pennsylvania

Autumn in York, 1985

Posted by meraki

Selfishly I loved this video a lot, it had a lot of baba, yiayia and pappou with me and D when we were super little and it’s all very lovely. Especially baba bouncing me on his shoulders, walking D home from school (? not sure how that worked, we weren’t living there were we?), and playing with leaves in the park with Yiayia.

Also, lots of footage of just me, which I wasn’t expecting! It was kind of awesome, thanks for that mom πŸ™‚ I only wish we saw more of you in front of the camera, but I’m glad for the few moments where we did see you.

My baptism – 1984

Posted by meraki

It’s always a little odd editing video for something you know you attended but can’t remember. It’s me in this video, gettin’ baptized an’ all, but I was way too little to remember it. Very weird cognitive dissonance thinking it’s some other little scamp all grumpy and crying in the font, though I recognize her as me.

I got a lot of nice words from family about the last video I uploaded. I think we all loved seeing so much happiness in such a beautiful moment in life in that last one. It was great seeing Yiayia knitting and her and Pappou smiling with the grandbabies, back in the Juniper Street house no less. I have at least one more film reel converted to VHS already on my computer that I can upload soon, I hope to get to that upon my return from a business trip this week. And I think I may be running up against the end of film reels on VHS that my parents have at hand. (It may be time to start asking around other family members for theirs, if they’d like to contribute…)

On less happy news, it seems the key piece of hardware that I’ve been using to convert VHS tapes to digital has gone all primadonna and refuses to work. I have no idea why. I’ve had it about a year now and have used it maybe half a dozen times in total. I’m a little afraid to think that it might already have bit the dust after such little use, but all other measures I’ve taken to troubleshoot it are pointing to that conclusion. As it’s not a cheap device to replace, I really hope I can get it running again, though I’m mainly just annoyed that something I’ve barely used has already started getting very temperamental. πŸ™ I’ve done nothing to change my set up or anything, so this is completely out of the blue and very, very aggravating.

York to JFK Airport, 1968

Posted by meraki

I love this video – it was definitely a bit of ephemera, I don’t think it was meant to be a big deal, but I love seeing everyone packing up the car and getting ready for a big trip. Plus the shots out the car window and of even mundane things like the JFK parking lot — back then, no big deal — are really neat to look at these years later.

America – York, PA and JFK airport – 1968 from Meraki Mou on Vimeo.

Some great ephemera on this home video of America in the late 60s. (I believe this is 1968)

The family packing up the car in York, PA and driving to JFK airport in NYC. I loved the cars on the highway — there wasn't a lot of traffic!

You can tell Pappou did a lot of the filming here because there are soooooo many jump cuts. Who knew he was so influenced by Godard?

What’s also amazing to me (as a Millenial, I guess) is how nicely everyone was dressed for a long trip! I can’t even imagine a trans-Atlantic flight now in a nice dress and Mary Jane shoes.

Pascha 1968

Posted by meraki

This video was spliced right in the middle of a film of the family in Greece (oh, Pappou and his splicing!)
I am going to guess this was in 1968, though it’d be great to find out for sure — anyone remember when this was?

Pascha (Greek Easter) 1968 from Meraki Mou on Vimeo.

This clip was right smack-dab in the middle of the film of the family in Greece. Before this clip is everyone wandering around Athens and the village, and immediately after is Theia Anna's wedding. I'm pretty sure this video was a bit back in time, not sure if it's 1968 but it is likely around then.

It's definitely Greek Easter though. Those red candles and red eggs are a giveaway!

It’s possible that after the Easter meal the video takes place somewhere else (or is spliced in from another event), but I am not sure. I could use a second opinion πŸ™‚

There was actually audio on these and the next few files — not the original audio from the events of course, but added-in music by the film-to-VHS company in York that did the first transfer. It’s pretty hokey stuff, like random jazz meant to give these videos an “old-timey” feel. I didn’t think anyone would be all that attached to the music so I removed it from this video and all the rest.

Also I just bought a Vimeo Plus account, which means I can upload more videos more quickly and you can view them in high definition. As always, all these videos are downloadable — you can save them to your computer! Drop me a line if you need help doing this.

SOOC: Tree climbers

Posted by meraki

Three of my cousins and my pappou George climbing a tree in my grandparents’ backyard in their former house in York, PA.

Tree climbers – some color work – highly compressed from Meraki Mou on Vimeo.

This one’s so bad SOOC that I super-compressed the video so it doesn’t eat up my upload quota!

Might not be much I can do for this, but I’m going to try. When I’ve tried to do some corrections, the film quality was so degraded that a lot of the color information is simply gone. Fingers crossed I can fix this up a little more.

What I love about this clip is that it was randomly spliced onto the end of my parents’ wedding reel. According to my mom, pappou George really liked to splice, even if it didn’t make a whole lot of contextual sense.

For me, this is like a little easter egg of footage at the end of my parents’ wedding footage. Completely unexpected but really awesome, especially since these three kids in the film now are grown and have kids of their own (or on the way).