The Tides of March...

...have pulled me home, from literally half a world away in India the last week of February.

It was a whirlwind, and my travel journal and note pad are full of scribbled impressions and thoughts and facts recorded. And my cell phone and camera have video and still photos to go with some of the writing.

I add this disclaimer. I visited only Chennai, formerly Madras, on the southeastern coast. What I saw and experienced was overwhelming, but I know it was only a tiny glimpse of civilizations and cultures much older than mine, in a democracy much younger. So my perspectives and conclusions are limited by my journalistic training and senses. No more could I fully understand and comprehend the vastness of India's population and history and geography from this visit than an Indian visiting Oklahoma City could understand and comprehend  the vastness of America's geography and history and much smaller population.

But still, impressions of small realities hint at larger truths and realities, just as impressionistic painting hints at them.

For the record, I went there, thanks to UCO and the College of Liberal Arts, to attend an International Symposium on Globalization in Media and Information Technology at SRM University. I was the guest of the journalism and mass communication department faculty and students, and presented part of my paper--The Effects of Information Technology on Newspapers in a Small State in the U.S.A." and chaired a panel on "The effects of social media, twitter and whatnot." I was one of about 10 faculty members and media professionals involved--from India, London, Singapore and the U.S., and we had from about 150-800 students in the audience in the two day-event.

I learned much technologically and about media in other countries, but more from the people and the experience.

Those impressions, like dabs of color in a Monet painting, will follow in pages of my "India journal."