In 2007, when I was still engaged with US Esperanto movement, I decided that what it needed was a tabloid newspaper to share fantastical stories about Esperanto personalities and events. I persuaded a couple of people to help (mostly Philip Brewer and Robert Read) and we produced a one-off newsletter — printed appropriately on tabloid paper — to hand out at the Landa Kongreso in Tijuana. We did it a few more times — in 2009 and 2013. I don’t know that it ever gave anyone more than a chuckle. But we had fun doing it.

I called it Oni Diras Nun! (or ODN for short.) This translates roughly as “one is saying now” but an onidiro is a rumor, so it has a tongue-in-cheek meaning more like “current rumors”. I hacked together a logo that shows the face of a prominent Esperanto journalist speaking into the ear of Zamenhof (the creator of Esperanto).

I hacked together a website for it. Eventually, however, the website quit working. Recently, I saw something that reminded me of it (an artist, Jason Chou is photoshopping Paddington Bear into everything imaginable. In ODN, I photoshopped a picture of a friend into a whole variety of unlikely places.) So I decided to take a few minutes to at least post a page that recovered the links to the PDFs of the issues — which never really left the Internet. So, for everyone (Anyone? Anyone?) who’s interested, here is OniDirasNun!

Highlights include:

• The face of Zamenhof on toasted bread — but unfortunately the face of Felix Zamenhof, which limited its potential value.
• The presidents of Esperanto associations who form a committee to consider the possibility of doing something.
• A local Esperanto group success story from Champaign, Illinois.
• An article about a memorial toilet seat where a local Esperanto group has met.
• “Are Language Rats Human Rats?” (In Esperanto the words for “rats” and “rights” look similar).
• The largest Esperanto library that you can never visit (the NSA’s archive of intercepted communications.)
• Källë Kniivilä Worldwide Journalist (pictures showing an Esperanto journalist photoshopped into various fantastical locales).

We did have one more issue planned that was going to include La Ligo de Esperantaj Senmortuloj — an imaginary league of immortal Esperantists who had gone by various names over the century of Esperanto’s existence. But I got busy and my enthusiasm for Esperanto waned, so that issue never saw the light of day.