Twelve months ago, Latvians Online made its debut on the Web. After several months of deadline-pressure work, five people in two hemispheres launched a mostly English-language Web site that we all thought had potential to accomplish something interesting in the world of Latvian media. If nothing else, it would be fun.

Granted, Latvians Online in one sense was not new or different. It was a merger between LatBits, a Web site run by Arnis and Daina Gross in Melbourne, Australia, and SVEIKS.com, run by Todd Rossman and myself. LatBits, established in 1997, began as an e-mail newsletter covering the Latvian presence on the Internet. It eventually became a Web site, too. SVEIKS.com, a news and features service, appeared on the Web in January 1999 and represented a merger of two independent Web sites run by Rossman and me.

But in other ways, Latvians Online was new. It combined elements of the "three C’s" that some Web experts point to as necessary for the success of an Internet business: content, community and commerce. It relied—and continues to increasingly do so—on what some would call a distributed workforce. We have people in Melbourne, Australia; suburban St. Paul, Minn., and Stockholm, Sweden. We have regular reviewers and writers in Wisconsin, London, New York and Rīga. (In fact, I have to admit to having met only some of the folks I work with.) Certainly in the Latvian diaspora, we were doing something not yet seen on the Web.

And Latvians Online also was new because, I believe, we have all gone into this with a certain sense of love and adventure.

Latvians Online, in both philosophical and economic ways, is a labor of love. We haven’t planned to get rich doing this, and so far we are on target. Like many ethnic businesses, our purpose goes deeper than merely trying to generate income. We all care deeply about the Latvian community.

Latvians Online also is an adventure. While all of us have years of experience and skills in various aspects of online media or Latvian community work, we have had to learn much along the way: digital video editing, server side includes, marketing techniques and the gentle art of persuasion are among the technical and social skills we’ve added to our toolkits. We’ve been reminded time and again that Latvians Online is very much part of a worldwide community. We learn quickly when we’ve done a good job, or when we’ve made a mistake. We’ve had people yell at us, we’ve had people laud us. And even among ourselves, relationships have at times been strained.

So much has happened in the past year, both within our little Latvians Online world and outside it, that our first anniversary seems almost a footnote. But I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished so far and look forward to the years ahead to see where we end up.

But for now, I should close. Daina Gross, our managing editor, is probably sitting by her computer in Melbourne, drumming her anxious fingers on the keyboard and wondering if I’ll ever meet a deadline. Not this time, Daina. But once we put this latest update "to bed" (to use an old print journalism expression), I’ll be sure to toast her, Arnis, Gita and Todd for the commitment they have offered during our first year.

Liels, liels paldies!

The early afternoon telephone call from a London-based producer at BBC Radio Five Live came as a surprise. Latvia, once again, was in the news. Would I be willing to be interviewed?

Prince Charles, on a Nov. 8 visit to Rīga, had been slapped in the face by a carnation-wielding young woman from Daugavpils named Aļina, according to news reports. She told journalists that she was protesting Latvia’s aspirations to NATO membership and the British government’s participation in military strikes in Afghanistan.

The producer was searching for someone who could go on the air live and answer some questions about Latvia.

It didn’t make sense to me that a radio show in Britain wanted to talk to someone in the United States about a country that was closer and just as accessible. I volunteered to track down some home telephone numbers of contacts in Latvia. But the producer pointed out that the scheduled time for the interview was to be about 10:30 p.m. London time, half past midnight in Latvia.

So a few hours later I found myself back on the telephone, listening to radio host Richard Evans wind up a discussion about British football. And then he introduced the next topic, the flower power attack on Prince Charles.

As I listened to my name being announced to God knows how many British listeners, I suddenly recalled Latvian President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga’s well-done rapid-fire give-and-take with the host of BBC television’s "HardTalk." The president had stood her ground, looking and sounding as if she’ve done these sorts of interviews a hundred times.

But I’m not used to being asked questions. What if I blunder? I’m a print journalist, not a radio journalist. I’m used to writing, erasing, reworking, crafting, but not to tap dancing on the air. What if I’m asked something really serious? What if I want to back out right now? What if I just hang up the phone…

I was on.

The first question was easy: What kind of place is Latvia? From my earlier discussion with the producer, I knew the BBC was looking for basic facts: small country, Baltic Sea, 2.4 million people, the capital city’s 800th anniversary. And soon we were chatting about the architecture of Rīga and about relations between Latvians and Russians, topics most anyone could learn about by surfing the Web or perusing a few books.

And before I was even warmed up, the interview was over.

The way I figure it, I got five minutes of fame. That means I still have 10 to spare. For now, I have a story to tell my family, colleagues and friends about the day I was on the BBC.

Thanks, Aļina, you’ve made my day.

One of the flight paths from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport goes over my neighborhood. Several times this year, as I’ve watched the jetliners stream north-northeast across the Minnesota sky, I’ve wondered where they are headed. Several times this year, I have been on one of those jets, heading to Amsterdam, to Phoenix, to Washington, to Reykjavik (but not, unfortunately, to Rīga).

Perhaps no more than this year, the jet and its vapor trail have for me symbolized the freedom of travel, the opportunity to experience something new, something wonderful.

But no more. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the sound of the jetliners over my neighborhood—now that they’ve been allowed to take to the skies again—makes me nervous. I’ve caught myself thinking: "Please, don’t let it happen again."

And that’s just one of my fears.

The morning the hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I was on my daily commute to the university where I teach journalism. Shortly after a radio news report announced that the Federal Aviation Administration had grounded all commercial air traffic, I peeked out my car window and watched as a jetliner made a graceful U-turn back to the Twin Cities airport. As more details emerged of what had happened, my initial reaction was clinical, journalistic. By the time I arrived in the parking lot outside my office, I had amassed several pages of hastily scrawled notes. The events of that morning were all we talked about that day in class.

It was only the following evening, channel-surfing through various television news shows, that a rare emotion came over me: Fear. Here in Middle America, there’s not much to fear. But as I watched stories of victims and their families, of confusion about who was being arrested and why, of the growing rhetoric of war, I was afraid. The last time I had this feeling was years ago when my young daughter convinced me to accompany her and a friend on "The Wave," a ride at an amusement park near the Twin Cities. I wasn’t afraid as the craft into which we were strapped slowly rose up an incline, turned and rose again. But as the craft was tipped over the apex, to be sent speeding downward and splashing into a manmade pond, I felt for a brief moment that I had absolutely no control over my destiny.

That’s the fear that came over me as I watched the TV news.

I fear that America—and many of the other nations that have offered political support—is girding its citizens for a war that may well be unlike anything many of us have only seen in the movies or read about in history books. I fear that talk of a coming "clash of civilizations" is just another way of saying "race war"—and that there are those who would use that talk as an excuse to harm their fellow citizens. I fear that, even while we focus on bringing those responsible for the attacks to justice, we will let one more opportunity slip through our fingers to address the injustices of which all nations are guilty. And I fear that I can’t do anything about it.

The morning after the attacks in New York and Washington, I received an e-mail from a relative in Rīga who was concerned about our family’s whereabouts and well-being. When she heard about what had happened in the United States, she wrote, her first impulse was to think that we should join them in Latvia.

Tempting though it is, I fear that’s too easy an answer. Better yet, I’ll spit three times and get back to work. There’s plenty to do.