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Rod Amis - Unbound

bright lights, deep shadows

G21 #417: Biological Imperatives G21 AFRICA JOIN OUR MAILING LIST. It contains more jokes than not. G21 E-MAIL NEWSLETTER G21 READERSHIP POLL HOT LINKS MY GLASS HOUSE he also watches fireflies dance in the trees NEW YORK STATE RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT VOX POPULI. RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT ARCHIVES. LAST WEEK's EDITION MEET THE G-CREW! These are the people behind this jam-band every week. HOME TABLE OF CONTENTS & BACK ISSUES BECOME A SPONSOR OF THE WORLD'S MAGAZINE. WHY should you advertise here? We'll tell you. We know you're lazy. Here's a button for a quick translation of this page. Just click on the flag for your country. You're welcome! OR TRY THIS GOOGLE TRANSLATION SERVICE.

I HAD NOT BEEN in North Carolina a full month when I was feted to the spectacle of cross-burning in nearby Durham. The FBI and local police are investigating the incident but don't have any leads. They can find no motivation for the incident(s). Locals are outraged. The only motivation seems to be a warning and a reminder of deep-seated hatred festering just below the surface of seeming civility. For Blacks, it is not just an outrage but a palpable kick in the gut, a reminder that behind the handshake there is still the snake, an evil that continues to live in the American heart.

As noted in this space at our last outing, for many Black Americans, the memories, stories and experiences of slavery and then the Jim Crowe practices of denying us access to public facilities and upper levels of work and education are still very close and painfully real. Incidents like this cross burning -- only miles from where I am living -- remind us that it is not only in the state of Texas that an innocent Black man like James Byrd can be beaten, bound and dragged behind a truck and that it is not only in the state of New York that an innocent Black man like Amadou Diallo can be coming home from working a menial job and be shot forty-one times because he looks "suspicious."

In our experience the crosses are still burning every day. Every time we enter a store and get followed and looked at as if we were born as guilty thieves; every time we get stopped while walking through a neighborhood that is too toney, we experience the burning crosses.

Many of my White and Asian friends say they are not aware of the burning crosses that haunt our lives every day. It is comfortable and convenient for them to look the other way and pretend the crosses are not there. They call us overly sensitive or unrealistic when we insist the crosses are still there.

But some people in Durham wanted to prove them wrong and remind us of our vulnerability and that we are the targets of their hate and outrage. It is not the cross burnings themselves, then, that are important it is the effort to make sure that we got the warning and the reminder.

I say, ironically, when describing my life in this region since returning -- unwillingly -- from Europe, "That's what I like about the South."

At issue is a tolerance for insult, slight, and actual violence against Black people that is taken as "common custom" in the South.

What is at issue is an acceptance that treating Black people differently, and as inferiors, is institutionalized in Southern practice and not treated as the heinous crime that it remains. The stench of slavery is still thick in the air down here. The legacy of Jim Crowe practices and attitudes live on. The jails are crowded with Blacks, so much so that the joke about Southern justice is that it means the jails are "just us."

As a French woman visiting New Orleans observed about that place, "I was instantly surprised at how segregated things remain here. "

It was much easier to assert that we worked and played together fifty years ago than it is today. While there are many neighborhoods where both Blacks and Whites live in proximity to each other throughout the South, living down the way does not mean socializing. It is purely a matter of economics and law, not of community. The Blacks go to their own churches, as do the Whites, such that it is a matter for special comment (as in newspaper articles) when a church does have an ethnically mixed congregation. Whites drive by the houses of the Blacks in their neighborhoods to go to bars where the clientele is primarily White and vice versa. When Blacks do find jobs, with a documented frequency less prevalent than that of their White neighbors, they are likely to be pigeonholed into being security guards, retail clerks, stockers, maids, cooks and other members at the lower tier of the service industry.

White people are comfortable seeing Black people in these "traditional" roles and taken aback by seeing them in any others. When a call is made for a manager or a computer technician or a database administrator, the image in the mind of the "average" white person is not naturally that of a Black man or woman. (Protests will be made on this assessment but each person knows what they see in their heart and in their own mind's eye. Those blind to the burning crosses are nonetheless mindful of their own preconceptions.)

It is often said that Black Americans are among the world's most forgiving people. What is seldom noted is that -- because we have been made to scratch out every bit of social justice we have ever received from a grudging majority -- we easily take common cause with others involved in the same type of struggle. Be it an Iraqi, a Congolese, a Venezuelan or a Chinese woman, we know the burning hunger for simple justice in the breast of every person and the frustration with the stubborn hard-heartedness or simple -- but not benign -- indifference of those with the power to effect our relief and redress.

"Dude, why should I care if it doesn't affect me personally?"

And most of all we know, every day, that the crosses are still burning somewhere ...

INSIDE G21

THIS IS NOT THE EDITION I had planned on bringing you this week, my little loves. I had hoped that this would be the edition where we began our three-part series on HIV/AIDS, as I wrote in this space last outing.

What happened is that I had to take a lesson in learning that I have far less control of the editorial process than the other members of this jazz band complain about and claim. One of the assigned writers never came throughm the second one didn't get the assignment before I was at deadline and the third did not take being "volunteered" kindly.

My hope is that we shall resolve these internal SNAFUs by the edition of the 13th, before we go weekly again.

So, IN THIS ISSUE, you instead get the debut of Johannesburg's THABO PULE on our Op-Ed page (RDR) talking about that unmentionable subject (for African men) of erectile dysfunction. He is a new and eloquent voice that I pray will decide to contribute here again.

YOUR "Letters" page, VOX POPULI, threw me this time. Of the three articles that are directly referenced in your e-mails, the most recent one was published here in 2003. I've said it once but I'll say it again: DON'T expect me to remember everything that has been published in these pages. Help me out and supply me with a URL when you talk about an article, please! Thank you. I don't like living on Google.com. Sheesh!

It truly, truly amazes me that there are so many people out there who imagine that I remember chapter and verse of every article -- now in the thousands -- that I've edited over the last decade here.

Here's the fact: I DON'T REMEMBER EVERY ARTICLE I HAVE PERSONALLY WRITTEN, HERE OR ELSEWHERE. I just don't. Help me out.

BRAD BALFOUR does another sterling job this week. If you look back over the calibre and breadth of voices he has brought to this magazine, as his virtual colleague NGOZI RAZAK-SOYEBI pointed out months back, nearly half of the great interview subjects your World's Magazine has offered you are Brad's subjects. You have missed them at your loss.

This week he brings you Israeli director Keren Yedaya, whose film "Or" focused on the story, the lives, of prostitutes and their children in her native country. The very concept of Israeli prostitutes is anathema to our politically correct view that everyone in Israel lives a life of privilege. Ms. Yedaya reminds us about the struggle of the impoverished.

A small, independent and outspoken magazine like this one can't reach you every week without the support and patronage of its readership. As our way of thanking those who have committed to keep your World's Magazine here on your desktop through their generous donations, we feature their names and cities here in our Roll of Honor. SUSTAINING PATRONS DARHL STULTZ, Largo, FL, USA TIMOTHY MEADOWS, Anaheim, CA, USA RON DIENER, Wendell, NC, USA CHERYL HILL NATION, West Fairlee, VT, USA DRAGAN & DRAGANA VICANOVIC, Belgrade, SERBIA LESZEK MICHAELWICZ, New Orleans, LA, USA TERRY TERRIAN, Sebastopol, CA, USA MATT STOWELL, New Orleans, LA, USA Supporting Patrons BARBARA ATWELL, Berkeley, CA, USA BECKY ALTEMUS, Houston, TX, USA IAN CRYSTAL, Ph. D, New Orleans, LA, USA LARS KEFFERSTAN, New York, NY, USA MEREDITH TUPPER, Tampa, FL, USA NICK ALLEN, New Orleans, LA, USA RIC WILLIAMS, Austin, TX, USA ROBERT PURVIS, Montclair, NJ, USA STEVE VIVIAN, New York, NY, USA STUART ALTMAN, ESQ., New York, NY, USA We encourage you to add your name to this Roll of Honor. GENERATOR 21 cannot continue and thrive without your support. Thanks in advance. To support G21, please send checks or money orders to: G21: The World's Magazine Attn: Rod Amis 1116 Crestline Road Wendell, NC 27591-9245 USA To donate by credit or debit card, please go to the Western Union website by following the highlighted link. Should you donate via Western Union, please notify us via e-mail. Please make all remittances payable to Rod Amis. Again, thanks.

LIFE OF ROD

22 May, 2005: I have walked since I was a child. Walking is a better way of appreciating the world than whizzing by it to the pace of pulsing engines. it is a better, I have always upheld, to apprehend the world as you would from the moment of birth than through some enhanced and heedless construct. When walking, I can still talk to God.

Having culled the classified advertisements in the Sunday newspaper and on Craig's List on the Web, after submitting my latest slough of cover letters, salary requirements, applications and CVs, I took a shower, dressed in new clothes and took a walk around this country neighborhood which is now my own.

Walking in the country, of course, is not the same as doing so in a city -- my natural habitat -- so the walk was shorter. It was about appreciating flowers in a neighbor's yard, honeysuckle growing wild at the road side, areas posted against hunting, underground cable notifications, getting off the road when on-coming cars came racing by.

Most of the houses in this part of Wake County, near where I now reside, are prefabricated. They look a lot like trailers put up on brick foundations; some of them actually are just that but not all. The responsible country folk keep their dogs behind fences rather than let them wander the neighborhood -- though even that term, "neighborhood," seems a stretch in this rural environment. On the street where I live, the houses are less than seventy yards apart. I have ridden past other areas where they are separated by acres.

I am like a fish out of water around here. I am a city mouse. Adjusting to this situation has not occurred. Without Vickie, my beloved Memory Machine, I would be altogether lost. She is my anchor and companion still. I awaken every day here feeling as though this is some dream. I do not belong here. That I know. This is another waystation in the soul-journey I am taking ...

While I appreciate dear, funny Ron Diener taking me in when I was at sixes and sevens, I cannot but wonder "Where next?" and "How? When?"

So I feel I live every day as a Sleep Walker -- or, more appropriately, The Ghost Who Walks -- waiting for a job or a break or a miracle to point the direction that Providence means for me to go next.

For now, it appears, Providence just wants me to stand still, to take the shape of my container, to "just be ... "

The G21 READERSHIP POLL

As noted in our 2004 year-end Person of the Year poll, there are people making positive contributions to life on Earth. All-too-often, we focus far afield in those types of surveys rather than close to home. So this poll asks you to reverse that trend.

THE POLL QUESTION: What five people in your personal life or community have had the greatest impact for good for you and/or your family and neighbors?

DEADLINE: 30 JUNE, 2005. The responses and results will appear in July. Thanks in advance!

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24 May, 2005: Went into Raleigh at the crack of dawn this morning with Ron, chasing the elusive Job Connection. Got to use the WiFi (wireless Internet via the AirPort include that Vickie affords me) connection at a coffee shop around the corner from where Ron works. Went to a Job Faire. Read more of a book by an Italian Medievalist, Francesco Gabrieli, who has collected contemporaneous Arab writings about the Crusades. In the background of my mind was the roiling notion that I have to come up with a better plan for my forays into the "Research Triangle" if I am to succeed at getting a job here. That or that I should look for getting a job where I'd really love to be, be it Europe, Latin America or Manhattan. It's time to think about The Main Chance again.

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THIS MIGHT APPEAR unrelated to all of the foregoing, on its face, unless you know me. (I harbor the hope that you are coming to know me, my loves, by reading this "Glass House" every week. Maybe I am deluding myself. It wouldn't be the first time.)

Now that I can see Amy Goodman's wonderful Democracy Now! broadcasts on LinkTV, I am re-injected into the "dialogue" of those with whom I'm assumed to take common cause. Amy and I do seem to gravitate to same news items every day.

On the Monday Memorial Day national holiday here in the United States, she broadcast clips from a documentary examining the National Security Strategy document released by President Bush's administration in 2002. The documentary featured commentary from the typical leftist suspects like Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, et alia, counter-balanced by neocon apologists like Cliff May and Seth Liebsohn.

What drove me wild watching this documentary was how too many of the participants on the left focused on the notion of preventatve strikes, something certainly practiced by the American foreign policy establishment for centuries -- since the Monroe Doctrine, as far as I'm concerned, and exemplified by Kennedy during the Cuban missile "crisis" -- and the ball-faced arrogance of it. The rightists, meanwhile, mouthed the usual cant about the world suddenly being changed -- What? There was no terrorism before it happened in the good ole US of A? Ask the Brits and the Italians! They went on to say the we need to deal with terrorists, non-state, action by attacking "rogue states."

Stop the music.

You just said that the playing field had changed because we were NOT dealing with nation-states anymore and thus we had to use new tactics. You said that since international law didn't apply for these non-state players, it shouldn't apply for you. THEN you said the solution was attacking states.

Cognitive dissonance, anyone?

"Okay. What does Rod have to say?" you are correct to ask.

What I have to say is this: The National Security Strategy document of the Bush administration in 2002 was foremost and only about power and privilege.

(Damn! I hate repeating myself. But if you look at how power and privilege work, how those in power want to keep everyone else OUT and without privileges, it's a mind-expanding experience.)

The Bush Doctrine document's basic premise was that, as the only Superpower on the planet, the power elite in the United States --- NOTE! NOT the American people! -- had the most unprecedented economic and cultural and technological influence in the history of the world. The document said that they had earned this status of superiority and should not willingly give it up.

It said, and this was the part that too many leftists focused on, that the final question was whether they should use military might -- the willingness to send American citizens to die and overthrow other nation-states on the planet in order to maintain their status and privilege -- to maintain the status quo.

It said the answer, the answer of Empire, was "YES."

ONLY ONE OF THE COMMENTATORS on Amy's broadcast cut to this quick.

Power and privilege: that is the endgame. The power elite don't give a shit about anyone other than themselves.

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31 May, 2005: Vickie and I work on the dining room table in the main front room of Ron's house here in the woodland.

Matt used to tease me about the fact that, even as a city-dweller of great repute, I insisted that I needed to see trees when I was working. I have never felt right in a neighborhood denuded of trees, even in Manhattan.

Over the last few weeks, Ron and I have taken a "picture" window out of his back wall and re-oriented from horizontal to vertical. We made it the centerpiece between two glass doors. What was once a wall with a window is now a wi ndowed view of the forest behind his back yard. It is the perfect place for a man who loves to see trees when he works to be. But I still find a country hermitage much less attractive than the hermitage of a city, where I can choose to be social whenever "cabin fever" sets in ...

"RALEIGH! Raleigh? What the Hell are you doing there, Dude?"

I hear ya'.

"You should go back to Manhattan. Or try some place new."

Wait. Please. Maybe I should stand still.

Earnestly, my Love, what is most amazing to me is that people who have sustained my life over the last thirty-plus years have held on while NEW people assert their influence in my life. You, of all people, know how I am infatuated by the new ...

I must stand still and see God move in the wind, as I said when I was younger.

It is wonderful to increase this family of people with "light behind their eyes ..."

Let us see where His Work takes me next, shall we?

Thanks for coming back this week.

THINGS I PRAY FOR THIS WEEK

1 - Vickie and I unleashed again to do His work.

2 - A job that I can enjoy and that enjoys me. Soon. As soon as possible.

3 - A girlfriend who enjoys your Butterfly Soul.

"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, 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 and accepting that it is at the core of who he is. The refuge of the road, as Joni Mitchell once sang, for our country's most well-known domestic refugee.

He still needs to find 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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© 2005, GENERATOR 21.

E-mail your comments. We always like to hear from you. Send your kudos, brickbats and suggestions to rod@g21.net.