Ex-Fernwood resident Alexis Puentes plays for 1 hour on Mainstage @ BC150 Festival, Inner Harbour, Victoria, Monday, August 4, 2:30 – 3:30 pm, between Jim Byrnes + Colin James

+++  Alexis Puentes, ex-Fernwood and Pandora resident, founder with his brother Adonis Puentes of the Puentes  Brothers, and now reincarnated as ‘Alex Cuba,’ is back in town as the fifth star on the Mainstage bill tomorrow at the BC150 Festival in the Inner Harbour.

Alex Cuba will play a one hour set just after Jim Byrnes and just before Colin James, two giants of West Coast blues and gospel music.

The Juno award-winning Cuban-Canadian nuevo rumbero artist (who now lives in Smithers with his wife Sara Puentes and their children) will perform between 2:30 and 3:30 p. m. in front of a crowd that is expected to grow to up to 40,000 as the days wears on.

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E. CATHERINE MORONEY: The Chief who Danced, a short note by Gregory Hartnell (‘Goyo’)

+++  Here is a thin curiosity of an illustrated chapbook about the Salish people of southwest British Columbia by a retired Sister of Saint Ann. I remember meeting Sister Catherine at Island Catholic News board meetings in the early 90s, and was always impressed with her keen attention to detail, humilty and wisdom.  The two colour (black and red) illustrations by Art Harrigan are unusual for the way they attempt to fuse traditional Salish native design motifs with Western style caricature.   I imported this item from our Librarything account over here to the Concerned Citizens’ Coalition Weblog @ WordPress, goyodelarosa.wordpress,com/ where it should now be found under ‘Chief…’ or ‘Moroney.’    It is a short review I wrote of it for our CCC Library catalogue @ LibraryThing:  http://www.librarything.com/work/4655700     +++

STRANGE WEIRDPRESS: Reverse alphabetisation of category headers

+++  I just noticed that the category headers for this website are arranged in reverse order, with the As at the bottom of the roll, and the last letters of the alphabet at the top.  I don’t know if this is a peculiarity of weirdpress, but at least I see some attempt at order, even if it is backward…I like weirdpress generally though.  I wonder how people like the black presentation format?  I am trying to emulate FMR as much as I can.  Scroll down our blogroll for FMR or FRANCO MARIA RICCI and one will see what I like.  The black background sets off the colour of the pictures much better than white… +++

Still clear frosty ring-around-the-full-moon night looking southwest from Rockland escarpment

+++ … This is one of those classic kinds of still, clear, frosty, ring-around-the-almost-perfectly-full-moon nights, such as keep a poor soul such as meself up to all hours.  The view from the southwest-facing balcony of our home on the Rockland escarpment becomes fuzzy as one tries to gaze into the distance where the Olympic Mountains and the lights of Port Angeles should usually be…but are tonight completely obscured by a fine mist that seems to start just off the southern Marine Drive coastline…    …A moon-ring reminds me of another I saw recently in a new heavily textured painting by Virginia SmallFry of SmallFry Enterprises in an unusually large horizontal rectangle, showing Japanese plum blossom trees lit up at night with a moon-ring around the full moon in the upper right corner.  The painting is so unusually large for Virginia, she had a bit of dilemma as to how to transport it up to a house at Shawnigan Lake…  …I’ve bought a number of paintings by Virginia over the years.  I promise to get some pix of her work up here soon…  …Working late at night always makes me think of the great long ode to the night by the French Symbolist poet Charles Peguy…a master of trance-like repetition, spiritual mystery, and startling symbolic imagery, as in the Rosary, or Francesco’s prayer to Sister Moon, or the mantras of the Beats and the Krishna people…  +++ 

TIO JULIO CABRERA Y HERMANA MARIA TERESA: No. Uno Vic. Music Lion married my sister!

+++  Yeterday I named the Puentes Brothers, Alexis and Adonis as two of our CCC Victoria Music Lions, at the Concerned Citizens’ Coalition Weblog (CCC Weblog http://goyodelarosa.wordpress.com/) and well they do deserve to be so designated.  Not to take away from that honour, however, I want to put my own brother-in-law, Julio Cabrera, at the very top of the list of great Victoria musicians!  I hesitated to name Julio to the top of the CCC list at first, because of the obvious problem of a perception of favouritism, but when one considers the magnitude of his musical accomplishments despite the fact that Julio is a blind man, his explorations in many different genres of music make his genius all that much more remarkable and undeniable.    Like other great genius blind musicians of reknown, such as  Joaquin Rodrigo, Jose Feliciano, Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder, Julio is a man who has used his blindness as a vehicle for self-transformation, and has collaborated with dozens of other musicians in Victoria, Puerto Vallarta, Mascota, Alaska, Argentina and many other places in North and South America to produce many memorable live appearances over the years with ever-changing personnel in different bands in such genres as salsa, merengue, cha cha, montuno, bolero, rumba, tango, tropicalismo, ranchero, flamenco, reggae, blues, etc. and has produced quite a history of recordings, one of the most familiar of which was entitled Retrato, which was recorded and produced here in Victoria, I believe, with a full colour reprodution of a typical Luis Merino painting of a Mexican Oriental woman on the CD cover in vibrant Mexican colours to complement the colours of Julio’s music.    I don’t know how to upload some of the CDs I have in my collection yet, but when I do, I will put them up here.  In the meantime, I will be writing an email to my sister Maria, Julio’s wife who shares his life in Mascota, Jalisco, Mexico, between Puerto Vallarta amd Guadalaraja.  I hope to be able to put up a discography for Maria and Julio and other aficionados of Julio’s here soon.   Readers may find many spots on the adjacent Blogroll where they can click to see a slide show of the new renovations that Julio and Maria have done at their Meson Santa Lucia in the old colonial quarter of magical Mascota.  I believe that they will be putting up some of Julio’s music at the site in the coming weeks also, so things are really happening down in sunny Mexico!  Adios, mis amigos…Goyo… +++

Sara Marreiros is first Victoria Music Lioness @ CCC Weblog @ goyodelarosa.wordpress.com/

+++  Sara Marreiros is the first female musician from Victoria on Vancouver Island to be designated ‘VICTORIA MUSIC LIONESS,’ information which will appear on the Concerned Citizens’ Coalition Weblog, also known as the ‘CCC Weblog’ found at: goyodelarosa.wordpress.com/, maintained by CCC founder Gregory Hartnell who blogs there under the moniker ‘Goyo de la Rosa.’  In fact, ‘Goyo de la Rosa’ is writing this very type in front of you!  Sara has consistently produced a very high quality of musical artistic work since her days at the Sevilla World’s Fair with the Juno Award-winning Victoria band of fond memory Djole, and well deserves to be the first Victoria woman in the world of music to take the top place on the CCC list.  Adonis and Alexis Puentes were the first two Victoria Music Lions placed on the CCC list yesterday.  Please listen to Victoria’s reigning queen of the mournful fado, the Lisboa blues, by visiting her website, which is found in the upper right hand of your screen under ‘VICTORIA MUSIC LIONESS,’ or under ‘MARREIROS, SARA,’ lower down on the right hand Blogroll, which you will discover is conveniently arranged alphabetically, or it may also be found in the tags by clicking the following web address:

 http://www.members.shaw.ca/lmarreiros/  +++

Listen to our Alex Cuba Band on Canada Live from Calgary Tuesday @ 8 pm CBC Radio 2

+++  Alex Cuba Band, led by ex-Victoria resident Alexis Puentes, late of the Puentes Brothers, is performing in Calgary Alberta on the CBC Radio 2 FM network tonight on Canada Live, third on the evening’s schedule, so there is still time to catch the rumberito!  Click on the radio schedule here: www.cbc.ca/radio2/schedule_canLive.html  +++

Goyo de la Rosa: Adonis Puentes: This Brother makes la musica cubana con mucho sabor!

+++  I did a tile job once for Adonis and his brother Alexis when they lived in a house on Fernwood owned by Sarah Puentes’s father and some other Catholic Workers…idle name dropping, I know, but if Taki can get away with it, so can I, even if I was down on my knees working for the betterment of all…which brings me to the website link at hand, one for ADONIS PUENTES, brother of the same Alexis who formed the PUENTES BROTHERS group.  Now Alexis is on  his own with a band called ALEX CUBA BAND, but Adonis is just as suave and caliente as is his brother Alexis, as a listen to the new recordings at this site will show…Gracias, mis amigos cubanos por este musica sin igual…Goyo de la Rosa…+++ 

 //www.adonispuentes.com/

HARTNELLIANA: ‘Don Guillermo Arnell’: Lives of William Hartnell by Susanna Bryant Dakin

+++  My cousin Peggy Ruggles (nee Hartnell) lent us this treasured copy of Dakin’s scholarly history of early Californiana and Hartnelliana.  Before lending it out to somone else, I’ll have to return this particular copy to her, and replace it with another, of which I find that there are good copies available in San Francisco shops for around $15 or so.  I wrote a mini-review of the present copy for our CCC Library Catalogue at LibraryThing, which is available under the title ‘HARTNELL, WILLIAM,’ in the ‘Associates’ sidebar-blogroll to the right of this.  It is also found in the tags under the following address:

 www.librarything.com/work/2608479

Goyo de la Rosa: Pearl Gervais & Grant Maxwell: ‘Forward in the Spirit’

+++  Pearl Gervais and the late Canadian Catholic journalist Grant Maxwell edited a commemorative book on the People’s Synod of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Victoria.  I wrote a mini-review of our copy of ‘Forward in the Spirit’ for the CCC library catalogue at LibraryThing, which I have transfered here to the CCC Weblog under the same title, found on the right under ‘The Associates’ blogroll.  This review provides many of the names of the contributors for historical interest.  The link to the item is found below under ‘Tags’: goyodelarosa.wordpress,com/  +++

 www.librarything.com/work/4665614