Welcome to this 9th Edition (June 2000) of "FROM THE WINDOW", a worldwide magazine inviting contributions in the fields of journalism, poetry, travelogues and experiential writing from people in all walks of life and all parts of the globe.
We are a non-commercial internet magazine (now with a readership in 105 countries) following a quiet path away from the soundbites and manic zing of mainstream net, promoting understanding of the breadth of common human experience, celebrating a joy in language and run by a pretentious and pompous crip child...
The contents are divided into: firstly, a Guest Column (where we publish contributions from eminent writers and other prominent people), The Editor's View (that's stuff I write), Collected Writings (that's the bulky bit of the mag and is arranged in alphabetical order by author's name, and contains all sorts of wonderful things written by supposedly ordinary people, usually FTW readers), Letters to the Editor (disappointingly thin considering that my private mailbag runs into hundreds per month), Pilfered & Filched (stuff I've enjoyed from the net), Coming Soon, and Poster & Bumph (submissions policy, acknowledgements etc).
Past editions are still available:
Our 8th Edition had a guest contribution from Stephen Hawking, the physicist; and other articles
included the delights and diversity of African proverbs; the just bowing-out Controller of BBC Radio 4 (the wordy station) writing about his years in the job; submarines; home from Japan; a junkie in jail; a junkie overdosed; baseball; a firefighter and paramedic writes about her work; memories of evacuation from the London Blitz in WW2; how to make life easier when one's on a ventilator; thoughts on AIDS in Africa; teaching in Japan; memories from an Indian childhood.
For
our 7th Edition James Van Allen, the discoverer of the Earth's radiation belts, has written a piece for the millenium. Other articles are on: direct action against racial discrimination in the early 1960s in USA; the horrors of leaving the Nepalese mountains to go to school far from home; growing from a child in George Bernard Shaw's house into an extrapolator par excellence; hillbillie conversations re IRS, the distribution of trash on the highway and the point of individual existence...; a proud mother worrying about her son at the World Trade Organisation demos in Seattle; a first visit into Africa by an Oxfam worker; the life and times of an Australian milliner; reality for a person with multiple personalities; learning disabilities or differently able: label and identity; Servas: the organisation that does free homestays; hang-gliding; childhood memories from Hannibal, Missouri; and a hunting yarn in descriptive technicolour. Plus some poetry as usual.
Our 6th Edition led off with a summary of my journey around the world and also included articles by a gay man on coming out, a psychologist on twitching around the world, a Belgrade academic on life under the NATO bombs, and a woman on the recent loss of a much-wanted child. Also some poetry, a trip to Rumania to help out there, a description of a ford in India, and a fine gin song.
Our 5th Edition has Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut,as Guest Columnist and other articles waxing lyrical on sailing in the Whitsundays; describing the work of a House of Commons clerk; a pilgrimage made by a British Buddhist in her 60s into the Thai jungle; a sperm donor's wonderings; quite a lot of poetry; and a retired gent recalling how he paid compensation on behalf of H.M. Government to all the individuals on each and every one of the Gilbert & Ellice Islands for coconut trees destroyed by the Japanese during the 2nd World War; inter alia.
Our 4th Edition has George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as Guest Columnist and articles include an account of a cycling trip to the Gambia, an article from a 14 year old about her memories of life in Berlin when the wall came down, memories of bad things done as a child, twisting and turning imagery in the poetry of T. S. Eliot, bothersome thoughts a coroner can't ask, thoughts from a Baha'i, photography as art, and a comical account of shipwreck in the Western Isles of Scotland.
Our 3rd Edition has Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, as Guest Columnist and articles were also provided by Melvyn Bragg, Margaret Atwood and James Macmillan. In addition I published stuff by a physiotherapist working with kids in refugee camps in Jordan; a wee motor from Cairns to Darwin; a young London actor contemplating his kettle; a year in the life of an opera administrator; being on the receiving end of an armed robbery.
Our 2nd Edition has as Guest Columnist the contemporary composer Sir John Tavener, who had recently reached a wider audience with the playing of a piece of his at the funeral service for Princess Diana. It also carries articles on, inter alia, being a crew member in the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race; pieces on identity: being "Irish"; being a member of two different minority groups ie Gay and Disabled; the death of one's parents; a woman's account of childbirth; an adopted child's first encounter with her biological mother; a day in the life of a violinist. There is a motley selection as usual of "No Can Do" correspondence.
The 1st Edition's Guest Columnist was the poet Ruth Padel and articles therein are on a variety of topics such as fear of boats; a newcomer's response to Zimbabwe; the emotional impact of surgical versus congenital amputation; imagination and the prehistoric cave paintings of Peche Merle; the death of a cat; and a day in the life of a family therapist.
The format of this magazine is to present all of the current edition in one hit so that although it may take some time to download to your screen it can then be read in its entirety or printed out for sharing. The Editor therefore suggests that when you click on "mag" (below), you then zip off to make a cup of coffee, a shopping list, cut your nails or what have you. Or you can jump off the contents list printed below into a particular article.
Now up and running is the editor's homesite and the FTW diary. Why don't you bookmark my diary column and check it out regularly? That's where you'll find a lot of blunt stuff about living with disability that's widely and favourably reviewed in all manner of hardcopy newspapers and periodicals from the Chosun Ilbo in Korea to the Lancet, the Kalamazoo Gazette to the Swiss TV Times, the New Zealand Herald to South Africa's Fairlady. Click here or on logo at top of page to jump to Latest Diary Entry (1st April 2000). Check out my mystery page too.
I am as ever desirous of this magazine becoming less lamentably ethnocentric and reflecting a broader range of lifestyles, backgrounds and experiences. Therefore I am currently seeking contributions for the next edition from sources across the globe and very much hope that surfers reading this now as a result of my letter-writing or as a result of fortuitous roaming will wish to add their own voices to "FROM THE WINDOW".
MAG 9 CONTENTS LIST:
GUEST COLUMN
DAVID BLUNKETT
The UK Secretary of State for Education and Employment, who is also responsible for disability rights and discrimination, writes about his personal experience of discrimination and coping with prejudice.
EDITOR'S VIEW
In Mag 1, I described the pain of being so disabled I am "locked-in" and the realisation as a young child that it is a permanent state. In Mag 2, I waxed lyrical upon the elemental joys that buoy me up, and in Mag 3 I wrote about Oxford Envy. In mag 4 and 5, I just got too busy.
In Mag 6 I described in rather summary form my journey earlier in the year around the world - Tanzania, Bangladesh, Australia and New York, prompted by winning a prize for this website.
In Mag 7 I wrote on barriers to equality, which was the topic of my first paid work a couple of months previously, when Scope, one of the UK's biggest disability organisations paid me to speak and take part in a couple of their workshops at their annual national conference.
In Mag 8, I promised to write an essay on fear, but lo! some eagle-eyed avid readers spotted an omission - no essay. I'm plastering it in now.
COLLECTED WRITINGS
RAYMOND BETTS
poems
SHERRI BROWN
on her disabled sister
SASHA CAMACLANG
childhood in the Philippines
KEVIN CHILDS
being a runaway living on the streets of New York
MICHAEL COHEN
school violence
GLEN J DETTON JR
Apple Pies
DEBORAH FINDLEY
growing up in South Africa during the apartheid years
HUNTER JAMES
the Deep South in the 30s
DOUG MORAMARCO
vine poem
KARI ANN OWEN
victims
TONI PAYNE
forest poem
KIRSTI REEVE
on cutting herself
MARGO ROSE
a "little house on the prairie" childhood in Kansas
ANANDA SEN
part 2 of a Bengali childhood
DONNA SKINNER
remembering the children who never grow up
JIM TIFFANY
a sad story
CHERYL MARIE WADE
disability rights and fears: a polemic on euthanasia
KIRBY WRIGHT
summer hols at Granma's ranch in Hawaii
PILFERED AND FILCHED
a hootingly funny net translation from the German of a newspaper article about the Editor.
This website took 1st prize (�1,500!) in the Individual Category on February 18th in Sydney
This "site of the week" award was granted March 19, 1999
"If you visit only one website this year, make it this one."
1st Edition / 2nd Edition / 3rd Edition / 4th Edition / 5th Edition / 6th Edition / 7th Edition / 8th Edition
Editor's Homesite / mystery page / FTW diary
This site was last altered on 17 June 2001, but is checked weekly.
