Life in the Past
July 22, 2011
Been wanting forever to convert countless hours of video tape to digital files and finally, FINALLY did that. This afternoon, our video professional friend (that would be Phil) delivered a hard drive with something like 240 gigs of stuff on it. I’ve spent the last few hours watching (and laughing, crying, shaking my head, etc.) a small sample. I hadn’t seen moving images of the young Peter since the young Peter was standing right in front of me..singing and performing filmable antics before my eyes, in real time, in the flesh.
I, the mom, was duly entertained and enchanted… then.. and now, today, watching those videos.
That loud sigh you hear is me, relieved we’d not waited too long; so incredibly relieved our videos had not degraded. I’m ecstatic beyond words that we now have mountains of memories. The flip side of that, of course, is that we now have mountains of memories… and need to do something with them. And I’ll get right on it, soon as I figure out what to do with the 28,065 photos we have… yeah, that’s a real number.
Truth is, I’m close to a manageable solution for the photos. I think it’s going to be photo books, organized around some kind of theme (one for each of Peter’s years of life? Birthday celebrations? Baseball? Annual Yosemite trips? Who knows.. but something.. a lot of somethings). My friend Bev, the queen of digital documentation, has agreed to share her strategies and methods. I am so excited and grateful to have a path. We also have some fancy dan video editing software we’ll use for all these video files… we’ll ruthlessly edit them down to something watchable.. which I think, in fact, will be Jim’s project. Such a relief.
The ease with which we can now record and digitally document our lives is astonishing, and finding reasonable ways to memorialize family life has been challenging, if overwhelming. The thing is, for kids nowadays, it’s just not as magical (or even meaningful) as it was for us growing up. Peter is usually fairly disinterested in the pictures. And today I learned he was only marginally interested in the videos. Sigh.
Still, I feel compelled to create a record. A sweet story of a sweet life. My gift to him, to us.
I just don’t want to be a slave to these projects… there really is no end to what a compulsive documenter can document. My goal, however, will be to keep it real and keep it sane, so I can keep my focus on life in the present.
We’ll see how that goes.
Life of Wry 
July 23, 2011 at 9:01 am
I need to do that too with our old VHS family videos. I used to scrapbook all our photos, but once we got a digital camera, everything just go uploaded onto the computer and there it sits. I did have a couple of photo books made on Shutterfly, but need to do a lot more. And then I wonder, like you, how important is it? Are we the only ones who care? I rarely look at old photos of myself as a child. And like Peter, my kids aren’t really interested in seeing photos or videos of themselves from the past either. Maybe for a minute, then they are bored. Maybe the parents are the only ones who care. And then it just makes me sad! Maybe it is best to have the memories in our heads? Ugh.
July 25, 2011 at 8:00 am
Let me know when you want to get together to see books. I, too, don’t know if there is any purpose or value in it, but I like to think that after I’m gone SOMEONE will care. In the meantime *I* care and that makes it worthwhile to ME!
July 25, 2011 at 2:12 pm
I will! I want to first finish my trip blog (that will take another few weeks, since there’s a vacation or two coming up), then I will turn my attention to photos. I can’t wait to see what you’ve done.