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by Radio Raheem
G21 Staff Writer

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RADIOACTIVE: WHAT WOULD A MAN DO? - RAHEEM sends an Open Letter to our Editor and Publisher advising him on his latest plans.

Oakland, CA, USA - When I read here - since our Esteemed Editor has not talked with me directly in a while, or maybe it's the other way around - that Rod was finally admitting where his real home was and comin' back to Cali, I was overjoyed. It's about damned time! I thought. He's been freebootin' around the world, too long and goin' to New Orleans was one huge mistake.

So, upon the occasion of my old friend comin' back this way and knowin', now, that he means to return to our city, I have to give him an update on what will soon be the post-Jerry Brown days here in Oaktown. After last week's numbers, it seems that we shall have run-off between the wizened but legendary former Congressman Ronald Dellums and our own local pol, Oscar de la Fuente. No matter which one of them two wins, Oakland will continue to be a growing and expanding progressive city - just the way I like it. So I suspect PubMan will be politically happy here, too.

A former writer in these precincts, where tag-lines were once all the rage, had one that I always thought was proper: What would a Man do? In a time when just about everybody on the Web was being at least a bit politically correct, CHARLIE THE TUNA's tagline worked for me. I knew from where he was coming. And I sympathized with his point-of-view, in that respect if not among others.

I have now lived long enough to see manliness, the principles of honor and integrity as means of defining a man, come back into vogue. It was a very long wait but the pendulum finally swung back our way, thank the Lord.

I bring this up because my thinkin' is, as much as Rod says he loved New Orleans, I never read any evidence that New Orleans loved him.

Going further, a MAN would choose to be in a place that best supported him, I think, and that was a source of inspiration. What kind of inspiration is anybody gonnah get in a city that is hanging on by its fingernails, with more people wishing and hoping they can get back into their own damned houses than people making a positive contribution to society? As Mr. Rod himself might say, "Just asking."

AND if he's looking to get out of a depressing environment now, New Orleans is the last place on the planet Earth to go, ain't it, y'all? Correct me if I'm wrong.

I have been known in the past to take our Esteemed Editor and Publisher to task because I, among everyone here and being the one of longest tenure, believe I have earned the right to do so. Come home, PubMan, at least for a while. Hang your hat for a year or three and then continue your wanderings.

Besides, you yourself have always said that a journey of less than a thousand miles is just a taste for you. You say nine thousand miles is just about right. North Carolina to New Orleans is only a little over a thousand miles; you come back to California, you got at least a third of what you consider a worthwhile trip. Am I right or am I wrong?

I'm not even saying you have to stay. This is not a prison sentence. You can move on. But you gottah know a lottah folks out here love you - and know you - like nobody else in this world - and very possibly nobody else in the next. Consider that.

Those of us who read your "My Glass House" column over the years know that there have been only two places where you, my friend, have had memories that resonated for us. One was Austin, Texas, and the other was here in California, though in various cities. You were here in Cali longer than any place I've ever seen you live. Doesn't that say something? I think so. Come home, PubMan, at least for a while.

I know you are a man who finds it difficult to talk about family. I was amazed, in fact, that you would tell us about your brothers in the hospital in your last "Smoke & Mirrors" entry. That was a departure from your usual practice of "revealing while concealing." It tells me, at least, a lot about your recent emotional growth.

I bring up family for two reasons.

1. I have written about family, holiday family gatherings, and the meaning of family more than any writer you have featured in these pages.


2. If you have a family - as I define one for people like you who don't gravitate toward a family based on blood - then the only real family you have, Rod, my friend, has always been those of us here in California.

I won't belabor the point. You know what I mean, even if our readers don't.

Come home, my friend, my dear Publisher Man, at least for a while.

You may think, like Thomas Wolfe, that you can't come home again. But that's a romantic sentiment, at best, and, at worst, a maudlin illusion. You are better than both. You can do whatever you want to do, which you've proven more than once. I know. So do you.

So yes! Yes! Put it in the wind again. But this time make it a west wind. Come back to your putative "edge of the world" and live with us in a place where the next century is being created. Live and laugh with us again, staring off at the great Pacific Ocean looking toward China. You know the nature of cities, great Kublai. Come celebrate cities with us again. We await the return of the King.

We know you have seen much and suffered much on your quest. We hope and pray that you have also gained great wisdom that you can now share with us. We await the return of the King. Come home.

You will remember Telegraph Avenue. It is no longer the same street you imagine, either in its stretch in Oakland or Berkeley, PubMan. Oakland, particularly, has grown during the Jerry Brown years and become more the city we all believed it could be. It is a city that will charm and warm you, I believe. Come home.

Your funny little mayor in New Orleans, Ray Nagin, looks like a pimp and talks like a friend of Wall Street. Homie don't play that. He wouldn't last a half second up here in Oaktown, the real Chocolate City. But then that's Louisiana all over, isn't it, Homes? They imitate life down there because they have no idea what it is really like.

AND now you have that new job, with a new Internet venture here in NorCal.

Can't you see it? Can't you taste and feel it? The Cosmos is nudging you to come back home.

It is doing everything but putting your narrow ass into a seat on an airplane and locking you down with handcuffs until you come back where you were meant to be.

As another of your friends used to say, "SURELY, there is a sign in this for those with understanding."

I think you get my drift on this.

Peace out.