Some ten years ago, there were a couple of great TV specials I enjoyed, but I never got to see the endings. (We were going out to have dinner with friends, or we had to pick up someone at the airport - and left before the programs were over.) I don't watch a whole lot of TV, but I really wanted to see the whole of these two broadcasts.

Both documentaries were on PBS (Public Broadcasting Service), and both were biographical. One was about Hergé, a Belgian cartoonist, the creator of the very popular, occasionally controversial, Tintin stories. The program was not just about Hergé's life and work (the evolution of the Tintin adventures was fascinating), but it was also about the times. In 1940, Europe was rolling into World War II, and though newspapers continued to carry Tintin, once Germany occupied Belgium, Hergé lost his creative liberty and was directed to reflect the contemporary Nazi spin in creating his stories until the war was past.

The other program was on 'Pistol Pete' Maravich, the 1960s Louisiana State University basketball player. The program contained film from his young adulthood, not only displaying his stellar game performances, but showing him at play, going to a carnival, for example, and fascinating the crowds by winning all the prizes making impossible shots with his back to the goal. He died at a relatively young age, 40, but not before making a big mark in basketball history.

As long as I have TV on the brain, one other thing has been popping up, I believe from the show 'The Lone Ranger'. This masked rider was usually accompanied by his friend, a Native American Indian named Tonto. There were occasional references to the Great Manitou. I looked up Manitou this week, and found a description in Wikipedia that I'll paraphrase here: The Algonquin word Manitou refers to the interconnection and balance within nature and life, similar to the East Asian concept of qi. This spirit is seen as a person as well as a concept. Everything has its own manitou— every plant, every stone and, since their invention, even machines - and they are all interwoven. Unlike some understandings of God, Manitou is more akin to one part of the body interacting with another, both the spirit of every individual thing, and the collective Great Spirit (known as Gitche Manitou).