This past Thursday, we attended a local benefit screening of a documentary film ‘The Well-placed Weed’: The Bountiful Life of Ryan Gainey’.

Ryan Gainey was a close friend and very obstreperous guru of our own close friend Rick B and his late partner Marc R, who own/owned a large and thriving plant nursery.  Click on the photo below for a short writeup on the film in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Making a film about an eccentric who wants the attention, but classically fears a glimpse of the ‘fraud’ behind the curtain, is a formidable undertaking.  The filmmakers ended up with an intriguing portrait, but one that is more of a ‘quilt’ (that’s a ‘Q’) than something with a beginning, a middle, and an end.  Also, as is so often the case, it would have benefited from some (pardon me) pruning.

In the course of the film, Mr. Gainey says, ‘These days, I am more devoted to my past self than the present one’.  Hopscotching through my posts over the past nine years [almost], and certainly the more recent ones, one can certainly see why I picked up on that particular remark.

Though in no way an intentional segue, here is an artifact from my three or four year-old ‘self’, behold Harvey.  I calculate the ‘three or four year-old’ from the fact that my parents apparently suggested the name to me via the 6’3½” rabbit companion of James Stewart in the 1950 film ‘Harvey’.

I had accompanied my mother to what would today be called a ’boutique’ child’s wear store in town, and spied Harvey in the eye-level (to me) glass display case, and said politely ‘Can I have that?’  My mother replied that since my birthday was soon, maybe then, and I quietly acquiesced (‘accept something reluctantly but without protest’…) as was the norm for quality (!) children of the day.

Unfortunately, Harvey has spent virtually his entire life in my sphere, blind with a broken neck.  Early on, I left him on the neighbor’s backyard swing set, and my playmate Virginia’s dog Inky chewed off his plastic button eyes.  Successfully laundered, but his posture was never the same.

This photo was about the best I could manage.  Look, I say take a gander at the original Winnie the Pooh.  He doesn’t look so hot either.