KATRINA & THE LOST CITY OF NEW ORLEANS by Rod Amis New Orleans is the Lost City of America. New Orleans has disappeared as surely as the lost city of Atlantis or the lost city of Pompeii, which former mayor Marc Morial and Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA.) have compared us to in their statements. That New Orleans, the New Orleans I mean to tell you about, that will never, ever, exist again--that city of love, lust, death and sex--will never exist again. 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! To order on Amazon.com, go here! 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 BECKY & KENT ALTEMUS, Shenandoah, TX, USA RON DIENER, Wendell, NC, USA MATT STOWELL, New Orleans, LA, USA DARHL STULTZ, Largo, FL, USA TIMOTHY MEADOWS, Anaheim, CA, USA TERRY TERRIAN, Sebastopol, CA, USA CHERYL HILL NATION, West Fairlee, VT, USA DRAGAN & DRAGANA VICANOVIC, Belgrade, SERBIA LESZEK MICHAELWICZ, New Orleans, LA, USA MARIE SINSABAUGH, Granville, OH, USA Supporting Patrons NGOZI RAZAK-SOYEBI, Jos, NIGERIA NICK ALLEN, New Orleans, LA, USA X.N. IRAKI, Jackson, MS, USA BARBARA ATWELL, Berkeley, CA, USA LARS KEFFERSTAN, New York, NY, USA MEREDITH TUPPER, Tampa, FL, USA RIC WILLIAMS, Austin, TX, USA ROBERT PURVIS, Montclair, NJ, USA IAN CRYSTAL, Ph. D, New Orleans, LA, 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: Rod Amis G21: The World's Magazine 1500 Royal Crest Drive, #156 Austin, TX 78741-2709 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. G21 at FeedBurner Rod Amis at the Huffington Post in February Rod Amis at the Huffington Post in May Rod Amis at the Huffington Post in July Rod Amis at the Huffington Post in August Rod Amis at the Huffington Post in November ENJOY WHAT ROD DOES! ("My Little Doll" - Music from my friends at Artasanas Campesinsas in Taxco, Mexico. I loved it hope you will, too.) When you mean to read Rod's more dissident writings, go here: .

Rod Amis - Unbound

SMOKE & MIRRORS - ASS KICKING TIME IN AMERICA: ROD AMIS provides his editorial and then talks about his new life in Texas.

SMOKE

"Where there's smoke, there's fire ..." Popular Adage.

It was Ass-Kickin' Time in America last week, as everyone now knows. San Francisco's Nancy Pelosi is now in line to become the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States.

That the San Francisco political machine, as noted by a fellow journo at the Sacramento Bee, is one of the most corrupt in the United States, after Chicago, does not make me very sanguine about Ms. Pelosi's ascension. Having worked with San Francisco Democratic politicians a bit over a decade ago, I know them to be both cynical and full of their own brand of self-righteousness. Cooler than Thou, as the saying went.

Remember that this is the political coterie that gave us Angela Alioto, Willie Brown, Carole Migden, Kevin Shelley and Gavin Newsom. You couldn't find a better crowd of oppor tunists outside of a drug rehab center. I should know, I worked for and with a lot of these people. As I've written in this space before, I walked away every day feeling like I needed to take twelve showers in order to get clean again.

Let's keep in mind, too, that before Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton showed their true colors, Dianne Feinstein was the most Republican Democrat anyone could imagine.

So I don't necessarily celebrate the Democrats getting back in power as much as some of my fellow dissidents here on the WWW. Let's face it, we've just exchanged one group of crooks and liars for another. If ANY but a paltry few of our national legislators spent as much time tending to the public business as they did getting on the phone to raise funds, we might actually have a workable democracy. Everyone with half a brain, looking at her wallet, knows that we do not.

Which brings me to a topic I've been editorializing on here and elsewhere lately, our definition of democracy. The hagiography of "the Framers" of the United States Constitution and of the "Founding Fathers" is rife with lies.

First of all, George Washington openly said, after the Constitutional Convention, that he didn't expect the document to hold up for twenty years. Benjamin Franklin, the only one of the Founders who signed the three seminal documents creating the United States - the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris and the Constitution itself - gave the document that organized and created the new country less than ten years.

In that, I consider those old heads wiser than us today, though I don't hold most of them in high regard other than Franklin. Franklin, at least, was willing to speak up and say that the slavery of Black people was wrong and immoral. Not those other bastards.

This country should have had a new Constitutional Convention years ago, probably right about the time when the robber barons figured their way to exploit workers and run rampant over the law.

So whenever I hear some conservative or - worse yet - neo-conservative windbag drone on about "the wisdom of the Founders," I feel like Elvis in front of the television set. Thank God, I don't actually own a weapon.

Inside the Magazine

I am uncertain as to whether readers take this section of my column seriously or feel that my own recommendations, as the editor, are actually of value. Thus, I've contemplated discontinuing this section.

Unless I am disabused of these doubts, consider this my last series of recommendations. On our cover, at our Table of Contents, our RSS feed and our navigational functions, you can always see what articles are available in each new edition. Some of those features also order the articles in their order of recommendation. So this part of my column might, indeed, be redundant.

Speaking of the cover, special thanks to MIKE HANEY, of 787designstudios, for design consulation on our new look. Good-bye to the era of "chick covers."

For what it's worth, I do recommend that you spend your time here digesting KEN KAMOCHE's perspective on the most recent China-Africa Summit in G21 ASIA.

MPHUTHUMI NTABENI moves to the DAY ONE chair this edition and provides a considered opinion the spiritual and political importance of the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi.

DANIEL PATRIC WELCH returns to our OpEd page ("RDR") to question the real change brought by the last US election.

H. SCOTT PROSTERMAN reminds of us the historical significance of late US President Eisenhower's stance during the Suez Crisis in G21 MIDEAST.

These are but four of the eight new features of this edition worth your time and delectation.

MIRRORS

9 November 2006: Bucky James is dead.

They had the second line for Bucky James, on Tuesday, 7 November. He was a bartender who took over my slot at the Spotted Cat on Frenchmen Street after Hurricane Katrina. Bucky hung himself.

Back in October, Addie Hall, another bartender at the Spotted Cat, was found by police dismembered by her boyfriend who had just committed suicide after murdering her. Her head was boiling in a pot on the stove. Her arms and legs were in the oven. The rest of her remains were found in a garbage bag in the refrigerator of their apartment.

Taking my old shift at the Spotted Cat seems to be a bad idea for anyone...

I didn't know Addie. I think I only met her once. Bucky I had known for the last five years. He was a friend and then a customer of mine and I took his death harder than I would have expected. I think about it every day now.

Bucky had suffered an earlier tragedy, while working construction, and had his brain messed up when a girder smashed in his head. After that, he wasn't the same. People who didn't know him thought that he was retarded. Those of us who knew the truth could sense that Bucky was aware of what he'd lost from that accident. He was like the Village Idiot; some people would cruelly make fun of his mental deficiency just because they could. Others would talk down to him. Those of us who respected him would never do that.

He went on benders, though, especially at that times when he was thinking about the man he used to be, and it became necessary more than once for me to kick him out of my bar when he started annoying my customers, meaning cutting into my income. Bucky knew that I was serious when I told him it was time to leave and he never held it against me, he knew it was part of my work. I think Bucky liked the fact that I never talked down to him. I treated him exactly as I did the rest of my customers, whether I had to be jovial or harsh.

Months before Katrina came, when I was still living in New Orleans, Bucky went through a noticeable change. He got more serious and centered and cut back on his drinking. He got a job at a rather trendy tourist bar on Decatur Street in the French Quarter - as a bartender, no less - and then, after I had left New Orleans, signed on at the Spotted Cat.

After Katrina, he was back in town and started dating one of the true babes of our circle, a woman from Toronto named Cheryl Toy. Cheryl had been an art director on that short-lived "Witchblade" television program that was popular for a while. I had to admit, upon getting the news that Cheryl was dating Bucky James, that I was a bit surprised. It didn't fit what I thought of as her modus operandi. Before Bucky, she had been the squeeze of a college professor. There's no accounting for why people couple.

Cheryl was not as bad as another woman in our circle, Mary McGinn, who always seemed to be at the center of some drama - supposedly through no fault of her own ("Yeah. Right.") - but she was damned close. There was something about the woman that always spelled trouble with a capital "T."

I got the news, as usual, from Matt. I had to tell him that I'm starting to dread his telephone calls because, more often than not, they are about someone I knew in New Orleans who is now dead.

Obituaries, as far as I've been concerned for most of my life, are an old people's game. I'm just not old enough to hear this often about people I knew who are now dead. New Orleans seems to be producing a lot of people like that this year.

Life of Rod

Robin "roblimo" Miller helped to save my life this week. It's that simple.

My former editor floated me a loan toward my rent and upkeep in the hope that THIS TIME I'd decided to stay somewhere for a little while. Two years would be a good change, he'd advised me while I was in North Carolina. People might get used to seeing me around - when I wasn't locked away writing - and actually get to know my name.

At this writi ng on Thursday, the day before the Poison Pill will actually kick in or not, I don't know if Matt will complete the job of helping me dodge the bullet or not. But I'm damned sure planning to put out this edition of the magazine out before I go down.

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Okay, it finally happened.

Anybody reading my latest project - likely the last of 2006 - at the Huffington Post mirrored over at TOTALLY DISSIDENT Web publication Atlantic Free Press has to realize that I've taken off the gloves, both intellectually and politically, and decided to let my Freak Flag fly. It's not about the much-lauded "middle ground" for Rod anymore. It's about kicking ass and taking names.

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Memaw told me a story from my youth this week that I had never heard. Fouke, Arkansas, is a little town close to Texarkana that - even back in 1976, the time I was there - had a town sign that said, "Nigger, don't let the sun set on your ass in this town."

Nonetheless, because the Williams family, my surrogate family, had moved back there after Pepaw left the Marine Corps, I dropped down there to visit Ric, my high school pal, on my way to California. My plan was to get to California before Henry Miller died in order to get his blessing.

What I didn't know until this week, learning it during my conversation with Memaw, was that I had only escaped harm because her father - who had hung the last Black person who had dared stay in that town, back in 1959 - who was the local law and poobah, decided that would not happen to a person staying with his daughter. The way the Williams family was punished instead, for having me in their house those few weeks, was that they did not get telephone service for two years.

Two years. Both Ric and Becky confirmed this account independent of each other. I was both shocked and saddened.

This was only one of the stories Memaw, Gloria Williams, told me about the results of having a Black person live - even visit - with their family, in Virginia and Arkansas. The stories are not pretty. When I have related them to other friends, they have been aghast and disbelieving.

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11 November 2006: I spent three hours with Ric Williams, my putative friend, from the Austin Chronicle this afternoon. It was exhausting and maybe I wish I hadn't.

I suppose it is that I had forgotten how emotionally worked up he gets when faced with disagreement. For him a disagreement can become adversarial, a struggle in which the opposing side must be defeated; his voice rises in volume, he demands, his body shakes and quivers. I try to make my arguments as calmly and quietly as possible; for me it's easy to accept that others might disagree with my positions, and often do, and simply walk away from the point of contention. I don't have a personal stake, as he seems to, in winning the day.

Frankly, I've never found that one's argument is more correct simply by dint of the amount of passion involved. Mobs, after all, are often full of passion but not necessarily inclined toward reason.

Perhaps I'm just a cold fish but I believe it more important, when a disagreement arises, for each side to have the opportunity to express their views, clearly and plainly to the other, in search of a point of compromise or accommodation. I don't think that a passionate victory is necessarily more important than a mutually accepted détente.

When I asked him, "And what is going on with you?" he changed the subject.

It was not that I did not already know the answer to my question, of course, but simply that I wished to hear his version of the answer.

Matt commented: "So he tried to evade Socrates?" And then Matt laughed.

Ric had been larger than life for me.

Suddenly, I realized, this past weekend, the real difference between Ric and I. He is all about his healthy security and I am all about risk.

While I had traveled the world, talked to people who had been bombed and lived and ate with them, seen their damaged homes, lives, cities, written their stories, he had been sitting here in Texas working government jobs.

I live my passion. He argues his.

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LISTEN UP, KIDS! Rod is looking for a job. ANY job. He needs it right away. Referrals are begged and pleaded for. Thanks in advance!

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I received an e-mail from my pal Natalie Davis with the Subject-line "You Devil You". Ooh-ooh! I like it like that.

Nat, who is the kind who likes to see the above-mentioned Freak Flag, and - since she hadn't visited me for a while - was surprised that I'm now in Austin. Wassup?

This is all for you, Nat: I proposed marriage this past weekend.

No, this is a NOT a joke. The World's Oldest Celibate is changing up. Really.

The Brilliant and Talented Woman in Question is thinking about whether young Rod is worth the bother.

Peace Out.

Keep me in your prayers as I keep you in my own.

Thanks for coming back this week.

ROD'S PREOCCUPATONS THIS WEEK

1 - Finding a Good Job.

2 - Actually having a new love life.

3 - Focusing on Happiness.

"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching ... "

Love,
Rod

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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.

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. Rod's more leftist writings can be found at Atlantic Free Press. (Don't tell his potential employers.) Rust never sleeps.

Our Resident Philosopher has decided to return to Austin, Texas, after over two decades away. Wish him luck..

In his spare time, Rod is now working on his second marriage.

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

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© 2006, GENERATOR 21.

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