I'm not really into games - especially electronic ones. However, a game with Gitmo started to sound not so bad -- I thought it might help people become aware of the horrors there and help us do something about human rights violations or something. I especially became more willing to give online rooms a chance when I read in _Infinite Mind_ that a Saudi woman and a Canadian kid were having a conversation about depression and that the online experience allowed the woman and others to talk about things more freely and that Lichtenstein noted "that’s more real than any other virtual experience."

That's how miwa Caeran was born -- or would she be reborn since it's on Second Life? Either way, I'm stuck a few inches from where miwa was born because of technical difficulties.

I' still worried that as society plays in virtual reality will not pay enough attention to "real world" issues and civil liberties will be destroyed right under our noses. I keep thinking about the comments in the documentary "Unconstitutional" that the USA PATRIOT Act was not the legislation unanimously agreed upon and was printed at 3 a.m. and voted on at 11 a.m. Who had time to read it? But then I wonder how many people are on Second Life at 3 a.m.? If we divided up the hundreds of pages of the Act, would there be enough people to read it? And discuss it? And help guide the decision for the legislators' vote at 11 a.m.?

Many years ago I took an old fashioned storytelling class in an Early Childhood Education class. I decided to tell the story of a girl who died of the "atom bomb disease". Someday I'd also like to tell the story of children in the Japanese internment camps and the story of children whose parents were detained after 9/11 or who were forced to register, based on their country of origin. Hopefully games can tell stories as well so we as a society don't keep making stupid mistakes that cost lives. Here's a link to my version of Sadako and the Thousand Cranes http://wserver.scc.losrios.edu/~mcgratm/movie5.html (warning: this was my one and only class and I'm not a good story teller -- yet!).