Digital Storytelling

For almost half of my life, on and off, I’ve lived in a four generation family. My birth in the middle of the last century of this recently passed millennium made my grandmothers’ mothers (both Irish immigrants born barely a decade after the Civil War) great-grandmothers. Yesterday the family clock turned again when my daughter gave birth to Adrianna, the beginning of our generations of the 21st century.

The oldest family picture I have is from 1896, three years before my father’s father was born. As I “read” the photograph, great-grandfather Brennan dressed his family up and hauled them down to a professional photographer’s studio to pose stiff as boards in order to commemorate the birth of his youngest and memorialize the passing of his eldest. You can see that they left a spot for my then recently departed great-uncle Martin on the right, behind the baby (who died of a fever just months before grandpa arrived).

Compare that to the image I captured of my son-in-law showing my mother-in-law a phone camera photo he’s about to send to augment the cell phone and text messages that already went out coast to coast and probably even to his relatives in Italy. All before the baby was an hour old!
Oh, the places she’ll go and the stories we’ll tell!
I just happen to have some pictures, moving pictures actually… Download AddieDEN3.mov