Unexploded Ordnance
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¶ unexploded ordnance this is A fAnzine published for distribution at Corflu XXX, on the first weekend of May 2013, by John D. Berry, 525 19th Avenue East, Seattle WA 98112. Fact and fiction about the editor can be found online at johndberry.com, and he can be reached digitally as [email protected]. Misusers of Google should keep in mind that he is not the country-music singer, nor is he the retired Native American studies scholar, nor the author of several books on the mechanics of helicopter rotors. He is, however, the guy who writes about type a lot. everybody’s doing it. I know, that’s I never mailed out the majority of the not really a good excuse, but it does seem copies. It was a big issue, at least for me: as though a remarkable number of Old & 32 mimeo’d pages, with a cover by some Tired science- fiction fans have thrown off guy named Dan Steffan and a back cover their lethargy lately and published actual by Harry Bell; half of those pages were fanzines, many of them even printed on letters on the previous issue. Hitchhike paper. Who am I to resist the siren call had become something of a dialog about of print? After getting sucked into fan- the counterculture of the 1970s, and zine-publishing again through the back that conversation dominates the letter- door, by designing and producing the column. (There is also a one-page piece two Progress Reports for Corflu XXX, by Felice Rolfe that is the funniest take I find that my typing fingers are all poised on cookbooks I have ever read, much less and ready to play. The least I can do is add published.) to the paper trail that will be strewn out There were 100 copies of this undis- behind this Corflu. I blame Randy and tributed issue in that box. Rather than Dan. call in the dogs and the bomb squad, I’ve decided to simply take the whole stack to i’ve been finding a fair amount of Corflu and give them away on a table at unexploded fannish ordnance as I rum- the Fanzine Flea Market. What better way mage through the boxes in the basement. to reach the readership it was intended for One box seems to have all of my college (albeit several decades after the fact)? notebooks, plus a lot of fan art, some of it my own. Another contains detritus there’s A ConneCtion between my from the time I was living in Washington professional life, in the world of typog- DC, including a set of operating rules raphy, and my fannish life – or at least I for the food co-op in my Dupont Circle like to think there is. Not only did I put neighbor hood. There are old N3F zines my fanzine-editing chops to use when I and an unread issue of the Doc Clarke– was editing the graphic-design magazine era OSFAn. (Dang! Not the lost issue that U&lc, and creating its digital companion contained The Eyes of Argon. That must U&lc Online, but there’s a clear connec- have been one of the ones that I never tion between my first type conference, even opened.) Typ90, where I knew myself to be a rank But the most interesting bit of poten- neo, and its successor nineteen years later, tial shrapnel, at least to me, was the big Typ09, where I was the head of the associ- stack of copies of Hitchhike 28, the final ation that put it on. issue of my principal fanzine of the 1970s. Five years ago, in February 2008, I For reasons that escape me now (im- found myself for the first time in Mexico pecu nious ness probably figured largely), City, on a scouting expedition for venues and partners for the next annual confer- Seattle and arrive in a warm, sunny clime ence put on by ATypI, the typographic where we could walk around in sandals organization of which I am president. and light shirts. (Unlike LA, Mexico (The odd acronym stands for Association City’s rainy season is in the summer. And Typographique Internationale, or in despite being quite a lot farther south English “inter national typographic asso- than LA and technically in the tropics, ciation.” The name is French because the Mexico City’s 8000-foot elevation gives association was founded in France more it a climate remarkably similar to that of than fifty years ago; why they chose not to southern California.) Roger’s connec- make the acronym a simple “ATI” I have tions meant that we weren’t arriving like never managed to find out.) Most ATypI tourists, bouncing off the surface of a conferences have been held in Europe, strange city; we were plunging straight with a handful in the United States or into its deep cultural life. Canada; this was the first time it would be Roger had a well-connected old friend, held in Latin America, and that was a big Abel Quesada Rueda, the son of the deal. It was important not only for Mexi- famous political cartoonist Abel Quesada can typographers and type designers, but and an artist in his own right, who among for the very active type communities in other things had been Mexico’s cultural South America, especially in Argentina attaché to Canada. Abel put Roger in and Brazil. Those countries are a very touch with his friend Ricardo Salas, who long way from Mexico, but the shared had the resources, the energy, and the linguistic and cultural roots meant that a professional nous to put on the confer- Valle de brAvo: metates, lot of people could be expected to make ence. Ricardo is a graphic designer at tools, & dinner conversation the long trip to Mexico City for this con- the top level of Mexican design; he even ference. As, indeed, they did. created the graphic identity for one of his But on this first visit, Eileen and I were country’s presidents. (Apparently each there with ATypI’s executive director, incoming presidential administration Barbara Jarzyna, and with Roger Black, has its own visual style. Imagine such a the very well-known editorial design thing in the United States! Barack Obama director whose idea it had been in the first seems to have been the first US president place. It was Roger who had organized who even knew what graphic design the 1990 ATypI conference in Oxford, meant.) He was also head of the design which he dubbed Type90. That was the department at the small but prestigious first big ATypI conference, the first one Anáhuac University, where his wife Tullia open to the public (albeit the paying pub- Bassani, also an artist and a graphic de- lic); earlier conferences had been more signer, was a teacher and administrator. like professional congresses. Now for Ricardo knew everyone, it seemed. several years Roger had been pushing He took us around the Centro Histórico the idea of an ATypI in Mexico. A few to see potential venues for the confer- months earlier, when we met at another ence, including the national folklore conference, I told him, “Okay, Roger, museum, MAp (Museo de Arte Popular); if you’ll take responsibility for making the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City’s this happen, let’s do it.” He agreed. He amazing opera house, which was begun wanted to call it, in allusion to his earlier in the Beaux Arts style and, after a slight conference, Typ09. It would be held in interruption for the 1910 Revolution, the fall of 2009 in Mexico City (or “DF,” completed as Art Deco; and several muse- as the locals call it, for “Distrito Federal” ums and art galleries around the Centro. – much the way locals in our own capital When Ricardo walks into a major gallery city refer to Washington as “DC”). Our or museum, the director comes out to sojourn that February was the first fruit of greet him: “Ricardo! Hi! How are you?” this agreement. Definitely not like coming in as anony- Mexico City in February is like Los mous tourists. Angeles in August – including the smog. When we weren’t traipsing through But it was a delight to leave cold, rainy the finest museums in DF, we were being uneXploded ordnAnCe | 2 taken to wonderful restaurants for food definite), and negotiations with hotels and drink and laughter and conversation, and caterers; we even met the Mexican the essentials of the good life anywhere cultural minister, whom Ricardo hoped on earth. Ricardo and Tullia and Abel to get interested in the conference. (He (and, when we finally met her later, Abel’s was, but unfortunately by the time the wife Mercedes) were all excellent com- conference rolled around he had left to go pany, intellectuals and artists with wide back to his career as a playwright.) Once experience and even wider curiosity. again we ate and drank well, and again we Eileen and I fell in love with the city and got to stay at the hacienda with Ricardo with the people that we met. & Tullia. After we finished the business part of The actual conference, Typ09, was the visit, and Barbara, who had another in October, just at the end of the rainy job, headed back to the US, Ricardo and season in DF. Everyone hoped that the Tullia invited Eileen and me, and Roger rain would be gone by then, but it turned and his travel companion, to their week- out to have a little kick left in it.