None Nicer & Bedside Breath Mints
Saturday, January 03, 2026
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| Book - Len Deighton's Cookstrip Cook Book - Zippo pipe lighter & cigar end cutters |
In Mexico City in 1962, I
was the definition of a nerd even though the word had not yet been invented. I was
going to Mexico City College (recently I found out that William S. Burroughs
studied there in the 50s) and studying engineering (not successfully). I
decided to start smoking a pipe to give me some sort of class. I did not smoke
cigarettes as back at St. Edward’s High School in Austin my school friends had
handed me a Marlboro which exploded. They laughed and gave me another one. It
exploded, too.
I started smoking a brand
that was considered the best in its time. It was called Edgeworth. Little by
little I adopted all the mystique and tradition and started buying more pipes.
The formula is that you never smoked the same pipe twice in a day so you needed
as many pipes as you would smoke in one day and multiply that by the pipes you
smoked in a month and resting them for a week.
When I was in the
Argentine Navy as a conscript form 1965, 66, 67, I was the only sailor allowed
to smoke a pipe at his desk (at the US Naval Advisory Group). The American
non-commissioned officers provided me with tins of Edgeworth. It was back in
Mexico that I enjoyed a Scottish blend called Three Nuns advertised as “None
Nicer”. While I was sort of a purist I rarely lit my pipes with a wooden match but with a my brass Zippo lighter.
In the late 60s my mother
taught in Veracruz so I began to smoke thin cigars called Flor de La Costa. It was
one evening in the late 80s when I was in the Mayan ruins of Palenque. that I had a magical night. By
evening it was unattended so I decided to spend the night inside the main
pyramid. I was attacked by mosquitoes but saved by those Veracruz cigars. In the early 70s I taught at a Jesuit University, Universidad Iberoamericana. In the photo below I am smoking a pipe made of pyrolitic rubber/plastic. I was allowed to smoke it in class.

In Vancouver by 1975, in
the late 70s I started working with a urbane writer called Ben Metcalf. He was
all about Hemingway, France, good wines, single malt whiskey and expensive
cigars. I started smoking Monte Cristo Claros (15$ a shot and Americans when
they came to Vancouver bought them) and H. Upmann, both of Cuban origin. It was
the fact that I was smoking the Cohibas (also Cuban), when I photographed Robbie
Robertson smoking one, that we connected and I got my fine portrait.
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| Robbie Robertson - October 1994 |
It may have been about 23
years ago, when I was in my Kerrisdale dark room and I became very dizzy as I
was smoking a cigar in the unventilated room when I told myself, “This is stupid.”
And I quit pipes and cigars. Rosemary stopped putting breath mints on my bed
side table.
Few reading this might
know why the Montecristo cigars were called by that name. Years ago Cuban women
rolled cigars on their leg thighs. This is how Cuban cigars were made. They
were entertained by a reader. Their favourite book was The Count of
Montecristo.
And most reading this will understand how stupid I must have looked shooting punk bands at the Commodore while smoking a pipe.
Bud Kanke - September 13, 1939 - December 28, 2025
Friday, January 02, 2026
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| Bud Kanke at Joe Fortes - November 1995 |
Sometime in the late 90s
at a gallery opening of the Exposure Gallery I was talking to a woman
photographer who like me had photos up on the wall in what was a group show.
She had graduated from Simon Fraser at the same time as my youngest daughter
Hilary. She told me, “Alex I could never photograph sewing machines like you
once did.”
Some years back Vancouver
Magazine art director Rick Staehling had dispatched me to photograph some sewing
machines. Because my Rosemary told me we need the money (all the time) I did
not protest. If anything Staehling taught me to be humble and to not be a
one-trick-pony. Had the woman been a man I might have punched him. I didn’t.
In social media and in my
Vancouver Sun I learned that prolific restaurateur Bud Kanke died on Christmas
Eve. I had no memory of having photographed him. Today I went to my files and
found him under the letter B. I believe I may have taken the photograph at Joe
Fortes and the woman at the table may have been his wife Dotty. I also noticed
that he is serving a wind labelled Kanke.
I am happy to find out
that the folks at Vancouver Magazine gave me lots of jobs that were not really
artistic. But they were, indeed important.
Thank you Malcolm Parry
(editor) and Rick Staehling.
Writers in Latin American countries like to call themselves cronistas (chroniclers). Carlos Fuentes, a Mexican was one of the most famous. In an important way for this city Malcolm Parry's Vancouver Magazine served to chronicle the happenings (not all important) of our city. We were lucky. Who is doing that now?
Chronicling the New Year - Jorge Luís Borges & Julio Cortázar
Thursday, January 01, 2026
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| On my wall |
I have written many a time
how Latin American authors sometimes call themselves cronistas (chroniclers)
and they write about the change they notice in their environment. One famous
chronicler was Mexican Carlos Fuentes who in the title of his first novel (The
Most Transparent Region) was met by incredulity as at the time Mexico City was
suffering terrible pollution.
A menudo escribo sobre esa curiosidad tan latinoamaricana de muchos
escritores se llaman cronistas ya que escriben de los cambios que notan en su
medio ambiente. Uno de estos cronistas fue el mexicano Carlos Fuentes. Su
primera novela La región mas transparente recibió mucha confusión ya que ya
para esa fecha la ciudad de Méxícot tenía cielos no muy transparentes.
Carlos Fuentes y "La región más transparente" su novela debut
(1958), es un retrato polifónico de la Ciudad de México postrevolucionaria,
donde la "transparencia" no es literal, sino una metáfora de la
búsqueda de la verdad social y moral, contrastando la idealización de El Valle de
México (Alfonso Reyes) con la realidad compleja y a menudo corrupta de una
metrópoli en mutación, explorando identidades, clases y la búsqueda de la
democracia en el México moderno.
Carlos Fuentes’s La Región Mas Transparente is a 1958 debut novel. It is a polyphonic portrait of Mexico City, not
literal but a metaphor for the search for social and moral truth. It contrasts with
the ideal one of El Valle de México by Alfonso Reyes in contrast to the reality
an often corrupt one of a metropolis in change, and exploring identities,
social classes and the search for democracy in a modern Mexico.
I believe that it is this
desire to chronicle important events that led me to instantly find two
Argentine authors, Jorge Luís Borges and Julio Cortázar who wrote about the new
year. Below what they wrote in both English and Spanish.
Creo que por el hecho de que los escritores latinoamericanos les gusta ser cronistas encontré
inmediatamente dos pequeños ensayitos
por Jorge Luís Borges y Julio Cortázar sobre el año nuevo. Los ensayos
siguen en español e inglés.
“Como siempre a esta altura
del año, me invade un gran deseo de volver a ver a los viejos amigos, tan
alejados ya por esas mil razones que la vida nos va obligando a acatar poco a
poco. Usted también, creo, es sensible a la amable melancolía de una sobremesa
en la que nos hacemos la ilusión de haber sido menos usados por el tiempo, como
si los recuerdos comunes nos devolvieran por un rato el verdor perdido.”
Julio Cortázar
"As always at this time of year, I'm overcome by
a strong urge to see old friends again, so distant now due to the many reasons
life slowly makes us accept. I think you're also sensitive to the gentle melancholy
of a long chat after a meal, where we pretend we haven't been as worn down by
time, as if our shared memories could give us back our lost youth for a
while". Julio Cortázar
Final de año
Ni el pormenor simbólico
de reemplazar un tres por un
dos
ni esa metáfora baldía
que convoca un lapso que muere
y otro que surge
ni el cumplimiento de un
proceso astronómico
aturden y socavan
la altiplanicie de esta noche
y nos obligan a esperar
las doce irreparables
campanadas.
La causa verdadera
es la sospecha general y
borrosa
del enigma del Tiempo;
es el asombro ante el milagro
de que a despecho de infinitos
azares,
de que a despecho de que somos
las gotas del río de
Heráclito,
perdure algo en nosotros:
inmóvil,
algo que no encontró lo que
buscaba.
Jorge Luís Borges
END OF YEAR – Jorge Luís Borges
Not even the minutiae of replacing a three with a two,
not even the empty metaphor
that summons an agonizing year and another that
emerges,
nor the fulfillment of a convoluted astronomical
deadline
surrounded with cataclysms of clappers and shouts,
can undermine this serene midnight plateau,
even as they make us wait
with a fantastic display of doom and gloom,
for the twelve dark chimes.
The true cause of our fascination
is the universal, fuzzy suspicion
of the metaphysical possibilities of Time,
it is the bewilderment of the miracle
that in spite of such infinite alternatives
something may sometimes persist in us
motionless.
My New Mentor - 91
Wednesday, December 31, 2025
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| Pedro Meyer - 1 December 2025, Coyoacán, México |
Pedro Meyer - 91
If I became a reasonably
good photographer and I look at that career from the vantage point of today
December 31st I can ascertain that it is all due to the fact I had many
fabulous mentors that began with my parents and grandmother, the Brothers of
Holy Cross at St. Edward’s High School in Austin and many more.
Because I am 83 a product
of a century when most people died in their 70s, I have outlived all my mentors
except for a few. Two important ones are ex Vancouver Magazine editor Malcolm
Parry and art director (also for that magazine) Chris Dahl.
.jpg) |
| Chris Dahl & Malcolm Parry |
Just when I thought all
that was over and I could just quit and wait for my oblivion I went to Mexico
City on December 1st to photograph 91 year-old photographer Pedro
Meyer. What I faced with my camera was a very busy photographer who uses a
digital Leica to take his photographs. Since two years ago he became almost blind
he is only able to discern light and shadow and some movement.
A man so excited about
photography at that age has given me the push to keep doing my plant scans,
portraits and writing my now over 6700 blogs.
Against statistics I have
a mentor much older than I am.
I like to associate. A few
days ago my Portland visitor Curtis Daily and I went to the Polygon Gallery to
see the Lee Miller show. I was particularly drawn to Miller’s great
inspirations in Man Ray’s darkroom reversal prints that are called solarized. I
have one that happened to me by accident. But this b+w negative portrait that I
took of Meyer reversed in Photoshop will do just fine.
Solarized Isis
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| Isis |
Thank you, gracias señor,
por la inspiración, for the inspiration, de continuar con lo hago, to continue
with what I do. Twenty twenty six promises to be a productive one for me.