-> SMOKE & MIRRORS
KATRINA & THE LOST CITY OF NEW ORLEANS by Rod Amis
New Orleans is the Lost City of America.A portion of the proceeds of this book will go to the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Fund. The cooks, servers and restaurant workers of New Orleans have provided fabulous times and memories for millions. Now we must remember them in their time of need.
Buy the book or get a downloadable PDF Copy now!
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
RON DIENER,
DARHL STULTZ,
TIMOTHY MEADOWS,
TERRY TERRIAN,
CHERYL HILL NATION,
DRAGAN & DRAGANA VICANOVIC,
LESZEK MICHAELWICZ,
MARIE SINSABAUGH,
BECKY ALTEMUS,
BARBARA ATWELL,
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:
Rod Amis
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. |
SMOKE & MIRRORS - HIGHWAYMAN: ROD AMIS reflects on his new life in California - the continued draw of New Orleans - and reaction to his writings about the topic of religious faith at the Huffington Post.
SMOKE
"Where there's smoke, there's fire ..." Popular Adage.
22 August 2006: I had very much hoped to catch Spike Lee's opus on New Orleans this week, since the place is very much on my mind, as always. But the Fates or maybe the Cosmos decided that now was not the time for that. In fact, that is probably for the better since I am so buried under projects I've agreed to do that I have not, at this writing, found the time to complete editing this new edition of the magazine.
As diligent as I am in trying to keep up with my many and far flung projects, I found myself near paralyzed this past weekend with the daunting nature of all I must accomplish by the end of the month. Among those things are writing a grant for my Ethiopian clients; covering for my boss at NewsTrust, who leaves town again tomorrow and shan't return until after Labor Day; catching up with the queue of stories to evaluate and edit here; pitching and selling new stories to my other editors; finding a new apartment here in California or immediately moving to New Orleans - a topic again on the table for me which I mean to decide by this time tomorrow.
Frankly, I've fallen into the feeling of having too many balls to juggle again.
On one of my Day Jobs I spend the vast majority of time reading new news stories, and then posting and reviewing them. I am immersed in the news as never before. The result is that I am disinclined to talk about here. I realized that yesterday as I attempted to formulate for myself what I meant to feature in the editorial part of this column.
I realized that there was no single issue or item I felt passionately enough about to bring to your attention in the space I have normally slotted for that purpose. (This might have a bit to do with my overall sense of overwhelm these days, as well.)
NOW I KNOW what people have meant over the years when they claim that I think like a European. This article sent to me by my pal Ric Williams, in Austin, Texas, pretty much explains it all. How sad. I concur with the author, "We are so screwed."
INSIDE THE MAGAZINE
MPHUTHUMI NTABENI debuts the first in the three-part serialization of his new piece "Trespassing" in G21 FICTION.
BRAD BALFOUR talks with couple Valeria Faris and Jonathan Dayton about their joyful new film "Little Miss Sunshine."
X.N. IRAKI does a whimsical turn on our OpEd page RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT.
MIRRORSI have a serious penchant for pouring anxiety over every decision I need to make. I'm a born worrier and am constantly in the process of second-guessing my own decisions.
That is one of the problems I am dealing with now. Should I stay or should I go? Should I just put the decision off for another month or two and see which way the wind blows? Arrgh!
Once I finally reach a decision and set a firm and public deadline, I usually stick to the decision, come what may, but until the decision and deadline are set, I put myself through a living Hell day and night, going back and forth over which is the best move to make.
I've found asking for advice never helps; it makes my indecisiveness even more pronounced.
There you have what is going on in Life of Rod right now in nutshell.
My friend, MPHUTHUMI NTABENI wrote me a long and thoughtful e-mail after reading my post at the Huffington Post Contagious Festival for this month's project, entitled End of Days. It is the fifth in the series, and was certainly not the one I considered its best, but it prompted him to write me. He says, in part:
I've just read your piece at Huffington Post: End Of Days. Great stuff. I once read, in one of those books that like to tell people more about their lives than they know themselves, that: Township people live with a vital part of their past castrated. I've ever since tried to understand what the author meant.
I'm the first to admit that there's an imposing ignorance about township life that is the legacy of apartheid. But the major problem in the townships is poverty, which locks everything in a vicious circle, in fact it oppressively hangs like an air of desolation, making you feel trapped and insignificant if you've such things as education to fall on. But the question of education too is locked up in that vicious circle: if you've got to work to provide for your family from the early age of thirteen you bound to miss on some valuable education.
Though in the depth of my guts my impulses are more inclined towards township life, yet with everyday that passes, with every book I read, the gulf of communication between my people and I grows wider. I have no one to discuss things I feel strongly about. Hence I have to go to an alien world of city suburbs to find people who are talk about things I'm thinking, only to find myself just as much of an enigma there too after a while. It'd be difficult for any one who did not grow up under our conditions to understand how most of us feel. We share the same symptoms with the culturally uprooted, the likes of Moslem youth living in the centre of east London, England. We are the 'in-between cultures,' alienated both from the cultural traditions of our parents and 'modern' western culture. Some choose to react with iconoclastic anger from this alienation, others through faith.
Faith based groups proliferate now in our townships for one reason or another. But I think the major one is that our age no longer has confidence in secular, socialist ideology of combating injustices. Faith groups allows individuals to transcend separation by linking them into the global "culture-free" identity; the self-identification by faith rather than ethnicity. Faith in our times stands as a psychological barricade behind which young people of our generation hide their lack of self-esteem to proclaim a functional strength.
Faith has become the supreme identity in the struggle for political and socio-economic interests. It is also both reaction to and defence against the experience of poverty and prejudice. The impulses of what might in another age have been seen as working-class anger have thus acquired a more plausible emancipatory narrative in religion for our generation, which naturally leads to fundamentalism, since an unintergrated faith is a very dangerous thing. Religion has become the agent of empowerment for many in our society. It champions the struggle against the extremes of capitalist inequality and all.
What perhaps is lost in the minds of these faithful is that the kind of faith they follow, of 'Born-again Christian Fundamentalist Right,' comes on the wings of American imperialism. Still the secularist's way appears bland compared to the ardent certainties of religion that are promulgated by mushrooming pastors for their own financial gain. The unfortunate thing is that the prospects of strategies for resolving the enduring questions of social justice, equality and diversity are dimming and daunting, in all this enthusiasm.
Because the faithful objurate from the natural human development for revealed ready-made answers from heaven. They want answers to come forth from heaven. As you can image, the whole thing is sowing seeds of disaster, as well as obscuring more hopeful and humane pathways to progress.
Surprisingly (at least to me - considering my secular humanist stance in these essays or blog posts) a number of other people have written me in response to this particular series. In that sense, it is the most provocative since "Murrow's Ghost." Most of those communications were both explanatory and personal and challenged my own perceptions on the topics I've attempted to address - always a Good Thing.
Mpush is probably right about the place of religion in this new century, I've come to gather from the e-mails sent to me. I continue, though, to find that a harrowing prospect when I consider the ethnic, racial, environmental and other challenges we face. As the link I provided in the normally editorial section of this column implies, I fear the advent of a new Dark Age.
Perhaps I am a highwayman in a new sense, robbing people of their certainties.
I have, of course, noted with some dismay that my own articles here have become shorter and shorter - (Thanks for saving my bacon this week, Mpush!) - since my move back to this coast and back into America.
I hope there is a remedy for the problem.
Keep me in your prayers (of whatever faith) as I keep you in my own.
Thanks for coming back this week.
THINGS ROD HOPES FOR THIS WEEK
1 - A new decisiveness about where I should live.
2 - More time for my own writing(s).
3 - Becoming prepared for the next book projects for the G21 Books imprint.
"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, r eaching 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. When he's not busy here, he writes technology columns for IT Manager's Journal and NewsForge, business columns for Enterprise Leadership and Slashdot. He he also acts as a Host and Project Coordinator at NewsTrust. Rust never sleeps.
Our Resident Philosopher is taking to the road once again. Wish him luck..
In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider.
He continues to be committed to integrity,
chastityand a dose of humility.
| HOME | THE THE PREVIOUS SMOKE & MIRRORS | THE NEXT SMOKE & MIRRORS | Send Page To a Friend |
CREDITS || TABLE OF CONTENTS || LINKS ||
VOX POPULI is YOUR PAGE to talk back to us. I'm glad you're not bashful. Keep those cards and e-mails comin', Kids!
RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
Our Editor does listen!
© 2006, GENERATOR 21.
E-mail your comments. We always like to hear from you. Send your kudos, brickbats and suggestions to rod@g21.net.
