. Anselm’s at 1pm Destrubé will be playing on his 17th century Italian violin (1685), in baroque set-up with a baroque style made by Michelle Speller of Vancouver in the following program: 

Program:

Johann Joseph Vilsmayr (1663 - 1722)

Partita No. 1 in A Major, from Artificiosus Concentus pro Camera (Salzburg, 1715)

 

 Heinrich Ignaz Frans van Biber (1644-1704)

 Passacaglia in g minor, from the ‘Rosary Sonatas’ (Salzburg, 1676)

 

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750)

Partita No. 1 in b minor for violin without bass, BWV 1002 (Köthen, 1620)       

 

 Presented in co-operation with Early Music Vancouver, with the generous support of the Drance family.

Consider that the price for admission $30 includes food and non-alcholic drink.

Thursday, June 19, 2025

Me - photograph - Johnny Thunders - 1981

 

Johnny Thunders - 1981

 

Johnny Thunders - From the Heart

 

Little Things – Julia Abigail Fletcher

Little drops of water,

Little grains of sand,

Make the mighty ocean

And the pleasant land.

 

So the little moments,

Humble though they be,

Make the mighty ages

Of Eternity.

 

So the little errors

Lead the soul away

From the paths of virtue

Far in sin to stray.

 

Little deeds of kindness,

Little words of love,

Help to make earth happy

Like the Heaven above.

 

These last few months I have suffered extreme depression. I even find it hard to make eye-contact with people. The death of a good friend two weeks ago by MAID has affected me, especially as my friend texted me on the day my friend died with a thank you for my friendship and added, “Dying is a tad complicated.”

To counter this bout it occurred to me to think and see things the way my Rosemary did. In the garden she noticed the little plants and their details. Rosemary had a way of looking at life much more positively than I ever did. But she might have taught me something.

Consider my luck in that I have photographed one Canadian Poet Laureate (the first one), George Bowering and he wrote a whole chapter in one of his books on how my portrait of him was not of him. I have always considered Bowering to be the “Great Contrarian”.

 I have also photographed three Vancouver Poet Laureates, George McWhirter, Brad Cran and Evelyn Lau.

Now that little thing happened today. It was a thought that made me smile.  I remembered that Brad Cran wrote extemporaneously a poem for me on the day my cat disappeared. It is in first link below.

A September Morning - Brad Cran 

An no the cat was not dead - Brad Cran 

Brad Cran - 2011

 

And there is another little thing I want to boast about. In my years of taking portraits for many magazines and the Globe and Mail many celebrities faced my camera. When I was working with writers they invariably asked me to photograph them with the celebrity. I always remained behind my camera.

There is a lovely exception. I was about to photograph that proto-punk of note Johnny Thunders when he told me, “Alex if you are going to photograph me I must photography you.” He did.

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

 

 

Because I live alone with two cats, I have lots of time in my hands. I like to putter in my oficina scanning my plants and writing these blogs (6467 including this one). Sometimes I linger in my thoughts with photographs I have taken in my past (thousands upon thousands) and today Anastasia Milne beckoned (indirectly) that I should do something different. 

In the last 3 years I have sandwiched two negatives (usually from the same session) and scanned them. I call the results “scanner sandwiches without mayonnaise”.

What makes this particular sandwich unique is that when I photographed Milne in the best room of the now gone infamous Marble Arch Hotel, I decided to use the sharpest film ever made. This was Kodak’s Technical Pan. I rated it at a very slow 25 ISO. For the photographs I used a Mamiya RB-67. But for just two (yes only two!) I loaded my German Gevabox camera and managed to take two exposures. I used the slow shutter setting of bulb.

I like the results. If I had more time my hands (the time of a younger than my 82 years) I could be at it for a long time. Fortunately my roses beckon for me to scan them.

Tuesday, June 17, 2025

 

As I get older I become more certain of books that influence my life. I have written about singularly good first paragraphs before.

Now with my insomnia, I have come to understand that there are two books I can never ever forget. One is William Gibson’s Neuromancer with that impossible to forget first paragraph,

The sky above the port was the colour of television tuned to a dead channel.

In the heels of my latest blog about suicide I cannot but state here that Jane Rule’s book Taking My Life contains a damnably fine first paragraph, much too long for me to remember verbatim.

Writing an autobiography may be a positive way of taking my own life. Beginning in the dead of winter, mortal with abused lungs and liver, my arthritic bones as incentive for old age, I may be able to learn to value my life as something other than the hard and threateningly pointless journey it has often seemed. I have never been suicidal but often stalled, as I have been now for some months, not just directionless, but unconvinced that there is one. No plan for a story or novel can rouse my imagination, which resolutely sleeps, feeding on the fat of summer. And so, I take my life, with moral and aesthetic misgivings, simply because there is nothing else to do.

While, I too am not suicidal, I feel so lucky to have met this woman and photographed her. When I enter my ground floor visitor’s bathroom I first see three framed photographs of my Rosemary. And then by the toilet, staring at me there is Jane Rule’s Taking My Life.

Suicide & this Lucky Man