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SMOKE & MIRRORS - LOTTAH SHAKIN' GOIN' ON: Our Editor, ROD AMIS, continues the evolution of his personal Blog and moves topical.
SMOKE
"Where there's smoke, there's fire ..." Popular Adage.
22 April 2007: It seems that the National Arts Council of South Africa has offered "our" MPHUTHUMI NTABENI a grant to work on a book about a 19th century Xhosa chieftain that he and I have discussed in the back channel for over a year now. When they asked him about a potential editor for the work, he suggested your Old Magician. I was honored and thankful that he would think of me. Another item on my crowded plate but one that I welcome.
To see my children, as it were, continue to get recognition as writers gratifies me a great deal. It is a torch I am passing on to a new generation of writers.
Mphuthumi, who among his friends is known simply as "Mphush," suggested this last year that I make this simply a Black magazine. I resisted the notion, if for no other reason than that I believe we are more international and inclusive than that. I believe we've published great work about Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Hungary, the Israeli Occupied Territories, and even the United States. I also believe that that type of centrism is counter-productive in the general scheme of human endeavor.
Nonetheless, because I believe that African writers - and Black writers in general - are under-acknowledged, I have spent a good deal of time here fostering their voices. I shall continue to do so.
I take great pride in the fact that this "hip little station at the end of the FM dial" (thanks and a tip of the hat to Jeff Winbush) continues to produce writers that are awarded national and international prizes but also feel a good deal of distress that the editor and publisher garners no awards and produces little other than journalism of slightly recognized merit. That is an angel I wrestle with, my lovelies, every day of my life.
But this is a No Whine Zone. Let's get on to my editorial and your latest dose of fire and brimstone.
Birds & Bees
I download Bill Maher's podcasts of his HBO program "Real Time" because I don't have HBO. (Breaks my heart that I missed the second season of "Rome." I guess I'll have to buy the DVD.) In a recent episode, 20 April I believe, Maher ended his program with a rather somber and uncharacteristic commentary on how we humans are failing in our stewardship of the planet. He opened his commentary with a quote from Einstein about the relationship between the pollination work done by bees and the future of humans.
When I heard it, I was moved and thought about the whales beginning to beach themselves over a decade ago. My mind then quickly jumped to the recent news stories about elephants, who generally ignore or avoid us, suddenly becoming more aggressive and even murderous in their behavior in Africa and Asia. This was all very troubling to me and still is.
Meanwhile, Maher's commentary reminded me that I had also been reading that bee keepers had been complaining in recent years about a marked decline in hives, those colonies where our busy little pollinators congregate.
Because we actually fact-check here at Your World's Magazine, I went searching for the Einstein quote Maher used to open his commentary. Here is wha t Maher said: "Albert Einstein said, 'If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live.'" I wanted to find the context in which Einstein had made this statement, of course.
Sensational, right? Also - likely NOT true. As far as my research went, I could find no instance in which Einstein actually said this. When I couldn't find a citation independently (the Internet is a wonderful research tool,) I decided to go to the Snopes,com urban legend site where I found this citation.
With all due respect to Bill Maher, who I generally enjoy and follow both from his podcasts and at the Huffington Post, that was just a bit of sloppy commentary and I must call him on it as I recently called Keith Olbermann on some of his excesses. Maher would likely say that he is not part of the "mainstream" or a journalist, so he should be cut a bit of slack. He'd be half right making such an assertion. In a culture like ours, celebrity equals credibility and propagating urban legends is not very responsible.
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"Our" Mphuthumi Ntabenii has a Blog now. Mpush Spear On. Check it out when you're not here.
Rod at MySpace=http://www.myspace.com/6250244Maher reaches millions, Your World's Magazine only reaches thousands in a good month. Thus, he has impact and added responsibility. IF I make a mistake, it only affects a few people and I can always come back in to correct it. When someone with a platform like HBO, the Huffington Post or - in Olbermann's case - MSNBC makes a mistake it reverberates through the culture.
Hard Out Here for a Pimp
Since the conclusion of the Imus Affair a couple of weeks ago, there's been a renewed conversation about censoring and generally getting down on Hip-Hop Culture. Most of the participants are people like Oprah Winfrey who don't like or even understand Hip-Hop and who have taken their self-righteous bully pulpits to denigrate it yet again. The conversation has gone away from the pervasive sexism and racism in American culture and toward how supposedly injurious rappers and others involved in Hip-Hop are to the nation.
These same bourgeois niggaz, now that he is gone, celebrate Gil Scott-Heron ("The Revolution Will Not Be Televized" "Niggaz Are Scared of Revolution") - who Yours Unruly considers a Father of Rap - as a visionary of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and '70s.
Thing is, the diversity of Hip-Hop Culture has been ignored in the process. This wonderful article by Paris of Guerilla Funk speaks well to exactly that point.
Compare and contrast his analysis to this one by Kelefa Sanneh at the New York Times.
As Chris Rock has jokingly pointed out, it's hard to be a defender of rap and hip-hop. I have been, nonetheless, and always shall be.
Here's, for example, a look at a Hip-Hop Culture event, sponsored by the beverage Red Bull, that I shared with a friend is also sympathetic to hip-hop and actually loves it. It ain't about fightin' or hatin' or hurting anyone. It's about the grace and power of dancing, incredible athleticism (I recommend the vid of the actual event to you. Your jaw will drop) and it IS an essential part of Hip-Hop Culture featuring "break" dancers from almost every country on the planet, from Brazil to Japan to Turkey. It speaks to the way that Hip-Hop Culture has transcended all national boundaries. You probably know, my lovelies, that there are even rappers from Iraq, yes?
I believe in Hip-Hop. It's a revolutionary musical and cultural phenomenon and doesn't deserve to be scapegoated, period.
ON another note: Long-time Loyal Readers are aware that our Focus Issue 2006 was potable water. Regarding that I recommend that you take the time to visit Leonardo DiCaprio's foundation Web site here and take a look at his video about his efforts. You might want to help out.
You're welcome.
30 April 2007: Let me close this section by sharing the words of Harry Belafonte this week, in his tribute to the Abraham Lincoln Bridgade, which was the first U.S. originated military organization that was integrated, Blacks and Whites - years before Mr. Truman's decree - fighting against fascism in the Spanish Civil War:
And as I move across the length and breadth of this country, much of my time is spent with what Frantz Fanon would call "the wretched of the earth." I spend a great deal of time among men and women who serve in the prisons of America. I'm awakened to their plight, because Paul Robeson and Doctor DuBois and others warned of this moment and told us to be vigilant and to be aware of all that would take place as we continue to struggle against the forces of fascism and against the compelling agenda of the right.
Dr. Martin Luther King once said to me, when coming from an encounter with gangs in the ghettos of America, he said, "You know, I share more with the young men and women in struggle in the ghettos of our nation than I do with those who have attained lofty heights and who delight in their middle-class pleasures. I would gladly trade 500 prisoners in the ranks of our struggle, and I would in exchange give you 15,000 Baptist ministers."
And so, with that rather curious and interesting remark, there came a time when I thought that the best work that I could possibly engage myself in would be to go into the darkest places of American society, to go into the heart of the Latino community, of the Native American community, where the greatest suffering can be revealed, and to go into the heart of the black community across the length and breadth of this nation and speak to the young. And although for a long time, in the last twenty-five-odd years, one could have said how youth seemed to have lost its way, somehow retreated as if the choice was exclusively theirs, but those who preceded the young of this generation did much in blundering in the way in which we passed the baton. So busy were we moving into the new successes that the Civil Rights Movement had unfolded for us that we abandoned the revolution. And while we filled seats in the legislative halls of America, while we filled new places in the economic affairs of America, we left our communities. And our young people for a long time did not know quite where to go and in the midst of their own pain and degradation did what we had to do back in the 1930s. They had to turn to themselves and look to themselves for solutions to the needs of the day. And it is in their midst that so many young leaders sit and are studying and are emerging, that I think will be very encouraging for what the future of America will look like.
When I go across America, on the reservations of this country among Native Americans, and listen to what young Indian men and women are saying, when I move across the length and breadth of this country into California among workers, the Latino youth and newly arriving immigrants, what they have to say, when I move among the communities of the black underclass and I listen to what the young people there have to say, I am heartened and I'm encouraged that the legacy that has been left to us by the men and women who so valiantly struggled in the early parts of the twentieth century, the examples set by the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and all anti-fascist forces, has indeed not died. Those flames of hope have been reawakened in the hearts and the minds of our young people, and they're coming together, they're speaking, they're seeking, they're looking for leadership, they're looking for answers. And each time I go among them and speak about the great noble things of our past, they take heart, their eyes flash brightness, their minds become awake, and they begin to dig into the blueprints of their history, and they find courage and they find purpose.
I stand and I speak in their name, when I say to the Lincoln Brigade, thank you so much for what you have given all of us, me in my youth and the youth of today. Without your courage, without your vigilance, without your insight, America could never have hung on as tenaciously as we have done to the things that are decent about this country. It is your example, it is that what you have given us, that has helped guide us through some of the darkest times in the history of this nation.
MIRRORS
Rod Amis
religion and sex and TV
and you think
you're so clever and classless and free
but you're still fuckin' peasants
as far as I can see - "Working Class Hero" - John Lennon30 April 2007: In recent weeks, I've gone out to lunch with one person or another - business associates and my old boss from the Austin American-Statesman - every week. I seem to be becoming Sir Lunch-A-Lot. At most of these lunches, I'm the guy who eats the slowest and seldom finishes his meal. I make some joke about how my mother used to complain that I ate "like a bird." (That part is true.)
What I don't explain is that I have another tooth on the way out, so that I associate eating with pain. It makes most food difficult for me. As soon as this latest tooth is to drop, intact - I've seldom gotten cavities my whole life - from my diseased gums, things will be better. It's embarrassing but is also part of my daily life.
Things should get better soon. Because of the new business venture I'm becoming involved with, I should be able to save up for dental work again. That would be nice. It would be cool to have a job where I don't have to go around looking like a refugee from the television program "Hee Haw."
Hmmnä What else is going on? Busy week for me this time out.
Besides hoping to get this edition of the magazine out on schedule, I have two podcasts I'm producing for the Talking Portraits show now featured at ITConversations for Tom Parish. I have a new post for Leverage Social Media that I'm itching, anxious, to put up, too. AND I begin my new job for the California start-up I mentioned to you during our last outing. I'm very, very excited about this last opportunity because I think there's a revolution coming. I can't say more now but by this time next year it just might be the only thing you're talking about.
There's also this woman (it always comes down to a woman for me, right?) that I've reconnected with. She and I may make one of my cross-country trips together this summer. She means to move to New Orleans. (NO! I DON'T plan to go there with her. I'm staying here in Austin.) Anyways, we'll be together as far as here and I've offered to put her up for a couple of days once she gets here. After that, she's on her own and she and New Orleans can do their damage to each other without me.
No, in answer to your question, my lovelies, she's not new. Like I said, "ä reconnect." We met last year in San Francisco. I will likely be in Ess Eff to housesit for my new boss this summer. While I'm there, she and I will hook-up again and then drive across country when I'm ready to leave. End of story.
Rod's Photo Album
Here's a feature I've neglected for a long time, no?
The accompanying photos are advertisements for a company my dear friend, Scott Salin, now provides some marketing assistance. When I saw them, I just had to laugh! I hope they bring a smile to your face, too, my darlings.
If you click on the thumbsnails I've provided, you'll get the full image of these ads. The pix are cool, in my view, but the text makes the joke. "Pick-up Artists?" My man!
Okay, if I'm going to get this magazine out anywhere near close to on schedule, I need to stop rambling on about flotsam and jetsam.
So here's my parting shot (over your bows): I spent a little over half an hour on the telephone with my dear "Little Sister," Mayor Becky, yesterday while taking a break from completing this edition of the magazine. As I've said before, she is directly responsible for bringing me back to my own true life by asking me to come "home" to Texas. She is also one of the few people I know with whom I don't have to dissemble.
Whether she agrees with my opinions, or my lifestyle, she respects that I am an adult and let's me just be me - warts and all. That opens the door to us talking about just about anything and my being able to give her a 360-degree look at my so-called life. I need and treasure an outlet like that.
So, I told her, as I cannot even tell you, my lovelies, what is really going on inside of Rod, what projects I'm working on, what the lay of the land is right now in World of Rod. She didn't hesitate to give me her input and opinions but she didn't expect that I'd change my own choices. That is respect and what true friendship is about in the end.
If I could paraphrase Becky's take on Life of Rod, I suppose I'd put it this way: "You're an adult, so you're free to make your own decisions, deal with any consequences, and take responsibility for your actions. It doesn't matter worth a damn what I or anyone else thinks about what you do, Rod, because we ain't gonnah share your coffin with you.
"I've never seen you try to hurt anyone intentionally and I know that you will always care about people and the world's problems more than you should, while neglecting to take of yourself first. That's just who you are. I also know that you are lonely and I do worry about that sometimes but I'm not going to wear that topic out.
"Most importantly, be a man. Be true to your own principles and beliefs. It all comes out in the wash, anyway. And lastly, know that I love you."
How can you not love a woman who treats you that way? That is why I pay tribute to our friendship and love here while I can.
Becky would likely not put it as bluntly as I did in the above paraphrase because, well, she's a public official, a professional, a lady and nowhere near as tactless as I am. But hey! I can afford to be tactless, it's my danged magazine. I can't remember the last time anyone complimented me on my tactfulness.
SCRREEEE-EE-EE-CH! "HOLD UP! HOLD UP!"
"Pardon you!"
"NO music on Rod's page? You got us used to expecting a damned link or something to some music and now you don't offer jack? That ain't right!"
"You talkin' to me?"
"Anybody else in the room? I must be talkin' to you, Home-slice!"
"Is this what you want?"
"That's what I'm talkin' about. Why you had to get all subtle on our asses?"
Keep me in your prayers as I keep you in my own.
Thanks for coming back this week.
THINGS ON ROD'S MIND THIS WEEK
1 - Meeting my multiple deadlines.
2 - Finding a girlfriend.
3 - Moving into a better neighborhood.
"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.
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. 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.His work will appear this summer in print and online for PR TACTICS. Rust never sleeps. He is being courted by California software company into going back into being a Made Man.
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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