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SMOKE & MIRRORS - BEHIND THE LINES (2): Our Editor, ROD AMIS. offers an extended post in his Blog about individual liberties, actions you can take for New Orleans' libraries and on the on-going vicissitudes of being the hardest working man in show business.
SMOKE
"Where there's smoke, there's fire ..." Popular Adage.
5 February 2007: [EARLY WARNING: This is a longer than usual "Smoke & Mirrors" posting. -Ed.] Am I, inveterate world traveler, the only one bothered by the fact that the US government has decided, supposedly as part of homeland security, that AMERICAN CITIZENS can now longer go to nearby countries in the Carribbean, Canada, Mexico, etc without a passport - FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE HISTORY OF THIS COUNTRY?
To provide some history, up until now, Americans could go to Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, the Bahamas, with just a simple picture ID like a drivers's license. Your government has decreed that that freedom of movement for you is no more.
Ask yourself something, Gentle Reader, are we being locked in?
IF you read my last editorial, I suspect you'll understand how I feel about this latest government edict. In case you don't: I'm outraged.John Lennon sang it: "Remember. Remember. The Fifth of November." (Taken, of course, from a rather old poem, which you would know if you were a Brit. So no, I'm not spouting revolution, I'm just making a rhetorical reference. Hear me, Alberto Gonzalez?)
16 February 2007: Whoo-eee! I almost forgot, next month is our eleventh (11th) Web Anniversary Celebration. Get ready to break out the champagne bottles and the condoms!
Okay, while we're on the subject of personal freedoms being lost, I have one more thing to say. I use Skype (voice over the Internet, also known as VOIP) because it affords me the cheapest rates to call my relatives in Bermuda.
I occasionally like to talk to my sister-in-law, Martha Rudell Amis, and hear the sound of her laughter in my ear. Once in a great while, I'll call Serbia to talk to Dragana. I've called Ngozi, in Nigeria, and AJ in Kenya. I've talked to Ken Kamoche in Hong Kong. I have telephoned my friend, Logan, in Rome.
Using Skype, my rates are pennies on the dollar compared to most domestic telecommunications companies. Back when I was on a domestic service, for example, I would have to pay $1.00 (USD) per minute to call Bermuda. On Skype, I pay less than twenty-five cents. It's worth it to me to stay in contact with my family and NOT have them pay the outrageous fees of the corporate hegemony when they would call me. I discourage them from doing so.
NOW GET THIS: Something changed this year. Every time I try to directly deposit money into my international Skype account, it is blocked. The ONLY way I can add credit to my international account is to through a service in London, UK.
Every ti me I use the service in the UK, my account is frozen. The next time I attempt to make a transaction by debit card or check NOTHING HAPPENS until I spend the money to call my bank and ask them to un-freeze my account.
My bank apologizes each time and tells me it is a requirement of your government that they check my overseas transactions - even if it's only for $10 (USD) - normally the most credit I can afford to apply.
Think about that for a moment, Gentle Reader.
I realize that many of you don't have either friends or family abroad. But many of us do. If we would like to contact them from the convenience of our homes, relatively inexpensively, we are now being restricted.
I know what you are thinking: I could do what the Latinos do and go out and by a phone card and use a pay phone. I consider that option an infringement on my personal liberty, when I have the means of making the call here in my living room, no matter the weather or where the nearest open public phone might be - let alone thinking about whose ear was on that apparatus five minutes ago.
Having to telephone my bank each time I want to add credit to my personal and private account to make calls abroad, at least to me, seems a diminution of my freedom.
Taking away the right to travel is bad enough. Taking away the right to even speak is outrageous.
15 February 2007: The Beijing 2008 Olympics are coming up, Kids. China, the rising power in the global balance, will be in the spotlight.
The Chinese public relations machine has been in full effect for a while. Last year, they sponsored their African Summit (See KEN KAMOCHE's piece) and next year the world will have a chance to marvel at their achievements. This is not to mention that they are financing the United States these days. Oops! Just did.
One of the centerpieces of the Olympic Park the Chinese have build in Beijing is the "Water Cube" formally designated the National Aquatic Center. Your Interlocutor is personally fascinated by this architectural achievement. There is a certain and odd elegance to it. You can take a look at it, in advance of the spectacle here. Definitely take the time to scroll down the page, where you'll find an video of how this structure will actually look. I'm chuffed!
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G21 at FeedBurnerON OUR G21 FOCUS ISSUE 2007, Relieving Global Poverty, I'd recommend you look at Mercy Corps assessment of what some of our brothers and sisters are enduring and we put under the rubric "silent disaster."
After that, because so many people think it is honky-dory here in the United States, read RAHEEM's column this edition.
I have to say something about that. Bear with me.
One of the most telling references, when I read (and later reviewed) Jim Wallis's book God's Politics, was his astute notice that most Christians believe that Jesus pronounced "... the poor you have will always," as the quote they most recognized but that - almost invariably - they took the quote out of context and failed to remember when the utterance was made. (Okay, I suppose I'm falling into that trap of doing what many of my friends accuse me of, thinking that everyone likes to keep things in context and, thus, closer to the true meaning, as I do.)
Wallis points out that the context in this instance was NOT that Jesus was endorsing the notion that there would always be poor people but rather as a refutation of the disciples upset that Mary Magdalene would waste money to buy precious oils to anoint Jesus's feet that they - the disciples - felt should be given to donations for the poor. Viewed in context, Jesus's statement takes on a new meaning. That meaning is, "This woman has recognized the value she places in my mission, that I might need succor today, and she can still provide for the poor later."
That statement DOES NOT feed into the notion that poverty is acceptable or perpetual.
[Oh Goodness! The editor is lapsing back into his theological/philosophical roots!]
From Over the Transom
Here are a few items that crossed my desktop since we last "talked," my little loves.
My friend, Mary McGinn, in New Orleans sends this note for me to share witth you:
Want to help the Friends of the New Orleans Public Library* by only lifting a finger (or three)?
GoodSearch.com is a new search engine that donates ad revenue, about a penny per search, to the charity its users designate. Use it just like any search engine, and it's powered by Yahoo!, so you get the same great results.
Just go to www.goodsearch.com and enter Friends of the New Orleans Public Library as the organization you want to support. Just 500 of us searching four times a day will raise about $7300 in a year without anyone spending a dime! Please spread the word!
The Friends of the New Orleans Public Library help fund programs and purchase equipment for NOPL, and they are also helping rebuild the library system with their Restoration Fund.
- DC Stultz wrote me from Florida asking if I'd heard about the giant new U.S. embassy complex being built in Bhagdad, scheduled to be completed this year. Oh yes, I told him. They say it can be seen from space. Look here.
You have been informed.
MIRRORS
7 February 2007: Hats. Weird thing about those, you put one on even before you know it, and there it is. I vaguely remember when I put on the Editor hat. Suddenly, I wasn't just a writer anymore. Next thing I knew, I was considered more of an editor than a writer.
There was only this little space (this page/column) where I was writing anything. Meanwhile, I was being acclaimed as a great editor and had writers knocking at my door for me to look at their work.
This year, by happenstance, I put on the Podcast Producer hat. I kindah-sortah know how that happened. The woman who shoved me in that role has yet to get a single podcast from me. Meanwhile, I'm doing it with and for a colleague of mine. Yesterday, we were invited to put our podcasts up at IT Conversations.
Whoa! Wait a minute. How did that happen? I thought I was a writer.
I'm beginning to believe that Rod 2007 Plan is working out too well. Why do I say that? For one reason, I'm typing this to you at 4:40 a.m. What does that tell you? My joke about rust never sleeping is becoming too real. I wake up in the dead of night telling myself, "Du-u-de! You should be working! We are so-o-o behind!"
That's not good. I want the little buggy voice in my head to say, "Dude, you should be dancing."
Yeah, I know. This is now officially a No Whine Zone. So cut me some slack and count that as a rant.
My pal DC, in Florida, just sent me a box - a 23 pound box that I had to lug down the danged hill! - containing something like twenty books. He knows I'm an inveterate reader and too poor to buy books of mine own. So he pays to ship me the new titles he's done with so that I can have something to do in my spare time, or while I'm riding the bus in central Austin or whatever. There are some juicy ones in the mix, I have to tell you, my lovelies, including Woodward's latest, some great crime novels (my Guilty Pleasure,) Maher's New Rules, and more Tim Dorsey, a Florida writer who never fails to crack me up.
Oh-oh! I just exposed my reading habits, didn't I? Well, it can't be Thucydides and Herodotus all the time.
Best yet, though, he also included a four book set of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I'm saving that set for last.
Now if I could just get a hold of some Hammett, some Chandler...
I know what you're going to ask: What's up with your novel, Loser?"
I'll find some time soon, I'm sure. The agent is looking it over and says he'll get back to me in March. Meanwhile, I have a few more chapters to pump out.
A new echo in my Jeremiad's lately has been the crowdedness of our world. I'm glad to say I'm not the only one, as this article from AlterNet demonstrates. I simply have the luxury of always bringing up the topic first.
15 February 2007: My friend, Logan Bentley is also named Logan Bently Lessona. This last because, she met and married an Italian Count in 1968. Shortly after she became a "stringer" in the Rome bureau for TIME magazine - from 1973 to 1994. She had also been a stringer for two years for Time and Life Magazines in Madrid before moving to Italy. She makes no big deal about the fact that she is Contessa. In fact she never mentions it. I susppose only her discerning friends know. There a many titled people in Europe who just get along these days and the era of royalty is basically passČ. She is the woman behind the Web site Made in Italy
Logan and I first "met" here on the Internet, where the majority of the world meets me, and have communicated with each other approximately a decade now. Her family has ties to New Orleans, where I once lived, and the horsey set of Virginia, where I have lived as well. (Stop the jokes about the fact that I have lived everywhere, man, I've lived everywhere right now!!)
Like many of my "friends," Logan and I have never met face-to-face.
Nonetheless, our communications, esteem and affectionate solicitude have never ended over the years.
We even kibbitz about what the Web is all about and how it has opened and changed the world, and our lives, in significant ways.
Over the course of our association, Logan has been to the States and I to Europe. When she is in Virginia, I am in New Orleans. When I am in Rome, she is in Tuscany. We have talked about actually meeting but never have.
Logan, most recently, was the Foreign Press Attache for Maestro Gian Carlo Minotti's reknowned Spoleto Festival. Well, let me put that another way. IF you know opera and operatic composers, then you know the name Menotti. If not, I suspect I'm taking you into foreign territory.
For music lovers, Menotti is a treasure. Recently, he passed. Logan was with him for the last few years and wrote a touching remembrance on her Blog, which I recommend to you. (Scroll down the page, please. You'll find it. It includes links to his Obit in various international newspapers.)
Logan has a wealth of knowledge to share and knows just about everybody that, in my youth, we used to refer to as "The Beautiful People," those member so the international jet-set who appear on the French and Italian Rivieras. She is a person of generous and inquiring spirit - I suppose that's why she became a journalist - and my fondest wish is that she shall write all of her memories down and publish them so that you and I, my lovelies, will get a glimpse into such a life.
She shared the news of the maestro's passing with me in an e-mail this week. It added to my list of passings I regret but I was grateful that she would let me know.
One of her endearing touches, to me, is that she ends her e-mails with salutation "Baci" rather than "Ciao."
16 February 2007: AS MY GIRL, Erykah Badu, has said, Keep in mind that I'm an artist, and I'm sensitive about my shit!. ("Call Tyrone")
So when you come out and play with little Rodja, you should and must expect anything.
This is anything.
I guess I never explainted "The Ghost Who Walks" thing that appears at the bottom of our cover page (like I expect you to scroll down that far and read the credits, use the extra links, all that.)
Because I'm the kind of person who'll follow Miles Davis's "Sketches of Spain" with a Bob Dylan of "Stuck in the Middle with You," I developed a reputation early on. Electic, is how my close friends politely put it. When I was working on my thesis and spent ALL of my time either in a library or typing through the night, my homies/housemates, decided that I was the The Ghost Who Walks.
This was taken from a newspaper cartoon about a man in tights in Africa, who always called "The Phantom." (When I consider that part, I recall, that my friend Felicity Murphy, nee Ussher, used to talk among the other writers here as to whether I was a real person, at all, and not just a cyper creation.)
Oddly, I decided that "The Ghost Who Walks" was an accurate way of describing me. I think, because of my links to the past of our world, it remains so. I walk among you but am not one of you. Not sure I ever have been.
AND most of you have NEVER seen me.
Keep me in your prayers as I keep you in my own.
Thanks for coming back this week.
ROD'S FOCUS THIS WEEK
1 - Devising a new organizational structure for my files.
2 - Scheduling some time for the novel.
3 - Attempting to have some kind of actual, workable budget and getting out of debt.
"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching ... "
Love,
Bogart
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 Andov er 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.
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 EnterpriseLeadership.org, IT Manager's Journal and NewsForge. Rod's more leftist writings can be found at Atlantic Free Press. (Don't tell his potential employers.) He writes a weekly column on social media issues for Leverage Social Media. He provides entertainment, political and media commentary at TimesSquare.com. Rust never sleeps.
Our Resident Philosopher has decided to return to Austin, Texas, after over two decades away. Wish him luck..
In his spare time, Rod chases women in the way a fly chases a spider..
He continues to be committed to integrity,
chastityand a dose of humility.
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