Late, lamented Harry

Over the past ten or twelve years I posted eight or ten pictures of Harry Brait. He was an Inuk carver who used to visit me at work from time to time. We'd chat and sometimes I would buy his carvings. And he'd let me take his picture.

I took this picture in the parking-lot across the street from my office because at that time Harry was officially banned from university property. It wasn't for anything bad he did. He had asked at a Dean's office if anyone would like to buy his carvings and his approach apparently scared one of the employees who then got the university security officers to escort him off campus. He was thenceforward persona non grata on campus.

Harry's life was one of ups and downs, and during the past few years he lived on the street, with his hands so arthritic he could no longer carve. So he was left with panhandling as his main income.

This winter he was also sleeping on the street, in a quiet alleyway downtown. It was there he was found one morning last week, dead.

He had hundreds of friends around town, people who enjoyed his chat, his pleasant smile, and his carvings. He may be the only local panhandling homeless man who, upon his death, made it onto the nightly news on a couple of television channels, into the the local newspaper, and several radio reports, not to mention the hundreds of social media notices of his passing.

He was a fine fellow, for whom the present social system did not provide.

(This picture was taken in October 2012, in my half-frame Pen D3 camera, on Kodak ProImage 100 film.)