A Window Stained With Colour

You may have noticed  that the header on my blog changes frequently. The change can depend on the season, holidays, current travel or just because.  When it's a holiday or travel destination the choice is fairly easy but what to do during those times between?

Fortunately the internet is a constant source of material - that and friends share moments of their lives which they have captured.  My friend Elizabeth and I met through a picture I had taken of a wine shop window in Rome - don't ask! - and over the past seven years we have shared stories and pictures through our blogs and Facebook.  Recently she posted a simple picture of a window in her home.  Simple but it captured, for me at least, those first days of winter.  The frost is on the window, the trees are almost bare of leaves, the light looks filtered through gray, and possibly stormy, clouds yet it still picks up the glow of a few of the pitchers and vases she has collected.

As I look at this one of my thoughts is:  time to be put the kettle on for a nice cup of hot tea to fight the coming cold. 

Thanks for sharing Elizabeth.


December 2 -  1991; Canada and Poland become the first nations on earth to recognize the independence of Ukraine from the Soviet Union.

Memories of .... Another Time

The downsizing I am currently experiencing means going through 60 years of "things" - knick-knacks, paintings, posters, books, CDs, household items, clothing and photographs. A few things have been put into the boxes for St Vincent de Paul or the consignment house without thought to where they fit in my life but more often unpacking something and simply turn it over in my hand has brought back memories of the many remarkable experiences and people that have crowded my life in the past six decades.

None more so than the photos that are neatly filed in albums or randomly piled in boxes or between book pages.   Admittedly in a few cases I'm at a loss to identify one or two people, the occasion or even the location but as I look at most of them the memories, and I will admit the tears, have come flooding back.

This photo was taken during my time at St Thomas Anglican Church on Huron Street in my Toronto days.

It was a Sunday evening choral evensong in late May and Patrick Bergin was being welcomed into our parish family.   Father Bull was officiating, the choir and acolytes guild were in full force and the church was full of family and friends of the Bergins.  It was a joyous parish event but as I think of it, just one of many joyous celebrations that I recall from my days in a place that was for a time a source of comfort, friendship and love.

16 novembre/November - Santa Gertrude di Helfta detta La Grande

Faded Photos

This post is a day late but yesterday was one of those days where much as done but not everything accomplished. A trip to the Vet for our Nicky – we're helping to feed Dr Porcino's 18 daschunds – followed by a laugh-filled pranzo with my friend Marco, then champagne and dolci with Maria Luisa and Laurent capped by an evening at the opera with Riccardo Muti conducing a special performance of Rossini's Moise et Pharon just for my birthday. Okay that's a bit of an exaggeration but its a nice thought. Between that and greetings from friends it was an almost perfect birthday.

When I packed up things for the move to Warsaw 11 years ago I had a large box of family photos to bring with me. I had retired and was going to have the time to go through them, scan them, burn them to a disc and have family and friends help me identify some of the people I didn't recognize. Well as they say the best planned lays ....

Over the last week or so I've been thinking about that box sitting on a top shelf here in Roma. I have come to realize that most of the people who could have helped me remember or discover the names behind the faces smiling or squinting into the Brownie Box lens have left the scene. Now many of those faces and the events those photos recorded will fade away as in time will the images. And that fills me with, if not a sadness, a profound melancholy.

Though the bulk of the photos record events in my parents life – both in Ireland and Canada – many captured people and places from my childhood. Unlike today back then I didn't seem to have an aversion to a camera flash. When I took the box of its shelf yesterday, in a fit of birthday nostalgia, I came across three photos that would have been taken, if not on the same day, certainly around the same time.

These would have been taken in the late spring or early summer of 1947 in the backyard of our house in what was then the countryside outside of Toronto. I had been born on December 9 of the previous year – according to family legend a snowy, blowy day in Toronto. My mother had been told – after losing two children – that she could never carry full-term so on the 8th my father announced that he would be off work as his wife was giving birth at 0930 on the 9th! And thus little William John came into the world – I recall that later I delighted in quoting Macduff that I “was from my mother's womb untimely ripped.” Given the period and state of medicine at the time perhaps a more honest description than I thought.


This would be me with my Aunt Vic who lived across the street from us. She wasn't really my aunt but in our family close friends were referred to as Aunt and Uncle. She had no children of her own and fawned over and spoiled me no end. She was a tiny French Canadian woman with a strong accent who's life was the stuff of novels. She didn't have a phone and would use ours occasionally; however she believed that the further away a person was the louder you had to talk. When she called her family in Rimouski all her sister really should have done was open the window she would have heard her just fine.

My father, Ab - a nickname he got because his little sister couldn't pronounce Albert, was the centre of my universe for the first 14 years of my life. I don't ever recall once in that 14 years going to bed without kissing him goodnight. I'm sure I've allowed time and circumstances to romanticize both the man and my relationship with him. Like most people I'm sure he had his faults and foibles but I only remember him as a loving and caring father. Fifty years later I still miss him.

Perhaps it's because I've ticked off another year but I think maybe I should dig a little deeper into that box before any more memories or photos fade away.

09 decembre - Juan Diego nato Cuauhtlatoatzin

Día de los Muertos - Mixquic 1987

As I worked on the posting for November 2 - All Soul's Day - one of those little memory drawers opened and I recalled a Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) fiesta back in 1987. Laurent was in Mexico City on his first posting. I was able - through juggled work schedules and thanks to working for an airline - to get down for a month at a time once every two or three months. We were lucky - the peso was low, the economy booming and despite the death and destruction that the 1986 earthquake had caused, the city and country was vibrant and bustling.

Part of learning about the culture was realizing that the images of death were always present - as a theme it ran through art, music, religion and folk traditions. The strange mixture of Aztec and Christian traditions that in another place would seem dark and unduly fatalistic here had an openly sardonic irony that was in so many ways healthier than that Anglo-Protestant fear of death I grew up with.

In Mexico death was part of life and at no time was that more apparent than on the Feast of the Dead. And in particular in the small town of San Andrés Mixquic just south of Mexico City in the Distrito Federal. It is a three day event there - part street fair, part carnival and part honouring the dead by families and friends. Many of the traditions are common to most towns and villages - the bread of the dead, the sugar skulls and strange skeleton figures but in Mixquic they are know for the decorations on the graves and the traditional altars to loved ones set up in homes. Families work on elaborate floral mosaics and prepare graves with candles and incense for a Feast with their Dead.

I did not take many photos that day but I think this one was perhaps the best and seemed to sum up so much of what the day was about.


A left click will take you to a short slide show of a few of the other photos that were taken that day.

05 novembre - Beato Guido Maria Conforti