It seems we've only just begun the new millennium and we're already at 2011. Time flies whether I'm having fun or not and as the calendar pages fill up and are ready to be discarded I realize how little time there seems to be and how busy we have become.
At year's end I always look back to see what's been accomplished and I look forward to another year. Our small community is nothing like a sleepy little town, except over holidays when community members scramble to fill the days with sun or snow or other adventures.
In a year there are many moments of pride, opportunities for new experiences, students who graduate and leave the community to reach out for their goals, dear people who take their last breaths and new children born full of promise and endless wonderful possibilities. Over the years I've documented many moments and hours and, as time has passed, digital imagining has become the norm, I am surrounded by more and more people sporting tiny handheld cameras, video recorders and cell phones capable of recording.
While at my childhood Christmas concerts there were memories made and we may have had a faded blue ink Gestetner copy of a program with the names of my schoolmates, my own children and their friends won't have to remember their childhood as it has been recorded. It seems more people watched the productions through their tiny screens than were actually looking at the stage this year.
This Christmas my sister presented us with a disc copy of 1,300 scanned slides my father had taken. When he would call us into the family room to watch a few dozen it seemed as if there were so many pictures in the boxes of slide carousels.
My sister's gift was a welcome glimpse into the mind of my father and the things he had loved in this life, but it was just a quick glimpse, a baby picture here, a front yard there, a birthday party or a trip on a train.
The pictures are aids to memory and, as my family disagrees about many things that happened in our past, we just have to cherish what we do remember. My children will have a completely different way to remember. There are more videos, more memories written down and while my dad catalogued 1,300 slides in a few decades it isn't unusual for me to shoot thousands of images every month.
2010 is finished and I have the pictures to prove what happened, most capture the moments to be proud of and make me smile and I'm looking forward to another year taking and making opportunities for more great memories saved digitally and in my heart.
