"U-Pick Touch Fruit Gently"

A neon public art work based on a handmade sign the artist Tiziana La Melia made as a child for her parents' fruit stand. Never mind what you think of it (if you have a problem, tell it to the jury that approved it, not the artist), this is a work born of love and devotion and getting a leg up on the competition.

The work is called Carrotini because a carrot is lounging in a martini glass and carrots are for sale as well. As for that martini glass, it is a long-serving metonym for an urban sophistication certain Kelowna-izers aspired to when they allowed roadside orchards and motels along Harvey Street to be razed and replaced not only with innovative oases like the Capri Hotel complex, but eventually with an endless run of strip malls.

For those curious about the origin of the word "martini", it is believed to be derived from a mid-19th century drink called the Martinez, after a hotel bar in the ferry port town of Martinez, California. Just how its Spanish name became Italianized is unknown. As for the name "Kelowna", it is an Anglicization of the Syilx word kim-ach-touch (meaning "brown bear"), which was said of settler August Gillard by a group of passing Okanagan people as he was climbing out of his underground shelter. 

Father Pandosy

Like José Martí in Cuba, Kelowna's Father Pandosy is everywhere. He is the name behind Pandosy Street and Pandosy Village, of course, but his presence is also felt in the city's architecture and, as you can see above, in its statuary.

Father Pandosy is known as Kelowna's "first settler." He arrived in the area in 1859 and built a mission that, whether in name or in aesthetic, influenced a number of area structures, from shopping malls to condos.

Obviously there is more to Father Pandosy than my gloss above (for example, he is described as being "as much a farmer as he was a priest"), but I will leave it at that before speaking further on someone whose presence belongs more to those whose came here than to those who have always been here.

José Martí is revered in Cuba because he wrote poems and essays, lectured, took up arms and died in the liberation of his country from Spain. If I were to speculate on an indigenous perspective on Father Pandosy, I might think of him as closer to Spain than to Cuba.

*photo atop this post taken from The Daily Courier