What I Inherited From My Father

Me and 3 of my 4 beautiful daughters:  The one in blue is our first child, in red is our second, and in green is their baby sister, daughter # 4 (they were married with children of their own when #4 was born).  Daughter # 3 was missing in action that day, off climbing a mountain in Colorado.

Daughter # 3

I have been in a deep nostalgic state for the last couple of months.  Recently I had all of our old home movies, from 1964 - 1976, transferred to a DVD.  I am most certainly my father's child, not that there was ever any doubt about that; I got my looks from him (it took me forever to adjust to having his Italian nose),  my values from him, and my love of documenting the lives of my family with a movie camera from him.  I used Walgreen's to do my VHS to DVD transfer but I will not use them again and would not recommend them.  Instead, I will go to Best Buy and invest in my own equipment.  I have "tons" of VHS tapes, from 1974 to the present, including a 30 day North American rail tour I took with my youngest child and her best friend in order to show them there was more to life than what they were experiencing in our dinky little town.  We took the rail tour when they were 16 years old, today they are 30 with families of their own.  So, all of my treasure trove has to be transferred and edited, and I refuse to work within the limits that outside parties put on my movies and my creative vision.  Even Windows Movie Maker, which was once so user friendly,  has found a way to limit me and trip me up.

At any rate, the following two videos are the first ever taken of my own family, and. in spite of their imperfections and abrupt endings, they are precious beyond value to me. They feature daughters 1, 2, and 3. 

Each of these, my three babies - Sinead O'Conner

So much love that I cannot hide - John Prine

Anecdote:  Thanks to my Technical Assistant - my 11 yr old grandson, a major obstacle has been removed from my path.  This kid has had a computer since he was 3 yrs old.  He discovered that after we copied the disc to my desktop, the video segments somehow acquired a faulty extension.   The  extension had to be changed from VOB to AVI.  He did this within minutes after I told him I was having a bad day and couldn't find a way to edit the videos on the DVD.  Technical Assistant?  Who am I kidding.  He is my superior in all things technical - time to give him a promotion.  He will now be known as my Director of Technology.  It's in his blood, he inherited his genius from his father who is Technical Director for a local major non-profit.  Ah, life is good when you have live in tech support.  I'm still going to get my own equipment though.  With the amount of work I have ahead of me, it will save me the expense of paying an outside source to do the transfer work.  My Technical Director agrees: "that would be the best way to go"

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