Picture Hope
When I was a child, I had a "pen friend". This was back in the day, before email and PCs were even invented, and if you wanted to communicate across the globe you had to write letters. My school connected up with a school in the Middle East and I was given the adress of Justine. Justine and I wrote to each other every three or four weeks for about five years. We never met in real life, and once we'd grown up we lost touch.
I started blogging six years ago because I like to write, and blogging has, in some ways, changed my work in the form of writing contracts that have come my way. But one of the results of blogging that I hadn't forseen was the handful of people who, through the comments section, have become the 21st century equivalent of pen-friends – people who I know a lot about, write to regularly (through email) talk to on the phone, and in some cases have now met in real life. One that I haven't yet met for real (although we have promised each other a weekend in New York one day) is the lovely artist Jen Lemen. Jen is always full of creative and world-changing ideas. Her messages hang on my fridge and on my study wall, reminding me to write, to sing, and to love.
Jen's latest idea is completely fabulous, inspired in part by her recent trip to Rwanda, but to get it off the ground she needs people who believe in her idea to vote for her. You can read about it here. Go take a look, and if you like it, then join me and vote for Jen and the Shutter sisters before April 3rd.
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author musician theologian
Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
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To me the question is do we want corporations (which own most songs, films, and other copyrighted works, except books) to continue to benefit from ownership. I don’t see the social benefit of that. I do see some benefit of wide distribution in the public domain.