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KATRINA & THE LOST CITY OF NEW ORLEANS by Rod Amis
New Orleans is the Lost City of America.A portion of the proceeds of this book will go to the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Fund. The cooks, servers and restaurant workers of New Orleans have provided fabulous times and memories for millions. Now we must remember them in their time of need.
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SMOKE & MIRRORS - 10 to You, 16 to Me: Rod Amis looks back on sixteen years of producing the World's Magazine and is made to think of I.F. Stone, he reflects more on the impending decline of the American empire and welcomes back alumni for our Anniversary Celebration.
SMOKE
"Where there's smoke, there's fire ..." Popular Adage.
16 March, 2006: Sadly, there will never be another I.F. Stone in American journalism, as far as I can see. We have all become too small and too frightened of the bullies and dictators of government and commerce to risk as much and rail as much as Izzy did. I think of this, as G21 celebrates its tenth year because, in a better world, and as a better person, I would have worked harder over these last ten years to use Stone as my model rather than simply compete with the Mouthpiece Media (MM) that I have castigated for doing such a piss-poor job of reporting the truth as it exists on the ground for the people of this world. Looking back at this ten years on the Web, your World's Magazine has plenty to celebrate, as I noted in my last editorial but it also has plenty of examples where we fell short of the high bar that I.F. Stone's Weekly set so many decades ago.
In our defense, I can say that we have taken the unpopular and contrarian stance under both Democratic and Republican administrations. We have lost subs cribers in that pursuit but it should now be clear that we were more often on the right side of History than not. We have been right about every major military conflict engaged in by the United States since our first day on this medium. We have reported on the ground more consistently than organizations whose money and resources dwarf our own. We had the temerity to refer to 9/11 as the equivalent of the Reichstag Fire for the United States when everyone else simply wanted to wave the flag and kill a bunch of Muslims.
We were on the right side of History then and we continue to be on the right side of History now, as the debacle (once so celebrated by the MM) in Iraq is exposed for the criminal mistake we argued it was at the time.
When most on the Left were celebrating the rise of the Clintons to the White House, we gave that President the nickname "Dollar Bill" and predicted that he would be more concerned with the support of Wall Street than Main Street. We called it right and watched as he betrayed every single constituency that brought him to Washington, gays ("Don't ask, don't tell",) Labor (NAFTA,) the poor (Welfare Reform,) and the uninsured (you know, Hilary.)
We were on the right side of history during Clinton's Balkan War, too. That why our reporters were Serbs.
Chilled and wet, we were on the right side of history when we reported on the first George W. Bush inaugural and predicted that this President would take the U.S. the way of a dictatorial banana republic where basic civil rights would mean nothing and we are on the right side of history today as we report about the looming crisis of potable war, and the death it will bring the world.
BUT we have not been I.F. Stone's Weekly or our putative model, the Paris Review.
What might I have done differently, if I had been more secure about this project back in March, 1996, when we first appeared on the Web? Lots of things. I would not have been so obsessed with "measuring up" to the Web publications I considered our competitors at the time, like Word and Feed, who were much, much better financed (they had actual investors and underwriters and could pay their writers.) I would not have been intimidated by the all the MM attention that went to Slate(bankrolled by Microsoft Corporation) and Salon (bankrolled by Hambrect and Quist.) I would have ignored it when the Village Voice, of all publications, celebrated the Misanthropic Bitch Web site as an example of great writing on the Web.
I would have accepted then, as I accept now, that choosing to write about and focus on international issues when the rest of my peers where so Amero-centric was a wise decision that lended itself more to this medium than most people thought at the time. I would have recruited more international writers more aggressively and had the savvy to market us outside the United States - as I have not done until this day.
Most importantly, if I had known then what I know now, I would have based our content more solidly to the Left than we already are. ("is that possible?" some of you might, understandably ask. To which I must respond, "Oh yes. There has been self-censorship here, whether you believe it or not.")
None of the foregoing is to say that I am not proud of what we have managed to accomplish in the last ten years. But, being an old man, I look back and wish we had done more, much more. That is the nature of growing old, I suppose. So I dedicate this edition to the memory of another Romantic, I. F. Stone. Perhaps my successor at your World's Magazine will bring more of Stone's spirit to this publication than I have been able to accomplish during my tenure in The Big Chair.
One of the "issues" that occurs when you've been on the Web for as long as This Writer is that you can't hide from your own words. That was brought home to me when a new reader sent me an e-mail asking about the opinion I expressed in this article back in 1999. 1999? I thought. Are you kidding, Lady? I barely remember 2003 and what I had to say then!. But I went back and read my little rant and responded like a gentleman."Well, yes, my dear, I misspoke myself when saying I'm not a Socialist. Actually, I am, as I've since said many a time. BUT I consider myself a Radical Socialist in that I believe most systems of government extant remain toxic, especially for your average working person."
It was appropriate, this incident illustrates, that my former column here was called "My Glass House." I could not conceal the events of my personal life, my writing, or anything else about me even if I tried, simply by dint of having lived so openly here on the World Wide Web for so long. If anyone can honestly say that their life is an "open book," it's me.
Try to be gentle as you turn the pages, my loves.
ABOUT OUR ANNIVERSARY EDITION
As mentioned during our previous outing, this edition comes to you on my birthday, an old habit here. I am fifty-four today. When I sat down in front of my old IBM clone, back in 1990, and penned the first angry words railing against corporatism and I how I felt it was ruining this country and the world, that many Marches ago, I was thirty-eight. The World's Magazine you know was just a twinkle in my eye back then. While this effort is ten years old for you, my little Web loves, it is actually sixteen years old for me.
This edition, though, because it represents a Web milestone of some significance, is larger and more deep than most we produce. There are thirteen (13) features in it, and articles by both our current team of writers and alumnus who have come back to join the celebration of this occasion.
Fittingly, there are two articles on the Focus Issue for us this year, water. One by an honored alum', KEVIN CAREY and one by a regular contributor, SIMIYU BARASA. I hope you'll take the time to read both. In addition, there are three features in our G21 AFRICA section and two interviews by our Media Editor BRAD BALFOUR.
I'm especially honored to have our alumni come back to commemorative this ten-year marker with us. The ever elegant, in my view, KEVIN CAREY; the always jocular ROBIN MILLER; and my old pub mate, JOE O'NEILL. (Sorry I didn't make it to the Pig & Whistle while I was so close to the Ess Eff, Joe.) It is wonderful to have been associated with these fine writers during my tenure here in The Big Chair and to know that they would come back for this festival of the Cathedral of Words I have attempted to build here.
MIRRORS19 March, 2006: BECAUSE I never get to my own column until I get to the end of the magazine, it's notorious for being replete with typos for the first few days. Who can edit themselves? NORMALLY, I fix them within two or three days and - because this is the Web - all is right with the world. BUT this previous edition, I came back from California with a cold that lasted for almost two weeks. By the time I could read the page in some stage of compos mentis, you had all read what Sick Boy wrote. Woe is me!
OR: Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!. Sheesh. I need a Rod for me.
Worse yet, I've discovered by way of my various statistical tracking mechanisms that you DON'T like this "Smoke & Mirrors" column as much as you adored "My Glass House." The latter was one of the most read columns at your World's Magazine. The current column is just one among your choices, it appears, and usually ranks high but not highest. That tells me that either you have become more demanding or I have become less appealing.
ONE OF THE MOST WONDERFUL DAYS OF MY LIFE was when Lynda and I went to see the film, "Black Orpheus." I sent her an e-mail recently with the subject line "Orpheo" and an attachment of Cal Tjader playing two tunes from that film, the theme and then "Samba d e Orpheo" which is so wonderful and childish. It's the one were you see the Black Brazilian children dancing on the cliff. So sweet, so full of life; it still brings tears to my eyes just thinking of their joy of living!It's the kind of thing you should see when you are in love, as I was then. We were beaufiful children, me with my reticence and fear and she with her daring despite the back brace she had to wear.
I never talk about that, that my girlfriend was inside metal and rubber when we met but I should. It was a wrong prison for her and I loved her for not letting it be a barrier to who she was. But no one who knew us, during the time she was confined to that machine or after, ever manages to bring it up. They don't talk about the long time we waited to actually be skin to skin. No, apparently that was not important. Bullshit! People can be so callous sometimes.
So, when I think of "Black Orpheus" I think of waiting for my love. I think of the first day I saw her without that metal and rubber encasing her young body. I think that understanding love is understanding patience, too.
That's why I get angry when people say that I only ever went out with bimbos. That's a crock. Sure, I usually chose women who now-a-days would be called "Babes" but they weren't the only ones. I was an indiscriminate dog. I have always, always loved women, short, tall, fat, small, slim - Mick said it, she could be Buvarian, she could be The Alien, send her to me.
From Rod's Photo Album
22 March, 2006: My friend A.J. in Nairobi sent me this collection of chalk drawings on sidewalks about a week ago.
I found them absolutely delightful, so I'm sharing them with you. They're great examples of the creativity and attention to detail that certain people can bring to their work.
And they're fun. After all, creativity and craftsmanship are exhibitions of our touch of the divine.
In a telephone conversation this week, a friend of many years told me that she felt there were two of me. The one, she said, was very public, compassionate, generous, caring and open. But there was another me, she insisted, that was very "walled-off," her words, and not very caring at all. Worse yet, she asserted, this private Rod did not care that much for people, might not even like them that much and was definitely at pains not to form close relationships. "You don't really trust people," she said. "You don't really want to form any close relationships. I think you're actually very afraid of people."This was a difficult argument to counter, especially as I spend so much time, in e-mail correspondence and in the writing I publish, dealing with the brutally and pain in the world. I have but to look up at what I read or what I hear from other people to have brutality and pain ever before me. I think this fact justified my fear of other people, my lack of trusting that they will not hurt me given the opportunity. So, I suppose, I do hold other people at a certain arm's length.
This is, I realize, the underpinning of my constant sermons on compassion as the highest order of human interaction. I do not believe that most people are compassionate enough in their dealings with each other and the news, even that presented by the MM, would seem to bear out this belief. When I listen to seemingly reasonable people, people we are told we should respect or honor, blithely write off the deaths of thousands of young children, for example, in pursuit of some illusory goal like building a "responsibility society" or "establishing a democracy," I simply get incensed. You cannot "save the village by destroying it." That a misguided and callous lie.
That thousands of years into the history of humanity we have not learned that there is NO justification for inflicting pain and suffering upon others, that we have not yet understand the South Africa concept of ubuntu, is appalling to me.
Perhaps that is why I come to this anniversary wishing we had done more ...
THINGS ROD HOPES FOR THIS WEEK
1 - Actually enjoying myself and having some laughter on my birthday.
2 - Getting back on top of generating more book sales.
3 - Continuing to jump-start my freelance writing career.
"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching ... "
Love,
Rod
ROD AMIS has published this magazine since 1990. It first appeared as a hardcopy 'Zine. In March, 1996, he launched it here on the Web. Rod was a Contributing Editor at Suite101.com, where he wrote the " 'Net Publishing" feature. His work has been featured in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, NRV8, and at the (U.S.) Public Broadcasting System (PBS's) WebLab's Reality Check site. Rod was a contributing writer on technology for Faulkner Information Services. He wrote on Web issues for MethodFive.com's Hyper newsletter.Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS Internet magazine, which appeared both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, r eaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.
In 2002, he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. He did stints as the Resident Philosopher at three separate gin mills in that city in the French Quarter and the Marigny, earning his stripes during two successive Mardi Gras seasons. Oh yeah, Rod's had Day Jobs working construction. Mostly renovations of old New Orleans structures, houses and a bar. Sometimes he designs Web sites for other people so that he can get his creative juices flowing the way he can't at a staid publication like this one. And he's been the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. When he's not busy here, he writes technology columns for IT Manager's Journal. Rust never sleeps.
Our Resident Philosopher has exchanged his legend mobility for a means of keeping your World's Magazine. Now he must become earnest about gaining a financial underpinning for this enterprise. (Read: Buy back his freedom and then go home.}.
In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider.
He continues to be committed to integrity,
chastity and a dose of humility.
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