Farum, Denmark 1982

I spent some time in Farum, Denmark, in the summer of 1982. Volunteer work with youth as part of an international group, but something had gone wrong with the planning and we really didn't have that much to do. This is just us at a lake with local kids.

 Lake near Farum

 Bente Ebsen got her hair braided by kids

Nadia, Jo, Amy, Alan, Bente, on dock near Farum

Bente (Denmark), Peter Koczoh (Hungary), Salim (Algeria)

, Ole Kierkegaard, (same family as Soren) (Denmark), Alan (England), Nadia (Czechoslovakia), Lise (Denmark), Jo (England) and me (Canada).

Søren Kierkegaard c. 1840 by his cousin Niels Christian Kierkegaard

(via Wikimedia)

Palace under reconstruction, Copenhagen

One day in Denmark

 

About to part forever from Veronica, a lovely girl from New Brunswick, New Jersey who I met and spent the day with in Copenhagen in the summer of 1982 - she fell asleep on my shoulder in the Tivoli Gardens - I loved how the Danes smiled when they saw her sleeping on me. She kissed me just after I snapped this and got on the train to Sweden.  I believe she was an Arts student - wearing a rag sweater and had a designer camera. Everything was designer in the 80s.

She was touring Europe and talked about

visiting Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris where she'd lived with some other young women. She said Jim Morrison's grave was covered with graffiti and condoms. We went to see a movie together - I think it might have been "The Harder They Come" by Jimmy Cliff.

Morrison's grave, via Wikipedia.

I'm adding this in 2023 because the host of a radio show kept referring to the cemetery as 'Pere Lachene' and I thought I was having a 'Berenstain Bears' moment, and this made me remember what she said.

March 26, 1981

Me in 1981! I think it was called the Food Co-op, not Collective. I made spelling mistakes during my time as a reporter too, but I always tried to confirm the spelling of names with the subjects. The photo was taken next to Macondo Books (Macondo Facebook Page) in Guelph - the bookstore later expanded into the area the Co-op was in. Macondo closed in 2014 after 36 years. It's named after the place in the novel '100 Years of Solitude' by Gabriel García Márquez. I remember the bookstore mysteriously appeared on the cover illustration of I think a Spanish novel in the 90s. http://www.archeion.ca/city-success-story

Dizzy Gillespie

 I saw Dizzy Gillespie at War Memorial Hall at the University of Guelph. He made a joke about how his guitarist Ed Cherry was from Saskatchewan. (He wasn't)

Dizzy Gillespie, 1991,

Roland Godefroy, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

I read the news today.

Dakota Apartments, New York, scene of Lennon's death

David Shankbone, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

 Tuesday, December 9, 1980 - Don Harron started Morningside with the words "I read the news today, oh boy."

John Lennon had just been shot dead the evening before.

1979

 Mississauga, IndEC. It was an alternative school. I didn't really go much and never finished. It was, as I recall, in portables near the corner of Hurontario and Dundas

Bob Marley and the Wailers / Tower of Power

 

June 10, 1978 Montreal Forum - Tower of Power was a funk band, very different from Reggae but put on a great show - lead sax dancing in a tailored suit. The audience was split between non Rasta Jamaicans and other Caribbean people in suits and dresses (it was the 70s and people dressed to go out in the evenings) and dreadlocked Rastas.

Both bands were great but the Forum had a lot of exposed concrete and steel surfaces that echoed terribly.

The I-Threes were the three female singers that accompanied the band. They could stretch their rhythmic movements over many bars of music. 

Some of  the audience threw manuscripts onto the stage. When the Wailers broke into Exodus, banners unfurled with pictures of people who I guess were important to him. Maybe Marcus Garvey?