Decades where centuries happen
May. 7th, 2026 12:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brin_bellway[cw: amnesia]
Went through my family's VHS collections this evening and felt the vertigo of ages stretching out behind me.
(This was the present, once, as real and vivid as today. This was, once, the highest tech level that anyone in the known universe had ever had.)
It was not objectively that long ago! I was *there* for a lot of this stuff! (Some of the tape labels are still recognisably my handwriting, though I have noticeably more fine motor control now and also have adopted a different way of writing the letter "d" †.) It is all within living memory!
I have lived for such a very long time. I have watched whole ways of knowledge live and die.
---
New furniture has grown around the video cabinets. I had to move several pieces out of the way, in order for the doors to have space to open.
---
I found my prize: a collection of home videos from the 1990s. (And a prize I wasn't expecting: home videos from the *1950s*, having already been format-converted at least once.)
I am taking them to the downtown library tomorrow, to the scanning room with the VHS digitiser.
(I told Dad, but not Mom. I want it to be a Mother's Day surprise. She likes surprise gifts.)
---
30 years is a very long time. Tape degrades. It may be too late.
We shall see.
---
†it feels fitting to note that my first instinct was to write that link in Markdown, and not HTML; (I'm noticing now that we do actually have a Markdown option here,and it seems it is officially time I switched but AFAICT it doesn't support footnotes?) ↩
Went through my family's VHS collections this evening and felt the vertigo of ages stretching out behind me.
(This was the present, once, as real and vivid as today. This was, once, the highest tech level that anyone in the known universe had ever had.)
It was not objectively that long ago! I was *there* for a lot of this stuff! (Some of the tape labels are still recognisably my handwriting, though I have noticeably more fine motor control now and also have adopted a different way of writing the letter "d" †.) It is all within living memory!
I have lived for such a very long time. I have watched whole ways of knowledge live and die.
---
New furniture has grown around the video cabinets. I had to move several pieces out of the way, in order for the doors to have space to open.
---
I found my prize: a collection of home videos from the 1990s. (And a prize I wasn't expecting: home videos from the *1950s*, having already been format-converted at least once.)
I am taking them to the downtown library tomorrow, to the scanning room with the VHS digitiser.
(I told Dad, but not Mom. I want it to be a Mother's Day surprise. She likes surprise gifts.)
---
30 years is a very long time. Tape degrades. It may be too late.
We shall see.
---
†it feels fitting to note that my first instinct was to write that link in Markdown, and not HTML; (I'm noticing now that we do actually have a Markdown option here,
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Date: 2026-05-07 04:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-07 04:25 am (UTC)