COVER -> MY GLASS HOUSE
Baltimore - 1 October, 2000 - Get this: when I first launched the G21 onto the Internet at the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online Back in The Day, our newest (and youngest) writer, ANA JUMARI, was all of 14 --- maybe 15 --- years of age. I find that fact staggering!
There were so many people on the Net back when I got started who I considered Light Years ahead of me. I thought this effort would never catch up, let alone survive and thrive, and that we'd quickly be lost in the shuffle.
As you know, they are gone. They were about building personal reputations and being "kewl," rather than about building an institution or a community where voices from around the world could thrive. Like the turtle, G21 took the slow, boring and steady route instead. Our most important values were reliability (being here with new stories every week,) quality (finding and encouraging the best writers we could,) and presenting an alternative (news of the world from people actually living it.) We're still here.
Now Ana has written a piece for me about the growth of the Internet in Asia, and specifically Singapore, and how she grew up with the phenomenon that excited me no-end, but was a learning challenge, those storied years ago. Wow!
Believe me, I never would have thunk such a thing would EVER happen.
This is a fabulous --- if word-heavy edition for your World's Magazine. We're running a number of features MUCH longer than I usually accept.
Our Top Story --- DRAGANA VICANOVIC's Special Report on the Yugoslav election fits that criterion, but is worth every moment you'll spend on it. Find out what really happened and why Milosevic will fall.
My relationship with Dragana started during the NATO war against Serbia. I'm proud of its endurance and the quality of the reporting she has provided us over the last two years. This piece is no exception. MILOSEVIC WAS BROUGHT DOWN BY THE LAUGHTER OF CHILDREN, you'll learn when reading her latest report. That's a Truth we have always believed in here at The World's Magazine. (Our Publisher is God's Own Fool.)
Freedom, we have often argued, starts with the ridicule of the young against calcified and outmoded systems. Too often, adults forget how to laugh at hypocrisy and the importance of challenging it. They just want to retire to the country and peace.
| WIN ROD AMIS'S MONEY!!!
IS THERE ANYTHING BETTER THAN FREE BENJAMINS IN YOUR POCKET? You tell us.
With the holiday spending season looming big-time, wouldn't it be nice if you could spend our publisher's money instead of your own? Well, just click-through to our special Sweepstakes Page and find out how easy that can be, Dreamer. Do it now |
Word-for-word, this is a very strong edition that I trust you'll enjoy.
The Story Teller
In times past, in villages far away, people would sit around fires late into the night and listen to men like me recount the adventures and mishaps of their lives. Some believe that is why you come to this flickering screen and rush to see what I have to say.I was, perhaps, harsh to say that people come to see how screwed my life is compared to theirs.
At least one person has said that people come back because they see the echoes of their own mistakes in mine. And that is the job of the story teller, isn't it? To weave the universal tale and make it seem like it was only about one person when it is actually about all of us. I know when I stumble through the night and its horrors, when I look for love, when I mourn the dead, when I toss a child into the air and catch her --- giggling! --- into my out-stretched hands, so are you.
When I weep at night about my fears and regrets, so are you. My "Glass House" is a window into the life of a soul, I guess.
You certainly could have picked a better one. You could have picked one with a happy childhood, fulfilled love, and more than this Cathedral of Words to leave behind.
But then I would not be like Augustine or de Chardin in my ruminations... And there is something to that.
The hour is late now. I am doing this last, after fulfilling what I consider my editorial obligations to the other writers you find here each week. And now we are alone, to paraphrase The Bard.
I played with ideas about this week's story for you, my newest confession. Some were good, but I now think they should be saved for another time.
That has to do with this whole role. I recall that when my friends, Ric Williams and Bill Wilson, and I went down to Saltillo, Mexico, in the mid-1970s, the people showed a special reverence when it was explained that I was an escritor, a writer.
Unlike this country, where you receive the raised eyebrow and the skeptical glance when you you say you are a writer, there the response was close to a form of reverence. It was much like what one of my icons, Henry Miller, described about his experience in Europe.
Here, the immediate question comes: "Do you get paid to do that?" as though storytelling has no intrinsic value.
In other countries, ones I've traveled in during this life, and ones I've only read about, the response seems typically, "Then you are blessed."
I have taken, as part of my mission in life it seems, to convey more of that second response.
That's why I send every spare dime I can to writers in other countries who contribute here.
The art of story-telling, you see, is much like Spencer Tracy's description of acting: "Don't ever let them see you do it..."
The best at this art have taken me away with them into a moment. I was suddenly on a balcony before The Magic Mountain, in an apartment in Paris during Tropic of Cancer, a church meeting in Go Tell It on the Mountain, the maid's quarters in Native Son. I walked the streets with the Consul in Under the Volcano, and adored Justine in the mirrors of the Cecil Hotel during the Alexandria Quartet.
I was there, as surely as I am in this room writing to you.
So I have tried to take you to a few of my places. I have wanted you to see the miracle of a chorus of white doves suddenly turning in the golden sunlight before a minaret, at dawn, in Cairo... Maybe sometimes I have succeeded.
THINGS THAT I LOVE THIS WEEK
1. The on-rush of new writers pestering me to be featured here.2. Making an end of this mammoth edition.
3. My plants.
Thanks for coming back this week.
"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching..."
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 WebLab's Reality Check site. Rod was also a contributing writer on technology for Faulkner Information Services.
Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000. He is now a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine.
He lives in Baltimore, MD, at the moment (though it seems to most people he *actually* lives on the Web,) edits the writing of people from four continents for The World's Magazine, and wonders who The Last Woman will be in his "spare time."
Our Editor does listen!