Sunday Sundries, 24

1. An exciting Saturday night: to Stow-Kent Starbucks (drive-thru), then home to stream the first of the latest episodes of Wallander, just released to Netflix. The only problem? All Swedish--no subtitles. (Did some Netflixian screw up? Or do they just overestimate our polyglottery?)

2. We've been recycling our plastic bags (from the grocery, cleaners, newspapers,etc.) at the recycle center here in town; today, that bin was gone ... ? The replacement said bottles and containers only. Now what?

3. I had another wild dream last night, a dream I was going to write about today. I was really looking forward to it. Didn't take a note last night. And now I can't remember a damn thing about it. (Maybe I'll learn when I get older?)

4. I just remembered!

5. For some reason a group of my former students (from various eras of my life, various schools) approached me about a Super 8 film they'd just made. (These guys--yes, they were all boys--were all about 8th-grade age, even though I taught them in many different decades.) They'd made the film, but they didn't know how to thread the projector.

Well ... I told them that I used to teach filmmaking courses (which I did, back in the 1970s--at Aurora Middle School/Harmon Middle School), and I would love to thread the projector for them. They handed me the beginning feet of the film, and I stuck the end into the projector (which looked like no projector ever), then realized it was probably self-threading. I did something that activated the self-threader, and the film leapt into the projector, and the boys ran out ahead to see ... what? I woke up. Never did know what their film was about. (Yes, this is disappointing, I know.)

I'm pretty sure I know the source of this dream. We've been cleaning out/downsizing, and I have, in one of our closets, a couple of boxes full of footage that kids shot over the years. Back in the 1970s I had a four-week elective on "Film Study" (we looked at old films by Chaplin, Griffith, Keaton, etc.), followed by eight weeks of "Filmmaking." The kids would write scripts, plan and shoot their stories, edited their films. Then we had a public showing of their works for their parents, families, friends. One group (all girls) won a local PBS contest in Cleveland with their film that matched images from Van Gogh works to the popular song "Vincent" by Don McLean. (I see now that someone has done the very same thing on YouTube; I will not look at it.)

So ... what to do with those films?

I also have some file cartons stuffed with the 30+ play scripts and production information about all the 30-some shows I did in Aurora--1966-1997.

What to do with those file cartons?

I also have photo albums full of pictures of kids in rehearsal, in production.

What to do with those albums?

I'd floated the idea that the Aurora Alumni Association could sponsor an Aurora Alumni Archive at the local library--but I don't know where that stands.

I hate to put them out for Waste Management to pick up some Friday morning,

**

And what happened to those filmmaking classes? Well, one of those Back-to-Basics movements swept in like a tsunami. And that was that.

6. I'd not done anything with filmmaking in decades when I had to shoot some video of my colleague Andy Kmetz, who had been chosen for Aurora's Honored Educators Hall of Fame. Andy couldn't go to the ceremonies, but he wanted to express his thanks via video.

I had no idea how to edit digital video and had some real adventures finding an editing program that was simple enough for me to use and understand, yet sophisticated enough to allow me to do some things with titles, fading in and out etc. Before it was all over, I'd spent some $$$, uttered many foul words and expressions, felt Less About Myself as a Person.

I had all been so easy for me back in the Super 8 era: I knew how to cut and splice film, how re-order scenes, insert titles, etc. ... how to thread a projector.