You have reached the Web site available in TEN LANGUAGES. Why? BECAUSE WE MEAN TO KEEP THE "World Wide" in the WWW. To read our articles in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Espanol, Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Russian, copy and paste the complete URL and enter it in the box after you click through.



by NICO COLOMBANT

WASHINGTON, D.C. - This is about my year of playing dangerously. Soccer is my protective blanket. Like Linus who carries his ragged piece of cloth everywhere he goes, wherever I go, soccer follows. The great thing is that really means everywhere: frigid Canada, always-on-vacation France, tea-drinking Turkey, beach-loving Brazil and running amok Indonesia. Whenever I feel down-and-out with all the petty obstacles life has to offer, I strip down to my soccer shorts - always worn just in case - lace up cleats I carry around in my backpack and run to the nearest pitch of redemption to tear the Pakistani cover off the ball or dribble up and down the field like Pele in the 1980s movie "Victory"...MORE



by GAYNOR PAYNTER

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - With this letter, I send you greetings from a beautiful South Africa. The first of September heralded a new season, Spring, in this our most beautiful of countries, transforming it in a matter of weeks into a harmonious cacophony of colour. You may be able to tell that I love this season. It's the season when we can shed our winter clothes (not to mention kilograms!) and haul out our old favourites; the sun is warm and transluscent before the harshness of the summer months, the air smells sweet with the blooming of the flowers, and the world is a green, happy place to be. Spring allows me to indulge in the simple, most beautiful pleasures of life -- planting flowers in the garden, playing ball with my sons in our balmy evenings, and organising our favourite activity -- good old South African braais (which I think Americans know as a barbecue), in which we are free in socialising with friends, bringing out meat, beer, drink, salads, paper plates and garden furniture, and just generally relaxing and getting rid of the day's stress in the most pleasurable fashion...MORE




by BOB POWERS

MARIETTA, OH, USA - The Fantasy Records group of prestigious record labels devoted to jazz contains some of the finest examples of the genre recorded over the past half-century. Sometimes the number of new releases becomes dizzying and as a result, new titles tend to pile high in my office while I struggle to listen to them all. It's a duty, but one filled with hours of listening pleasure. I'm not complaining, but sometimes feel sheepish because I don't always review titles on a timely basis.

Seeking attention as one of the most intriguing new albums is one featuring three excellent exponents of hard bop. The CD, simply titled "Ronnie Matthews, Roland Alexander, Freddie Hubbard" combines two albums, one from 1961 and the other released in 1963...MORE

DUBLIN, IRELAND - The late, great John B. Keane was once accosted by a man, in Killarney, who accused him of not having written about bucket-handles. That most prolific of playwrights retired to his writing-room, overlooking the Ballybunion Road, and penned a thousand-word essay on the handle of the humble galvanized-bucket. The last sentence read: "There is no subject under the sun about which a decent treatise cannot be written".

Well, an illusory bus passenger has appeared in my less than fertile imagination and challenged me to write about brown shoes...MORE

NAIROBI, KENYA - MR. DEATH, WHY THIS CRUELTY

You took away presidents
As well as other leaders
With no precedence
They have all left us

Just like an eagle
Who crushes its prey
With so much ego
You have joined that fray...MORE




by ROD AMIS

NEW ORLEANS - 2 October, 2002: It has been necessary for me to deal with two gathering storms, one swirling toward us across the Gulf of Mexico promising certain disaster for this subterranean city and the other gathering destructive force in the apartment where I've been staying these last few weeks.

What's a break? I must remind myself that every silver lining that would venture my way comes with its requisite cloud attached. I might as well be living under a bridge when I have a profligate flatmate who takes in stray miscreants, without consultation, the way old Italian ladies adopt stray cats. "Oh. I see: while you were drunk (again) you ran into a crackhead and decided that it was a good idea that he move in with us. Thank you very much.

"What's that? The crackhead is definitely moving out tomorrow? Okay. Is that like he was definitely moving out yesterday?"...MORE

Click here to cast your vote for this site. We'd appreciate it. Thanks!

TABLE OF CONTENTS Thanks to Meadows & Meadows of Anaheim, California you can download the PDA software here and The World's Magazine is there on your Palm Pilot or other device. Yowza!.

OTHER EDITIONS

THE PREVIOUS ISSUE: PLAY IT AGAIN
(HOT LINKS adds new sites to visit when you're not with us; RDR features two Special Reports on the hurricane scare in New Orleans; and much more!)

G21 TODAY!

SOON COME!

In Part Three of "Nouvelle New Orleans", our lovely JAMIE MENUTIS in a sit-down with New Orleans' first 21st Century Mayor C. Ray Nagin.

FEED THE HUNGRY. You can help someone else in this world and IT WON'T COST YOU A DIME. If you simply remember to drop by The Hunger Site every day that you surf and click a simple button ONE LESS PERSON WILL GO HUNGRY. The food is distributed by the United Nations World Food Programme and paid for through the sponsorship of companies that care. Do your part.

| The WRITERS | TALKBACK | AWARDS | YOUR LETTERS |