Before 1970 I would run into hotel or pensions in Mexico that had copies of the National Geographic. I would look, especially, the American car ads. I believe that sometime in my youth I may have seen my first nude (a native perhaps in Africa). And I will never forget that the exceptional photos were identified as either Kodachromes or Ektachromes.
In 1970 in Mexico City Rosemary and I decided to buy membership in the National Geographic Society. I found myself bribing my postman to bring as many of those 12 issues as possible. I would on lucky years get 8. When we moved to Vancouver, to our delight, we would get all 12 issues.
After all these years I can report that one of the finest magazines I have ever read and read is National Geographic History. It is printed in Spain and most of the authors are Spaniards. This means that the shorter articles are about stuff that interests people who do not live in Anglo Centric America (Canada and the US).
As an example I am citing here the December 2023 issue.
Where, would anybody find out that Danish King Herald Gormsson fought his neighbours and introduced Christianity to Scandinavia. "So what?" you might say.
Let me quote the writer Inés García López:
Every day thanks to Bluetooth technology, people across the world can connect wirelessly to listen to music, check out a podcast, or watch a movie. In the mid1990s, its developer – Intel engineer Jim Kardach - was trying to think up a name for the new technology. Reading about the Viking history at the time, he was intrigued by a stone inscribed with runes that praised the exploits of a 10th century Danish king called Harald Bluetooth.
My friend Ian MacGuffie is always quoting me Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. How can I convince him that my issue of World, that is not woke, has a comprehensive article on the man?
People who read my blog might know that I follow the dictums of Bill Richardson’s fabulous 2004 CBC Radio program called Bunny Watson which he would introduce a few themes that apparently had nothing in common. By the end of the program you found out tha twas not the case.
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| Bill Richardson |
And so, Spaniard writers weave stories into their World that somehow may not have anything in common. But they do!
