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Happy birthday, Stan

1/31/2016

Gord McCaw‎ to Stan Burfield
31 January ·

Happy birthday Stan, here's a little gift for you. I've been going through some negs from the 80's and found this shot of you from March 2, 1984. We were having a fast coffee at the Aristocratic, which you may remember was at the SW corner of Broadway & Granville, where the Chapters bookstore has now been for many years...

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Meredith Moeckel, Magnus Grendel Samson Coleman, JoJo Nora and 5 others like this.
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Stan Burfield That is such a crazy coincidence, Gord. I am sitting here right now as you post that WEARING THE EXACT SAME SWEATER!!!!!
Like · Reply · 2 · 31 January at 22:28

Gord McCaw Which is why, of course, I sent it...
Like · Reply · 31 January at 22:28

Stan Burfield Uh, Gee, Gord. You and I do go back a ways, but umm, you know... umm
Like · Reply · 1 · 31 January at 22:30

Stan Burfield When Lindas show is over, Ièll ask her to take an updated shot of the above.
Like · Reply · 1 · 31 January at 22:33

Gord McCaw That would be cool...
Like · Reply · 1 · 31 January at 22:33

Stan Burfield Just before I went on my bicycle trip: Thunder Bay to St. Johns
Like · Reply · 3 · 31 January at 22:35

Kathryn Alexander the Aristrocratic was the cafe my nana used to take me for hot choc and chicken in the straw I miss it
Like · Reply · 1 · 1 February at 00:11

Koral Scott This is amazing!
Unlike · Reply · 1 · 1 February at 08:12

Martin Hayter I remember the Aristocrat! THE diner's diner in Vancouver. Cool sign too. Shame about Chapters moving in...
Like · Reply · 1 February at 13:12

Stan Burfield Gord has a huge data bank of his own photos of old store signs. I'm sure he has one of this one.
Like · Reply · 1 February at 14:03

Gord McCaw Indeed I do, I shot photos of the Aristocratic close to the time of this picture, about a month before they stripped the 30 foot bands of white neon off the sides of the building. I'll post a shot later when I'm near the PC...
Unlike · Reply · 1 · 1 February at 14:37

Brian Dedora Risty...
Like · Reply · 1 February at 19:32

Gord McCaw I accidentally posted this to the wrong thread. I shot this photo of the Aristocratic on Jan. 28, 1985...
Unlike · Reply · 1 · 2 February at 00:14

Stan Burfield Great photo, and a beautiful cafe. Sad that it was torn down. Going by the wording on the sign, they expected to become a chain, not just a memory.
Like · Reply · 2 February at 00:22

Gord McCaw The Aristocratic was a chain, at the height of their success, in the 40's and 50's, there were a dozen Aristocratics, as the sign says, "all over town". There was one up in Marpole and another at Granville & Smithe, making three on Granville alone...
Like · Reply · 2 February at 00:31

Stan Burfield Wow, I had no idea. Viravek must have borrowed "all over town" from the cafe.
Like · Reply · 2 February at 00:33

Gord McCaw I like the way he used to say he was "going to town."...
Like · Reply · 2 February at 00:39

Stan Burfield Ha, yeah. I just listened to one of those tapes today. Just like yesterday. Hey, can I put in the tape of the Allen Ginsberg reading? (Then I'll post it, if it turns out any good.)
Like · Reply · 1 · 2 February at 00:42

Gord McCaw Fo sho...
Like · Reply · 2 February at 01:19

Stan Burfield Great. Suddenly the audience expands!
Like · Reply · 2 February at 01:20

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Winter sunset

1/22/2016

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In the spring and summer, the sun will set at the right side of this photo, if not further. The road down below is pointing straight west.

JoJo Nora, Penn Kemp, Frank Beltrano and 20 others like this.
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Yvonne Maggs
Yvonne Maggs Lovely ...
Like · Reply · 21 January at 18:04
Barbara Green
Barbara Green We really are wobbly on our axis, aren't we?
Like · Reply · 21 January at 18:20
Stan Burfield
Stan Burfield Yeah. You can really see it from up here. That road is pointing straight west, towards the summer sunset.
Like · Reply · 2 · 21 January at 21:20
Meredith Moeckel
Meredith Moeckel Did you add any green to this photo Stan? Just wondering since I've never seen such green in a sunset!
Like · Reply · 22 January at 09:01
Stan Burfield
Stan Burfield I did enhance the colour a bit, just increasing the colour saturation mainly, but it may have added some green. (I'm red-green colour blind.) The problem is that my cheap little camera washes out a beautiful sunset like this completely when there's a little of the actual sun in it so that the photo looks like a bright day-time photo. But it looks pretty close to the real deal here..
Like · Reply · 22 January at 14:12 · Edited

Meredith Moeckel
Meredith Moeckel P.S. What a beautiful view you and Linda have of sunsets! smile emoticon
Like · Reply · 22 January at 09:03
Stan Burfield
Stan Burfield Yeah. We would hate to move from here, just for that reason.
Like · Reply · 22 January at 14:13

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The pow wow

1/18/2016

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When I was a small boy on the farm we would go to the rodeo on the Hobbema Indian Reservation in central Alberta and after the events watch the pow wow in the trees to one side. The drumming and chanting and dancing lodged itself pretty deep inside me.

If you're not an Indian, watch this. You'll see what you're missing. We don't have anything like it at all. I wish we did.

Meredith Moeckel, Raven Black and 2 others like this.
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Meredith Moeckel Yes indeed! I used to live near the Stony Indian reservation when we had a log cabin about 20 miles from Cochrane. I just told Linda that I'd take some photos of the beadwork on leather pieces that a couple made me. Neat pow wow story dear friend!
Unlike · Reply · 1 · 31 January at 10:04

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DRINK

1/16/2016

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But
I thought
a life is a sip.

Martin Hayter, Raven Black, Jaime R Brenes Reyes and 5 others like this.

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Well put, sir.

1/12/2016

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I woke at 3 am last night, ostensibly to go to the washroom, but actually to recall into the waking world the dream that woke me.

It was a lesson. My dream mind had a lesson for me. This happens occasionally because of my obsession with understanding things: my dream mind, like a dutiful son, also tries to understand things. Sometimes it gets so excited by a flashy new idea it wakes me up to tell me. Typical kid.

This time it made some kind of presentation, something like a 3-D version of a Power Point presentation. But I only remember the words: "YOU are always there. As either your self inside the world, or as your inner self inside your outer self, or as a character inside your inner self." (By which he meant, I assumed, a dream character).

As I woke thinking about this I laughed at the irony. Here was my dream self looking me in the eye and telling me that he didn't exist as someone who could look me in the eye and tell me things.

He was saying, I am always my self. I may seem to be communicating with some aspect of myself the way I used to do sometimes in my stretches of isolation as a fire towerman in the forest, but it is all me. And when I'm fascinated by my dreams, by the people and the goings-on that populate them, well, they are just me too.

And out in the real world I may imbibe the essences of others, but those are my own imaginings. My outer world is populated with my self just as my dreams are.

Nevertheless, sitting here writing this, I'm thinking how nice it is to wake up to profound thoughts that are already fully formed and fleshed out, ready to write down, and me not having to put an ounce of effort into it.

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Michael Hudecki, Kathryn Alexander, Larry Burfield and 7 others like this.
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Donald Brackett you could be thunderclap newman.
Like · Reply · January 12 at 5:46pm

Stan Burfield Hadn't heard of the band before! How do you mean?
Like · Reply · January 12 at 6:07pm

Donald Brackett the song was called "something in the air"....maybe about 1968...if you find it on Youtube all will be clear...you'll likely remember it...
Like · Reply · January 12 at 6:49pm

Stan Burfield We have got to get it together now. Yeah, I couldn't remember that song. What's your Buddhist take on my dream?
Like · Reply · January 12 at 8:24pm

Donald Brackett Hmmm. Not so much my Buddhist take on your dream as the fact that it was a profoundly Buddhist dream, or rather a dream of awakening from the dream. I recall having a similar (almost lucid) dream once where there was some calamity and I suddenly realized that I was in no real danger because (as I declared loudly in the dream "Everything that's happening is happening in my mind"!) You had the same insight it seems. The trick now is to realize the same thing while you're awake...in which case, whether you believe it or not, you would be experiencing the essence of the Buddhist enlightenment that the original Buddha had himself. The thing to remember is that there is no diety in Buddhism, and Siddhartha Gautama was just a guy like us who happened to see the mind-based nature of reality, hence the Sanskrit word which is the root of his honorific: buddha = awakened. That's a great dream, most momentous, congrats on it!....now just have the same one while you're supposedly awake during the day....that will really blow your mind for sure (in a good way)....cheers, D.
Like · Reply · January 12 at 8:40pm

Stan Burfield
Stan Burfield I'll look forward to it. I can't imagine such a thing, but yes, it would blow my mind!.....The fun thing I've discovered in terms of lucid dreams is that, being big on theorizing, and so having a theorizing subconscious, sometimes I'm in a really weird situation in a dream and, in the dream, I start analyzing the situation, usually coming to a conclusion while I'm standing there. Then when I wake up I can't figure the dream out because I'm stuck with the analysis I made while there in the dream. It's only later, when I'm good and awake and removed from it, that I realize that inside the dream I couldn't see anything as being symbolic. Instead it's all real. So I have to toss out my dream analysis and just look at the imagery, and then I get it!
Like · Reply · January 12 at 8:51pm

Jenny Getsinger Such a philosopher! Keep up with the good work, Stan.
Unlike · Reply · 1 · January 12 at 6:03pm

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Afternoon sun

1/5/2016

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JoJo Nora, Larry Burfield, Shirley Lin and 23 others like this.
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Jan Conn Purple, green, plus a glass candelier? Nice digs!
Like · Reply · January 5 at 9:14pm

Stan Burfield Linda's definitely got an eye. smile emoticon
Like · Reply · 2 · January 5 at 9:15pm

Jan Conn Yes!
Like · Reply · January 5 at 9:15pm

Linda Eva Williams Compliments to you and Linda (such a nice name).
Like · Reply · January 5 at 11:13pm

Stan Burfield ha ha
Like · Reply · January 5 at 11:15pm

Cambridge Keenan Linda and I share many of the same tastes
Unlike · Reply · 1 · January 6 at 9:32am

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I'm watching a reality TV series, The Polar Sea, which was made by some adventurers trying to sail the now-open Northwest Passage.

1/3/2016

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A middle-aged Inuit man is standing on the featureless shore of the Arctic Ocean. Behind him, rising low from the edge of the tundra, is a windbreak of wood slabs, the kind people took refuge behind in the old days. It looks tiny in the distance, but it might be large. The camera pans around to a collection of square, barely-functional cabins that are propped awkwardly above the permafrost. They may have once housed an invasion of baleen whalers. And then we look back to a bulbous nylon tent with a round door, which represents, in this outdoor museum, the latest strangers to adventure here--those who measure temperature, methane gas and death.

On this windless day the water wanders in around the pebbles beside the feet of the man who looks up at the camera. He says, "I like the waves. They come and go like the stories of the people."

Patricia Black, Meredith Moeckel, Shirley Lin and 6 others like this.

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Happy birthday, Stan

Winter sunset

The pow wow

DRINK

Well put, sir.

Afternoon sun

I'm watching a reality TV series, The Polar Sea, which was made by some adventurers trying to sail the now-open Northwest Passage.

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