Moving pictures

My husband has taken on the project of transferring old home movies into digital video. We’ve had
some good laughs, and refreshed memories, over the old films. We’ve also taken away a few tips for those who seek to preserve today’s occasions for future memories.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re using a digital camera, smartphone, or other type of technology, as these apply to style and content:

1. Forget the food. There may be a sentimental reason to feature a shot of a birthday cake or holiday spread, but don’t bother featuring food in your movie. We’d much rather see grandma’s smile or Aunt Sylvia’s wave than what was served at the wedding.
   
2. Move in for the close-up. Long shots are good for establishing a scene, but then move in. The relatives in your movies won’t be around forever, or won’t look so fresh and young after several decades, so treat your audience with big close-ups that reveal how sis and baby brother looked at that moment. And, crucially important, most small cameras can’t capture good audio from a distance. If you want to be able to understand what they’re saying, it’s got to be shot from seven feet or closer.
   
3. It’s a “moving” picture, so don’t ask people to stand still. Let’s see how mom danced, the tangle of little kids playing soccer, or the family rocking in chairs on the porch. Don’t stage a group shot, as you would with a still camera.
   
4. Slow down. Camera movement is great as you pan around the room or field, but slow and steady will help your viewing audience keep their lunch. Moving too fast or herky-jerky while filming can have a nauseating effect on viewers.
   
5. Be sneaky when necessary. Some relatives hide when the camera comes out. Back in the day, it was hard to avoid knowing when the camera was on, what with bright movie lights and loud camera mechanisms. Now it’s easier to capture the parents before they wave you off.
   
6. Record the fun. What we’ve found is the wish to see relatives look natural and at ease with one another. But, having said that, there’s nothing like the unguarded joy of siblings or friends having a good time. It might just be a hot day with a garden hose, or a sneak snowball attack on your sister. Make the camera inconspicuous (point 5 above), stake out a good spot to start, and don’t hesitate to move around to get the best angles.
   
   
   
7. Record and archive in highest quality possible. For the first time in the history of motion imagery, many of us have cameras in our pockets that could, in the right hands, shoot pieces of a Hollywood movie. The first rule is to shoot at the highest resolution and quality available on your device. And learn how to transfer the raw footage to your computer for long-term storage. Don’t count on saving the clips you loaded up to social media, because that footage is usually highly compressed in the process, with great loss of quality. Yes, you’ll probably want to learn how to do some basic editing in iMovie or Premiere, throwing out the junk, and always saving at the highest quality once you’re done. You will end up investing in external storage drives, which are relatively cheap and plentiful, but archiving carefully is key to future generations being able to enjoy what was going on way back…now.

It’s great to look back through photo albums, in hard copy or digital, but in 30 years or so there will be nothing like seeing Mom making pasta or your brother going to the prom with his future wife.

Flying cats and parallel paths

As my parents entered their ninth decade, they decided to adopt two kittens. The year was 2008. Since then, those two scrappy cats have occupied dedicated space in my head. My brother would tease me saying, “You know what I call them? YOURS!”

I knew at some point, some day, I would be involved in their lives. That time came last week, when my brother and I flew from Florida with the cats and my widowed mother, as she relocated back to New Jersey.

For months I had been anticipating, planning for, and dreading this flight. I had called dibs on doing everything to help with the move except for being on the actual flight with the cats. I enlisted my husband to be my stand-in cat-flying companion. But when push came to shove, I knew I had to put on my big-girl pants, stop whining, and get on that plane.

The only traveling I had done with cats was to bring mine to the veterinarian. Even though these were short car trips, the yowling was constant and insistent. I couldn’t imagine a two-hour flight with noisy felines under the seats in front of us, and I was anxious about the potential side effects of sedating the cats.

The only thing to do was to plow ahead. The day began early, before dawn, because no one could sleep. My brother and I wrangled one cat and then the other into the bathroom to pill, harness, and secure in carriers. My mother sat quietly in the living room, and we put the first cat-filled carrier on her lap. By the time we completed the second one, the first cat was already in mid-escape. We caught him just in time, and secured all the locks.

We were well prepared for airport security, with leashes at the ready, so we could remove the cats from carriers to put them (the carriers, not the cats) through the X-ray scanner. Then we settled at our gate to await boarding. There was a moment, pre-boarding, when we noticed a bad smell emanating from one of the carriers. So my brother and I locked ourselves in the companion bathroom to change out the pet pee pad we were using as a liner. I don’t know what was stranger, changing out a cat pee pad or kneeling on the bathroom floor in an airport with my brother.

The flight itself was a non-event, except for some soft meowing and half-hearted clawing at the carrier. Between the crying babies and a barking puppy on the plane, the two cats were model travelers.

The next day, I began the task of notifying people of my mother’s change of address. One of the first emails was to her financial advisor, who immediately emailed back with a near-identical story.

While we were flying from Florida to New Jersey, he was flying his mother and her cat from Denver to California. Halfway through the flight, her cat figured out how to open the carrier and began climbing out. “Clearly the cat isn’t gonna run away, we are on an airplane for goodness sake….but my mom goes into full panic mode. Pretzels are flying off the tray, her purse dumps out, and basically hilarity ensues.” Fortunately, the guy in the next seat was a cat owner and helped retrieve the cat, which he then locked into the carrier using his keyring.

Mission completed for both flights, both sets of cats, and both moms (and their kids).

For me there was the added bonus of sharing what I thought was a rare experience with an insider of my mother’s affairs. As he wrote after we both related our stories: “Best….email…chain…ever!!”

The only thing better is having this adventure well behind me.

Give and you will receive (whether you want it or not)

My mother saved everything and now wants to send it all back

The idea occurred to me several years ago, when shopping for my parent’s anniversary gift. I had no idea what to buy a couple who needed nothing, had everything, and never agreed on anything.

I decide to buy something I liked for myself, figuring I would probably end up with it someday. I didn’t know how prescient that thought would be.

Now that my widowed mother is moving across many state lines into a retirement community, everything I’ve ever given her is coming back to me. Or it would if she had her way. I’ve been fighting off the return flow of goods as best I can, but sometimes it’s easier to take whatever is offered and drive to the nearest Goodwill Donation Center.

Some of my handmade projects should never have survived this long, and yet my mother hesitates to throw them away. Nobody needs a lopsided clay pitcher that proved pottery class wasn't for me. Likewise the carved plaster turtle that looked more like a moving truck.

My mother saved everything that came from the hands of her children, whether bought, crafted, drawn, or published.

I spent many phone calls trying to convince my mother she could get rid of a career’s worth of my writing samples. I had my own copies of the annual reports, magazines, brochures, newsletters and newspaper clippings. It took some doing, but she finally agreed to recycle them. The paper, if not the content, was worth something to someone.

Some arguments have been harder to make than others. In the 1980s, I was hooked on Frostline kits for making down-filled vests and jackets. They came with pre-cut fabric, pre-measured packets of down, all the notions and tools, and easy instructions. I must have made a dozen of them, including a navy jacket for my dad. He wore it for years and then moved to tropical Florida. That was 25 years ago, and he passed away in 2014. The jacket, however, remains, and my mother wants me to take it back.

Lately, my mother has been getting sneaky about returns, mailing me packets of memorabilia. The current batch had postcards and newspaper clippings she kept by her sewing machine. She couldn’t bring herself to throw them away, but I’m not as sentimental.

Sure I enjoyed rereading the 2005 postcard I wrote while sitting in Monet’s garden in Giverny. As for the 1998 newspaper clipping, I barely recognize the corporate me, sitting in my office at Hercules, featured in a round-up article on brief cases. And the sports column I wrote in 1991 is not only relevant but more appropriate today, with the title, “If we run for fun, why does it hurt so much?”

Maybe that’s the whole point of returning gifts and giveaways. It brings back memories, allowing you to mark time gone by. I admit it’s fun to see these archaeological items from my past, but nothing is slowing me down from a trip to the recycling bins.

Living on the sun

As summer winds down, I look forward to cooler days ahead. And not just in a “wouldn’t it be nice” way. I am seriously craving a cooler environment. I used to have a greater tolerance for hot weather. Now, I just melt. I get slow and sleepy. Cranky. And good hair days are few and far between.

My frequent travels to Florida to visit family don’t help. Snowbirds – people who migrate to Florida during the cold winter months back home – actually get some wonderfully livable weather. Me? Too many August trips have tipped the balance. All I seem to get is intense heat, which brings intense storms, followed by more intense heat.

The way I see it, the Florida summer is like living on the sun. I realize I might have a different perception if I were lying on the beach sipping margaritas. Instead, I’m usually doing work around the house or running errands.

Too many times I’ve left my water bottle in the car while dashing into the grocery store. What I return to is boiling water fit for a tea bag. By the time the car air conditioning gets up to speed, I’m back in the garage. I rarely get a chance to blast the cold air anyway, because I’m usually driving with my mother. With her thinned Florida blood, she starts shivering at 75 degrees.

Summers in the Philadelphia area can be scorchers, too, but at least I can count on changing seasons to bring relief. When I’m prepared to sweat – while running, practicing yoga, or exercising in some other way – heat is a bothersome but short-term discomfort. It’s when I’m dressed for some occasion, or fresh from a shower, that I pine for air conditioning.

I’ve been to Arizona, where the lie of dry heat being easier to handle is exposed. Hot is hot, whether dry or humid. There may be less frizz to hairstyles, but it can still feel like standing in a giant oven.

When the temperatures hit the 90s, I become the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. I look green, and I frequently cry, “I’m melting, melting.”

In Florida, I just get condescending looks because this is exactly the weather that attracts vacationers and retirees. The locals say you get used to the heat. The experts say it takes about two weeks to acclimatize to hot weather. I say, on the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.