Family History
Last night I dreamed that I was sorting through my great-grandfather's negatives and picked up a roll that looked too big to be 35mm. "Oh," I thought, "it must be 120! How exciting!" Only then I removed it from its cannister and it turned out to be 4x5 sheet negatives. I was a bit confused.
In other news, there are still three tiny black kittens, spawn of the one-eyed black-and-white cat, outside, being wobbly and adorable and tragic. They're really small, fluffy and sweet, shakily scampering around, not quite in control of their tails yet but still clumsily pouncing on bits of grass. I want to go gather them up and coo at them, but they make me so sad because they're stray kitties and don't have anyone to keep them safe and warm inside. ;_; It was raining all yesterday, and they were huddled up under the flower bush by the garage door, and I don't know what to do with them. I'm tempted to call a rescue group, but I think they're too young to be separated from their mother, so I don't know. *sigh*
House people are supposed to call us today... *is hopeful*
In the process of my grandparents moving out of their house and into the downstairs apartment of my Granny's studio, lots of old family stuff has been being passed on to interested family members. Since I'm the one who has repeatedly expressed interest in old photos, old papers, and old clothes; I am the one who received all the old photos, old papers, and old clothes. It is both amazing and terrifyingly overwhelming because good lord my family has accumulated a lot of history! o_O I have photos and papers going back to the 1850s, and that's just what I've discovered from the barest shuffling through of stuff. I've hardly even opened the one metal filing cabinet that is FULL of negatives and photos. There are even old 8mm and 16mm video film, which is incredibly exciting and I want a video projector now now now. (There was also a bunch of film from my mother's family in with stuff from my father's uncle. I was a little baffled by that...) And then there's the old steamer trunk of my great-grandmother's (I think that's who it was?) which is now FULL of old clothes, including a long ton of old christening gowns, some of which probably date to the turn of the century, my grandfather's sailor suits (from when he was a child) and his navy uniform (from the war,) and some of my great-grandmother's clothes from the 1920s. I am UP TO MY EARS in family history. HALP.
To keep myself from going mad and hiding in a corner, overwhelmed by the sheer mass of stuff I need to go through and archive (because of course most of it is in old cardboard boxes or browned paper envelopes and I can only look at it and gibber and try not to think about acid and lignin and other evil, evil things) I decided to start small, and just deal with my great-grandfather's 35mm film.
Otis C. Rayburn was my great-grandfather, my father's mother's father. He and my great grandmother split up when my Granny was a child, and he spent most of his adult life in Alaska. He went up just after the ALCAN (Alska-Canadian) Highway was opened (though I think he was up there during the war too, I'm not sure) and he worked in the shipyards and as a carpenter. And he took photos, which I now have. There are lots of color slides, some of them now faded, but some still vivid, and three stationary boxes full of rolls of black and white. I counted about forty-five to fifty cannisters, metal or cardboard, and unprotected rolls. Not so bad, I thought. I ordered 150 archival polyester 6-exposure negative sleeves and 50 36-exposure archival binder pages, for storing the sleeved negatives. I thought that would be a good start. Hah. I'm maybe a quarter of the way through, a third at the most and I am down to about 25 negative sleeves and less than 25 pages. Every cannister has at least two rolls, sometimes more, of film inside.
I get excited looking through all the negatives, not that I can really tell much from them. Luckily my father shares some of my enthusiasm, so I have someone to talk to when I discover a particularly exciting roll. Next time I go home I'm bringing the negatives, as Daddy offered to help me make contact prints. ^__^ There is something so exhilarating about printing from old negatives, making proper enlargements of photos which probably haven't been looked at, let alone printed, for the last 60 years.
Now I am researching my next order of archiving supplies, to be made when I get my tax return and after I move. More 35mm supplies, of course, and more negative handling gloves, and a proper marking pen. The next archiving task is clearly the old negatives in the metal storage cabinet, especially the large format, so I need 4x5 and 5x7negative sleeves and pages. Some of the large format negatives were sleeved a long time ago, only the sleeves have shrunk and warped the negatives. *whimper* I think I can save them. I hope I can save them.
In other news, there are still three tiny black kittens, spawn of the one-eyed black-and-white cat, outside, being wobbly and adorable and tragic. They're really small, fluffy and sweet, shakily scampering around, not quite in control of their tails yet but still clumsily pouncing on bits of grass. I want to go gather them up and coo at them, but they make me so sad because they're stray kitties and don't have anyone to keep them safe and warm inside. ;_; It was raining all yesterday, and they were huddled up under the flower bush by the garage door, and I don't know what to do with them. I'm tempted to call a rescue group, but I think they're too young to be separated from their mother, so I don't know. *sigh*
House people are supposed to call us today... *is hopeful*
In the process of my grandparents moving out of their house and into the downstairs apartment of my Granny's studio, lots of old family stuff has been being passed on to interested family members. Since I'm the one who has repeatedly expressed interest in old photos, old papers, and old clothes; I am the one who received all the old photos, old papers, and old clothes. It is both amazing and terrifyingly overwhelming because good lord my family has accumulated a lot of history! o_O I have photos and papers going back to the 1850s, and that's just what I've discovered from the barest shuffling through of stuff. I've hardly even opened the one metal filing cabinet that is FULL of negatives and photos. There are even old 8mm and 16mm video film, which is incredibly exciting and I want a video projector now now now. (There was also a bunch of film from my mother's family in with stuff from my father's uncle. I was a little baffled by that...) And then there's the old steamer trunk of my great-grandmother's (I think that's who it was?) which is now FULL of old clothes, including a long ton of old christening gowns, some of which probably date to the turn of the century, my grandfather's sailor suits (from when he was a child) and his navy uniform (from the war,) and some of my great-grandmother's clothes from the 1920s. I am UP TO MY EARS in family history. HALP.
To keep myself from going mad and hiding in a corner, overwhelmed by the sheer mass of stuff I need to go through and archive (because of course most of it is in old cardboard boxes or browned paper envelopes and I can only look at it and gibber and try not to think about acid and lignin and other evil, evil things) I decided to start small, and just deal with my great-grandfather's 35mm film.
Otis C. Rayburn was my great-grandfather, my father's mother's father. He and my great grandmother split up when my Granny was a child, and he spent most of his adult life in Alaska. He went up just after the ALCAN (Alska-Canadian) Highway was opened (though I think he was up there during the war too, I'm not sure) and he worked in the shipyards and as a carpenter. And he took photos, which I now have. There are lots of color slides, some of them now faded, but some still vivid, and three stationary boxes full of rolls of black and white. I counted about forty-five to fifty cannisters, metal or cardboard, and unprotected rolls. Not so bad, I thought. I ordered 150 archival polyester 6-exposure negative sleeves and 50 36-exposure archival binder pages, for storing the sleeved negatives. I thought that would be a good start. Hah. I'm maybe a quarter of the way through, a third at the most and I am down to about 25 negative sleeves and less than 25 pages. Every cannister has at least two rolls, sometimes more, of film inside.
I get excited looking through all the negatives, not that I can really tell much from them. Luckily my father shares some of my enthusiasm, so I have someone to talk to when I discover a particularly exciting roll. Next time I go home I'm bringing the negatives, as Daddy offered to help me make contact prints. ^__^ There is something so exhilarating about printing from old negatives, making proper enlargements of photos which probably haven't been looked at, let alone printed, for the last 60 years.
Now I am researching my next order of archiving supplies, to be made when I get my tax return and after I move. More 35mm supplies, of course, and more negative handling gloves, and a proper marking pen. The next archiving task is clearly the old negatives in the metal storage cabinet, especially the large format, so I need 4x5 and 5x7negative sleeves and pages. Some of the large format negatives were sleeved a long time ago, only the sleeves have shrunk and warped the negatives. *whimper* I think I can save them. I hope I can save them.