At the end of January I was cleaning out a storage closet and noticed a bin towards the back next to a stack of framed pictures. I wondered what was in it. When I finally pulled it out of its hidden corner and opened it, I found that it was filled with about 3,000 slides from the early sixties up through the nineties of the last century. They were not identified. They were not organized in orderly boxes. The above picture portrays how I found these slides. On top of the slides was a broken slide viewer, also a vintage product. Truly, this was a case of out of sight, out of mind. I had long forgotten these slides in my enthusiasm for pictures and digital photography. At present, I don't have a high end camera. But my iPhone 13 does a fabulous job. As I browsed through the slides, I realized that here was a record (albeit a totally disorganized record) of my life as an undergraduate, seminary student, Peace Corps volunteer in Brazil, missionary in Brazil, France, and Zambia and finally, some parts of my travels as Africa executive for the Disciples and the UCC from 1982 until 2001. Mixed into all of this were plenty of pictures of my family, including parents, grandparents, ex-spouse, children, sister and a number of friends. And then there were numerous slides of places and persons that I simply could not remember. What to do with all these photos? Or should I just leave them in the bin knowing that after I die their next destination would be the dumpster: In the chaos following a death, no one would have time to go over hundreds of obscure, unmarked artifacts of a defunct imaging technology. For a few days I thought about the challenge of migrating these slides into digital format. I decided that I wanted to "save" or "rescue" the slides that were in the process of degradation due to bad retention procedures (saved in plastic sleeves, in a box where there was plenty of dust, in a very hot or very cold corner of a closet). My reason for rescuing the slides was to leave a visual archive of the past decades for my family, especially the grandchildren. Using a flatbed scanner that can accomodate slides, four at a time, I worked daily on the digitization project. Technically, it was easy but sometimes boring. The difficulty was going back down memory lane. As I relived long-ago, near-forgotten experiences, I understood how crucial they were in making me the person I am today. For example, there were images of my grandparents, long dead, who I recalled with gratitude. I saw my now adult children as infants and toddlers and I tried to recall what it felt like to be a new father. I gazed upon the images of past associates or colleagues and regretted how easily I had forgotten them. And, in several cases, I found slides of persons who I simply did not like or who I had mistreated. Each day was an adventure and a bit of an emotional roller coaster. Now the project is finally concluded. I have retained about 1, 200 slides out of the original cache. They have been organized into appropriate folders. Each of my children, my partner, and my sister will have a copy of the archive on a flash drive. So I will be able to give these beloved family members a digital rendering of their own ancestors.
But more important: This digitization project ended up becoming a kind of life review for me. Going through the bin of slides taught me that we are constantly in change and that transience is a part of life. It also reminded me forcefully of how my life is linked with many, many others. I suspect that some readers have troves of slides hiding almost in plain sight. If you are one of these persons, you might consider organizing and digitizing the slides as a way to review the passing years. Even if you are not yet a senior, working with memorabilia to construct a timeline is one way to review your precious life. What about those journals, clippings, saved letters or postcards, photos, newspaper articles? . . . . All of them can be the basis for a life review no matter whether you are 38 or 78 years old. --February 27, 2022
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March 2023
AuthorDan Hoffman is an Indianapolis USA based spiritual director, supervisor of spiritual directors, and workshop/retreat leader. This occasional blog discusses things he is thinking about and wants to share. Comments are always welcome. |