WHILE SPENDING TWO DAYS alone with my mom in Pennsylvania Dutch country, I started to see and hear things from her side of the couch. I watched her sit comfortably in an easy chair with her well-worn legs up, glued to a new 32" television set and enthralled by home-spun DVDs that I'm creating from my Dell Precision M2400 hard drive. We went from sharing four minutes from granddaughter Misty's wedding reception to three minutes of Mia serenading herself on the way to her Irish creche. From the outside looking into our Lancaster sitting room, there's a blue glow from the television set radiating the room and memories that we really need to share in person. But there's value to watching the world pass by in slow motion on a screen and real power in being able to rewind the memories and pause them frame by frame. I've got four more blank DVDs for mom and I'm scavenging my hard drive to find segments that I know she would enjoy. Along the way, I'm combining audio snippets and electronic artifacts as part of a process that I hope to teach to my daughters and grandchildren. I want to bask in the blue glow of aging next decade when I'm pensionable.
