MediaStorm Website Publishes Audio, Video and Images

Media Storm (www.mediastorm.org) is an excellent site that allows talented writers, photographers, and videographers to share their work. This is a high quality site that displays quality and quite interesting work.

When this article was written, January 7th, 2006, Media Storm offered six compelling stories. They were:
> Never Coming Home
> Heaven, Earth, Tequila
> Friends For Life
> New York Reacts
> Close Up, and
> 1776

Never Coming Home
"Never Coming Home" is a seven minute presentation by Zac Barr, Andrew Lichtenstein, and Tim Klimowicz. This project is a set of interviews with families that have lost loved ones in Iraq. The story is told with photographs and the voices of the families.

This is a nice presentation. Too often, people talk about the war in political or macho terms, but forget that there are families, friends, and lovers for each soldier killed in Iraq.

Heaven, Earth, Tequila
"Heaven, Earth, Tequila" is a 3 ½ minute photo documentary about the people and culture of the Mexican state, Jalisco. The story is told through the beautiful black and white, monochrome, and color photographs of Douglas Menuez. The photographs are accompanied by some beautiful guitar music.

Friends for Life
Growing old is natural. As a writer and a photographer I find this process quite interesting. I see history in everyone. Within each person is a story that contains love, sadness, accomplishments, and failures.

Everyone deals with growing old. We help our parents and relatives as they grow older. Some enjoy the golden years with great health while others suffer though illness.

"Friends for Life" tells the story of Arden Peters, 90, and Warren De Witt, 76. This vignette about growing old is part of the one-hour film "Aging in America: The Years Ahead" by Ed Kashi and Julie Winokun.

This 8 ½ minute story is told through photographs, video, and audio. It is a heart-warming story about a friendship created from a common daily event - having breakfast at WalMart.