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PHOENIX, AZ, USA - 27 December, 2004: I thought it appropriate to begin with my last hours in Phoenix, Arizona. This stop on the hejira proved instructive in only that it gave me the space and courage to overcome the last vestiges of my Malady. It is effectively behind me, at last, after years of cringing under its hangover. I am more whole now than when I first ventured to New Orleans over three years ago and I am grateful for that.
My instinctive distrust of other people was reinforced, too, but not in the more paranoiac and delusional way that the Malady afforded. Now it is simple "grain of salt" type wariness rather than a fear of malevolence. That is a Good Thing.
As a cigar is sometimes only a cigar rather than a symbol, sometimes injury is only the result of brutish incompetence and obliviousness to the feelings of others rather than malicious intent. I have now had the unfortunate experience of the former up to my craw but am actually glad of it.
So back to Nawlins. But this time on my own terms and ready to grapple with its miasmic extremism. Waystation or stop? Like the trip here to Phoenix, this time, it is an open question.
ON THE FINAL DAYS: I have been eating like it's going out of style. I have gorged myself like a bear attempting to put on fat before long hibernation, for fear that I might go through another long period of near-starvation. Once poor, always frightened.
Doug did me the great Christmas favor of having the telephone and DSL shut off on Christmas Eve morning. So I was left with time to read, write, watch movies on Christian television, while packing my few belongings. No access to this medium where I normally live.
I asked my friend Matt to telephone my most significant patron to let him know that I was not ignoring his e-mails, I have simply to read them once I have access again upon arrival in New Orleans.
From past experience of being cut off for days at a time, I shudder to think what my next log-on to the Internet and my e-mail box shall be like. I'll have to wade through hundreds of spam entries to get to the insistent other hundreds of important e-mails, including stories for this first 2005 edition of the magazine or writers wondering if I have left the planet.
It can't be helped.
The weather-casters say that I shall be leaving on a(nother) rainy day here in the desert. I hope and pray they are inaccurate because I need to take two buses to make it to the Greyhound bus station for my cross-country trip. I cannot afford to take a taxi to the bus terminal, so rain would be inopportune for Yours Unruly.
Most frightening is the prospect that Doug may have also deprived me of the one job I have. I was scheduled to tutor a "walk-in" class today and could not do so and have no means of e-mailing New York, either, until I arrive in New Orleans. I must, as Matt quipped about one of my comments, add Doug to my prayers ...
28 December, 2004: We all know now about the deadly tidal waves that crushed much of the coastlines of southern Asia and what was once called Micronesia this past weekend. An "Act of God" of this proportion is breathtaking and frightening. Our stewardship of the planet is again called into question, of course, as is our willingness to care for each other.CARE, the Red Cross, Red Crescent and United Nations are all already there, digging out, supplying food and clean water. The surviving tourists have all rushed home, leaving the people who live in these destinations to mourn and bury their loved ones. The camera crews have rushed in for breathless reporting.
I sit and wonder, watching the footage, about my friend Kim Carter and his wife Phen, who live on Koh Samui, off the coast of Thailand. My fear is for the worst, considering the size of the island. Like everyone else, they would have had no warning. Even with a warning system, there would not have been time to reach the Thai mainland and get far enough inland.
I have no way today of attempting to contact them, cut-off as I am from the 'Net. I shall attempt to check when I reach New Orleans. They have been added to my prayers.
Matt and Jo are on the road between Kentucky and Louisiana right now, I wonder and worry for them.
Watching other footage, of the blizzard in Ohio, I wonder about my friend Bob Powers and his wife Betty. I hear reported that much of the state is without electricity. They are elderly and I must wonder if they are alright. They, too, are in my prayers.
Much of my own considerations are over-shadowed by thoughts and prayers for dear friends in dire places and my inability to reach them ...
Today is the day the butterfly must once again take flight. I am up early to complete the last packing, including dear Victoria, my computer, here; drop the keys to the landlady and make my long trudge across town to get on a bus, by way of two other buses, my various bags on my back and dangling from my arms. Fun!I have lived like a refugee for nigh-on four years now, so this task is nothing new for me.
It never becomes easier, I keep getting older and more brittle of limb.
I am more optimistic on this journey, though, than any in many a moon. I wish the butterflies in my stomach would believe that as much as I do. Joni Mitchell sang about the "refuge of the road," but I now understand that that was because she had her own tour bus. For many of the rest of us, the pilgrimages are as arduous as the destinations ...
Some part of my (good) luck is on this morning; it is not raining yet.
Doug popped in at six in the morning or so, casting light through my open bedroom doorway where I lay reclined on the sofa cushions. I slid the door shut, knowing the value of those last hours of near-restful sleep before the fits and starts of bus naps. There was one disrupting blast of noisome music and then it stopped, I rolled over and drifted back to sleep. When I awakened an hour and a half later, he was gone. I made coffee in the comforting silence.
If my luck holds, Vickie and I shall be gone before the maelstrom of noise begins in full effect ...
The Greyhound (hereafter referred to as "The Dog") information tells me that the journey shall be one of over 1700 miles. When one considers that the entire country only spans a bit over 3000 miles ... Well, it's the kind of marathon I would prefer to have the wherewithal to traverse by air. Though, as things are going in this country right now, that option looks less desirable. I'd not want to trade places with the thousands who found themselves stranded in airport terminals this past weekend.
NEWS TO ROD
ITEM ONE: This note from the Regret the Error Web site started my year off right:
Correction of the YearPerhaps the easiest pick of all for our round-up was this amazing correction from Kentucky's Lexington Herald-Leader. On the 40h anniversary of the passing of the Civil Rights Act this year, the paper published this amazing apology: "It has come to the editor's attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission." Simple, elegant, brave. Better late than never.
ITEM TWO: When the tidal waves hit South Asia and the African coast, I received this note from my dear friend Dragana Vicanovic in Belgrade:
The worst of all are some facts no one mentions [right now]: besides the horrible loss of lives, most of Asian economy is probably destroyed as much as the land is poisoned by sea water. In a couple of weeks, all plants and animals in flooded areas will die. What was once thick green jungle will become desert for many years, even decades. The survivors will face unbelievable hunger and lack of fresh water and even worse poverty than before. How easy [it] is to slip from Paradise to Hell in just a couple of minutes. Amazing how fragile is our civilization although no one is ready to admit it.How true, I thought at the time. But also: Isn't it just like a Serb to leap immediately to the greatest extent of the horror? As my friend Robin Miller commented when I returned from Serbia: "I can see why you're drawn to those people. Like your Irish cronies, they are morose and melodramatic."
ITEM THREE: MORE FROM THE TSUNAMI FALLOUT DEPARTMENT. I was immediately concerned for personal friends and contacts of mine, developed via The World's Magazine, in parts of the world where news reports said the danger was greatest. Among these were alumni KIM CARTER, who lives on the island of Koh Samui (miraculously unaffected) off the coast of Thailand; AAMENA JIWAJI, MORAA GITAA, and BINYAVANGA WAINAINA, all of whom live in Kenya, Moraa on the coast in Mombasa. I immediately tried to contact them once I was back here online. I was relieved to find that they and their loved ones were all well.
Moraa sent me this repo rt from Mombasa:
Hi Rod,That's sweet of you! A belated Merry Christmas and wishing you a happy and prosperous new year!
We are fine, but the tidal wave affected parts of Malindi and Lamu, a few people lost their lives, we are praying for God's Grace to be with them.
In fact on 25th we had gone to the public beach and at six in the evening Police and personnel from the KWS (Kenya Wildlife Service) came to the beach and issued an alert, though we had been concerned because the waters were quite rough and the waves gigantic!
You can imagine the panic on the public beach on a holiday with almost 10,000 people!!
The fear on Tracy's [Moraa's daughter's--RA] face - but we thank God that Mombasa was not affected.
The devastation on Asia is really incredible, but we hope that the humanitarian crisis can be stemmed by the aid pouring in.
Be blessed and stay well
ITEM FOUR: Who profits most from war? If you're like Yours Unruly, such questions come to mind. Lifelong friend, Ric Williams, from Austin, Texas, sent me a link to Corporate Policy's Top Ten List of War Profiteers that answers that question for 2004. You might find it informative, Luv.
ITEM LAST: Among my many sideline interests, the "grey science" of Economics since my universities days, when one of my work-study jobs was for a professor in the Economics department. So I occasionally trawl among the prognosticators in the field.
Recently, I found these predictions in the Business Telegraph (UK) with which I tend to agree.
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From Rod's Photo Album
There are only three new photos in my album this week. All are from friends over in Florida, that state still digging out from the hurricane devastation of 2004.
This first comes from my friend and former editor, Robin ("Roblimo") Miller. Robin, for those among the cognoscenti, works over at Newsforge.com, Slashdot and generally tries to spread wit and wisdom on the WWW. For all the years I've known him, he's lived in a double-wide trailer. But this year, he and his wife have decided to buy an actual brick-and-mortar dwelling. You can see pix at his Web site.
Meanwhile, in my photo album, we offer the photo of their new dog, Terry. (Robin confides that he determined that the pooch was a terrier and thus fit that name. No comment.)
The next two are from my friend and patron, DC Stultz. He thought they would mess with my head and said so in the subject line of the e-mail.
He was right. I love optical illusions. They are confirmation -- at least for me -- that anyone who believes in "subjective reality" is missing something very important about the limitations of our human perception ...
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 Problem of Heroism (Again)
Regular Readers of this Glass House will recall that two journals ago I mentioned the essay of Thomas de Zengotita, in the December issue of Harper's magazine, ["Attack of the Superzeroes"] and his take on why we, as popularly accepted, can no longer have heroes/heroines. Zengotita argues convincingly that, because our lives have become so mediated, the mythic basis of lifelong heroism (and hero-worship) that existed for our ancestors cannot exist for us. He does not accredit this to our own sophistication but rather to how practiced we ourselves have become at being able to perform.One example he presents is our ability to know exactly how to behave in front of the television cameras -- inculcated as we are by multitudinous instances of what was effecting and what was not -- as opposed to our predecessors, who come across today as wooden (to our modern eyes) on camera, don't trust that the microphone actually amplifies their voices, etc.
He goes on to say (not a new idea,) that if there are any heroes/heroines for we mediated moderns they are rock stars, professional athletes and film stars. Performers all, he continues, such that any figure -- politician, soldier, inventor, artist, to list the activities from which heroes of the past were taken -- attempting to be a hero today must needs compete with those figures who are paid and trained to perform. In short, they must get training (we immediately think of professional media consultants here) to perform for us. Only in that way do they appear to us to have the attributes now required of a hero.
Take that as a leaping off point, for now, because of what I attempted to posit in that last essay. Here, I mean to move on into other territory.
My lifelong friend, Ric Williams, the poet, has always had a visceral disdain for the notion of heroism. Even before he had a philosophical basis for making his arguments that no human being was worthy of to be looked up to or emulated by others, he would have long arguments with me about his belief that the very idea of heroes was a bad one.
Being an inveterate hero-worshipper myself, as all my friends know, I fought back just as adamantly. I have always believed that the lives of young people could and should be shaped by studying the "lives of great men"(and now we have added women to this axiom,) as the saying goes. In my own times of spiritual extremity, I have continued to go back to either the words and thoughts -- as with Bertrand Russell -- or the deeds and biographies (Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar come to mind immediately) of those heroes I adopted in my youth.
For me, heroes and heroines have always represented some part of the best that burns within the human breast. Who can deny how the myths and legends of our heroes continued to move us? Take that image of Odysseus tied to the mast in order to hear the song of the Sirens; who can deny knowing that urge to hear the threateningly irresistible? Why else do you want to go "where no [one} has gone before," Captains Kirk?
But reading the John Gardner collection, Of Writers & Writing, I experienced one of those insights which has always fueled my love of reading, rubbing against the thinking of other analytical minds. Gardner, in a critique of Paul Zweig's book, The Adventurer makes the point that my friend Ric has been trying to make me consider for years: Heroes are as dangerous to their friends as they are to their enemies.
I had to stop reading the passage I was on and consider this equation on its face. I thought of one of my own heroes, Mahatma Gandhi who -- unlike other heroes (two already mentioned) whose obvious martial bent could obviously be brought to task -- stands, for all the world, as a history-making model of benign pacifism and moral authority. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a special hero of my own race, credits Gandhi's thinking as shaping his own.
I must admit publicly that, to the analysis of any thinking individual, it cannot be denied that Gandhi exemplifies Gardner's statement.
Let us take just one example, the iconic salt protest against the British monopoly so tellingly dramatized in David Lean's biopic. Is there not something callous and single-mindedly compassionless in Gandhi's expectation that his followers have their skulls broken open in order to make his moral point? Yes, the failing Raj needed to be worn down by resistance but would any person in his right mind call Gandhi a "friend" for asking him to be incapacitated and hospitalized for this "higher goal?" Is not Gandhi's act of encouraging this protest as compassionless and cruel as that of the British officer ordering that the [our] heads be cracked?
My choice of the Mahatma is intentional for the purpose of this point but no less, and possibly much more, can be said about the blinders to the suffering of their friends and disciples of all great heroes.
Simon Peter knew this when he denied Jesus three times on the night of the arrest. If Caiaphas had been of a more insightfully efficient bent, he might have rounded up not only Jesus but the whole lot of dissidents and had them all exterminated, thus nipping the incipient threat of Christianity in the bud.
Before continuing, I need to insert two digressions from this main thesis.
To return to our original consideration, this insight from Gardner awakened me to my friend's disaffection with the notion of heroism while also increasing my own understanding of what it means to be heroic. Odysseus, one of the prototypical figures of the Western heroic tradition, could actually be admired by Homer for his facility at lying and cheating. Heroism, in other words, has an implicit ingredient of amorality if not immorality. This will be hard for us to swallow but should not be if we know anything of human nature or heroes.
- This new insight -- for me -- about the heroic, does not in any way change my belief in the importance of our having heroes or taking instruction from their lives. It is not a recantation.
Rather, I continue to believe that the capacity to have heroes is important to our moral and spiritual understanding and growth; that it is essential to our understanding of our own natures and characters.
- Even further afield from today's consideration, by "hero" I don't mean that cheapened definition of the term in common discourse too often. I don't mean the usage that military men interviewed by the American press are trained to say "Everyone involved here is a hero, ma'am" or that popular equation that all the police and fire-fighters involved in the World Trade Center recovery effort are automatically heroic.
For the purpose of the definition employed here, though they are certainly deserving of our respect and honor, they are not heroes.
The usage employed here has nothing to do with conforming to our expectations of commendable group action in a crisis and everything to do with going against expectation.
When Caesar, as one example, chose to cross the Rubicon, the significance was historic. Though he had always been a maverick among the members of his own class, he had never actively undermined and challenged it. By crossing the Rubicon, he invalidated the authority of the Roman Senate and became its enemy henceforth. He was a "class traitor," to use a modern locution. He was, as Shakespeare rightly has Brutus perceive, an enemy of the existing order.
The very nature of heroism, taken from this perspective, is to be an adventurer -- as Gardner noted that Zweig points out -- in the sense of going to a spiritual, moral or psychological place that not only shakes up the existing order but changes history by individually altering the lives of large masses of people, both friend and enemy.
In this latter sense, Alexander and Gandhi were heroic in ways that the local fire chief or the evening television newscast's choice for "Smalltown Hero" could never be.
There is something cynical (as from the word's original meaning of "dog-like") about awarding acts of charity or commendable behavior with the word "heroic."
At the same time, and This Writer believes admirably, because the hero is not unalterably wedded to the mob morality, he or she is open to the creation and/or possibility of the new. Alexander could argue that Greeks were not the highest example of humanity but that the syncretism of the new idea of Hellenism was more superior by means of accepting the equality of trans-ethnic contributions to the cosmic stew. Gandhi could go about the unimaginable, theretofore, project of demonstrating that imperial armies could be brought down by an unflinching willingness to take a bullet instead of deliver one. And so on.
[I apologize for returning to only these two examples from the large pantheon of heroic figures. I only do so for reasons of brevity, not omission.]
I have personally learned two things about the nature of heroism, and thus my own life, from Gardner's imparted notion.
Firstly, that it should in no way diminish the stature of the heroine that we recognize her warts, that we accept that she is a danger. As I myself have often quipped, "What is life without risk?" The implied answer, of course, being a bore, a bloodless mere existence.
Secondly, why should we imperfect mortals expect our heroes to be somehow more perfect than ourselves? It is because they share our flaws, insecurities and doubts but force themselves to rise above them to shake the world that they are open to those possibilities of aberrant thought which lead to heroism. Doing so is not a mark of perfection but only one of courage.
More often than not, I believe, our admiration -- or at least min e, if not my friend's -- for heroes has to do with the spiritual courage to risk rejection and ostracism, not to mention penury and unfulfilled promise, for daring to embrace an unimagined possibility. This courage has everything to do with placing a higher premium on discovery than that one places on security. It is essentially moral in that it is based, I believe, on the notion that there is a capital T, Truth, remaining to be revealed.
More on that in some future journal entry.
So What's It Like Being Back
In Nawlins, Rod?6 January, 2005: My pal Matt, with whom I temporarily staying, as you could see from the contact info provided in our solicitation for monetary support of your World's Magazine, began the year by trying his first experiment in home-brewing. He means to make his own beer.
Since he and I have long shared the Homer Simpson axiom, "Beer: The Cause and Solution to all of our problems," I think it would not be inappropriate to dub his new brew "Matt's Solution."
That is not a very catchy name for a beer, of course. I'm sure he'll come up with something much better ...
I did not kiss the ground upon landing here in NOLA (another of the Crescent City's acronym's) because I left here in literal flight for how it had beaten me down and shown me its worst sides.
Nonetheless, I've returned giving New Orleans the benefit of the doubt. I am personally stronger now than when I first ventured here and I know every one of the sinkholes (spiritual rather than the actual physical kind) that exist in this town.
Also, I have no good reason or desire to remain here. My attitude is one of someone passing through on his way to somewhere else. I consider my knowledge of this whore as allowing me to be forearmed. That is a source of power, too.
This time of year is the most pristine, as far as I'm concerned. The climate resembles that of San Francisco during its best season and there is a festiveness as Mardi Gras (8 February this year) once again looms large.
So I shall see another Carnaval season in New Orleans ... I have absolutely NO intention of doing this one while slinging drinks from behind a bar, as in seasons past.
The truth is, I have another concern.
Terry ("Van Helsing") Terrian, one of my oldest and dearest friends, the man I chose as Best Man at my wedding those many years ago, is battling a deadly disease. The Big C. He is taking 200 million units of Interferon a week right now. That says to me that the situation is serious.
Those who know the history of the magazine know that I don't handle losing people very well. When someone close to me is lost, it's like a part of me passes over with them ...
Join me, please, in praying for him. I'd appreciate it.
Thanks for coming back this week.
THINGS I PRAY FOR THIS WEEK
1. Terry.
2. A girlfriend.
3. Good Luck.
4. A clear vision of where Providence needs me next.
"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching ... "
Love,
Rod
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, reaching 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. Our Resident Philosopher is now resuming his hejira. He teaches a distance-learning courses in Reading and Math to at-risk students online. Now all he needs is a job that actually pays well or an angel to hire him to do this magazine ... 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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