This is a letter from December 25th 2001. A new introduction for the new CROWN www.croatia.org coming soon.


Dear All,

Good bad or indifferent here we come.
This is an unedited letter from an editor. Stream of consciousness.

When the spaceships will make daily flights between galaxies, I want this few gigabytes to be relevant at that time. I want to create something that is solid and passionate as well as competitive in the field of Information Technology. We are about to develop our own existence in words, music and pictures. This will be the story about our ancestors and our future grandchildren. I will support all of you especially people who found and developed their own talent. CROWN is a nonconformist website and it will take a long time to accomplish the first phase of what I have envisioned. I won't talk about deep future, but I know that TV and Computers will be one of the same.

At this moment of the Croatian history, we have responsibility to do something. Play ball and not just watch from the stands. It is OK to hurt a little bit, sometimes, but it feels great to be on the court as a part of the wining game. For thirteen centuries, others wrote our own history. We can see repercussions in just the last few decades. I, who was born well after 1945, am answering the questions that our previous generations didn't have guts to do. It was difficult for sure, but majority of the people choose to be silent in the face of injustice. Now is the time to write our own history and the future as fair and factual as possible and share it on the world stage.

I want to create a website that will connect second and third generations of Croatians around the world, who are proud to be who they are, but didn't know where to turn. Well, now you will have home and place to find what interests you. From poetry to politics. From cuisine to church. From film to philanthropy. From science to unseen. Alone, I am not enough. But we as a team can accomplish this. I envisioned Croatian World Net to become a professional site. It will start the same way I started this net almost three years ago on a volunteer basis, but soon, I do expect to be more and more professional. Quality of the people who are on CROWN list is amazing. So far CROWN has successfully attracted a high profile audience around the world. Few people are very active and many are passive, but patience is my virtue. This is work in progress. We want to be part of culture and politics of meaning and compassion. Many projects with very good intentions were not fruitful, because of who we are. 95% of the human population is still not competent in their own chosen profession. Most of the people are not capable of making a phone call on time. My focus will be on you who can.

There is no perfect moment to start a family, there is no perfect moment to build a home. There is only the moment when we decide to do it or have an excuse for not doing it. This is the moment I have decided to start a website after all this years of struggle in everything. From financing to acceptance. From criticism to abundance of praise beyond my wildest imagination. On a technical side, our webmaster for now will be Eugen Lezaja. Also a Croatian, living in New Jersey. A friend of mine and a brilliant mind in its own class. I will accept all of your inputs, financing proposals (whoever is seriously interested, we will send them our business plan), donations, ideas and letters to be published as it was so far. The difference will be that this one will be permanent. I have received more then 500 emails a day, several times. For the volume that I envisioned and that will be 15,000 subscriptions in 3-5 years, we will need 2-3 people, just to open the emails. You will receive one letter per week with the links to the website. Additionally, we will send you approximately one letter every two weeks, for special projects. When someone writes about us in The New York Times good or bad, but important,...we have to react and proactively act. They have to know that we exist, that we read, that we write and that we are WILLING.

As I mentioned the spaceships, well... that is not the future. Future is now. Information is flying all over the space and we better be ready to spread the wings. Many discussions where made on the closed, and not so closed, circle of e-mail chains. I never responded to that, because it is simply, unless productive, most of the time, counterproductive. I expect Marko Puljic to be part of this team regardless whether Global Croatia goes or not. Marko, Hilda, Davor, Brian, John, Rukav and few others (thank you Drazen from Korcula for your graphics) are very active and productive in creating what needs to be done for this kind of work. I will support all of your efforts too, whether you go your own way or just a parallel path. And I will accept your, so far generous and talented, help.

Through my traveling around the globe, with my music, I stumbled upon many interesting characters. These people, although many of them not Croatian, will also be interested to find out about our culture and country as a whole. Deghettoisation (This is my word).I waited for too long to hear something from our Croatian government and finally I took this humongous task upon you and me. As they say "we are the government" and if we do not do it ... nobody will.

There is not a perfect moment to start a letter like this as well as not a perfect moment to finish it. One rule. Decency. Officially we plan to launch the website on December 31st, 11:59 PM, 2001. New York time.

This was an unedited letter from an editor. Stream of consciousness.
Good bad or indifferent here we come.

Svako dobro. All the best,

Nenad Bach
founder and
Editor in Chief
CROWN - Croatian World Net / Hrvatska Svjetska Mreza

distributed by CROWN (Croatian World Net) - CroWorldNet@aol.com
soon to be:
www.CroatianWorld.net
www.CroatianWorld.com