On behalf of production studios, this open letter, "Studio Manifesto," again places emphasis on artists and culture as opposed to corporate recording labels and this is the crucial dimension mission in public discussion about copyright.

All major news outlets say that by this Thursday almost all of Houston will have electricity. I sure hope so. Rick Casey, who used to write for the National Catholic Reporter, writes a column for the Houston Chronicle where he identifies the energy companies as responsible for the power outage being so massive. He writes that after Rita, three years ago, lawmakers and citizens pushed for a revamping of our power grid, but the lobbyists of the power companies squelched the move. Now we have this.

In Houston now, ....we've got plenty of the electrical energy,..human power., molecular, that is holding all of us together.....smiles and hugs.

I write this because it points out how media is now the web or fabri of society and thus it colors the cohesion and coherence of a society, affecting the friendships that are possible and also affecting the ability to love.

My newly-found friend, 35-year old from Slovekia, told me that he married his high-school sweetheart whom he first laid eyes on at the age of 15. He saw her from afar as she boarded a bus and knew instinctively that she was the one love for him. After some investigation, he found out who she was and where she lived.

He showed up at her house, a complete stranger, knocked on her door and when it opened, there she was. (I wonder what would have happened if the parents had answered the door!) He unabashedly told her that he wanted to be her "real," "special" friend, not just a regular friend and that he wanted to start seeing her regularly. She replied that she needed 2 weeks to think about this proposal.

After two weeks, she said yes, and they began seeing each other. They married five years later, he was 20, and now they are celebrating their 15th wedding anniversary. He says that love led the way and that there is never any doubt when that happens, if one is aware. He lives his life believing in romance.
And yet he senses that life in his small town in Slovekia has changed, become more rapid and more complex from that time not so long ago. Would he do now what he did then?

My sense is that Globalization is alive with Romance.
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My niece is managing a hotel that is not (hopefully) where the bayous or lakes will flood us, so Richard and I are going to spend the night there, hoping for the best. How important family is. We've got water and food and each other.

For my newly found friends at Catholic Relief Services Southwest, here's the powerpoint presentation that shows one easy way to reduce the size of images so that they can be emailed more easily or utilized in slide presentations. ImageResizeTutorial.ppsx was written by Alberto Pigola in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Check out this short video, Automated Confession, an example of how the Catholic church can use technology!

Mary Hess included this video in her well-received and insightful presentation at the 6th International Conference on Media, Religion and Culture here in Sao Paulo, "Social Media in Plain English."

Dr. Hess' contrast of the website, "FeAutor," with the website, "GodTube," was a revealing study of worldviews and theologies.

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Mary sent this on about information categories and creation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4CV05HyAbM

I'm reminded of "Five Easy Pieces," the 1970'a movie about alienation, despair and unsuccessful seeking. In the final bleak scene, the main protagonist, played by Jack Nicholson, simply leaves everything behind, including his wallet, his girlfriend and his jacket, and hops on a truck going North. A journey with no baggage at hand, no intentions claimed, no feelings acknowledged. The truck takes Nicholson away from his context into an unknown future, propelled by despair. No hope needed.

Benazir Bhutto's journey of return to Pakistan is exactly the opposite of the American portrait in "Five Easy Pieces" which recounts a soulless journey of escape.

I make this connection also in relation to news media. Just as the character in the movie is unable to understand and name the cause of his alienation, just so the media in the US, and by extension our social discourse, is unable to analyze and explain the causes that promote the climate for hatred, murder and suicide. The underlying causes of hatred and murder in Pakistan are to be found also in middle America and in every sector of US society and they have to do with alienation. But we also have the internal resources to deal with the despair of alienation. We can claim our immediate context, respect our immediate relationships even when those relationships ask that we extend our boundaries of understanding.

The journalists who work in global corporate-controlled media are unable to name the causes so they use simplistic explanations that blame extremists who hate the USA. The conclusion follows that the extremists and their violence in Pakistan is a threat to us in the USA.

The threat to us is not from Pakistan, although it is related to Pakistan. The threat to us is within ourselves, what we talk about and what we leave unsaid. It is a lack of hope that our immediate context is the ground in which a better future will grow. Could this be the reason our media spend hardly any time analyzing our own context as a cause of violence?

Watching the news today, I can see hope in the agonizing suffering, the social and violent convulsions in Pakistan. By contrast, the commentary by journalists on network television and our public discourse remind me of Nicholson hopping on a truck to just get away, not realizing that he is taking his unnamed alienation with him. I think I can tell when hope has died.

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