To view the movie, double-click on the bowl, then click on it again in flickr.

MEMOIR WORKSHOP:  If you are balking at writing, why not describe your object on PhotoBooth (or the Windows equivalent)? I made this little movie five years ago, an early attempt at cataloging valued belongings and my first fling as film director, photographer and star. Recording a video on my MacBook Pro’s PhotoBooth was astonishingly simple: I just sat in front of my computer, adjusted the screen to a flattering angle and hit the record button. I could see exactly what was being filmed as I spoke. Sharing it with you, however, was another matter.

This video idea—an appealing short-cut to a quickie memoir post—landed me in a techno briar patch. I know how to format a photo to upload, download or otherwise export, but a movie? It did not plunk easily in place. Following advice from my son Dylan Kuhn, who has for several weeks been attending to daily emails, I uploaded my video to flickr, an online photo-sharing website. It took a while. I was tempted to just flatten the durn thing to a photo, but, reminding myself that a computer is not a toaster (Thank you, Dylan!), I was patient and now it works. I think. Let me know if it doesn’t.

NOTE: Ruth Blocksma, the unseen star of this video, began writing her memoir—Thirty-three Years & Twenty-one Homes—when she was 92. Using Google docs, we worked on it together for two years and I published 300 copies in April, 2014. We sold out by July. Mother turned 97 last November and lives in Shelburne, Vermont.