Title of Project: Preserving the Past for Future Enjoyment
Abstract of Project
This project will help to demonstrate the immense value of one individual person and her life experiences. I will be giving my time and service to a lonely elderly woman who needs companionship and someone close in distance to share her life with. I will gather her memories and treasures, including letters, photos, stories, and other memorabilia, and organize them into a condensed and manageable format, in both digital and hard copy. It will require discretion to determine what is of value to preserve. It will also require me to determine the best way to preserve and catalog these important aspects of this woman’s life. The end result will need to be of value to her, as well as her future generations, and will require ingenuity and creativity on my part to make it happen.
Unfortunately, the woman I had hoped to work with for this project was not able to participate. Her health quickly deteriorated and she felt that working on this project would be too exhausting for her. I also tried to work with an elderly man across the street, but he simply did not have enough photos to bring the project to the required time commitment. After discussing the situation with an EDGE counselor, I decided to adjust the project to focus on the relationship with my husband and to digitize our photos and memorabilia from when we first began dating until we converted over to digital cameras.
Goals
This project helped me gain the skills needed to sort through information and memorabilia, as well as organize and catalog memories and information for my own family, letting go of clutter and allowing for more enjoyment of past experiences.
I had over 5000 photographs to sort through, digitize, and catalog. This required me to determine the dates the pictures were taken, what activities and/or locations were pictured, and identify all people in those pictures. I chose to name and organize the files according to date (year-month-day-activity) for reference. As I digitized the photographs, I was also able to sort the hard copies into different piles of those I planned to keep, pictures to give away to specific people who would find value in having the pictures, and photographs to discard.
Once all the pictures were digitized, I had to determine which pictures to use in the photobook. I decided to focus on the meeting, courting, engagement, and wedding with my husband. I also had to choose a site for creating the photobook and learn the steps required within the software of the site for compiling the book. In addition to the pictures, I documented in writing the parts of our experience that indicated the value of chosen pictures as well as pieces of our story that are of importance to both me and my husband to preserve and pass on to future generations.
Outcomes
The main objective of this project was to create a catalog of memories and treasures for an elderly widow, both digital and hard copy, in order to preserve her past for future generations. I had hoped to:
Develop a deeper friendship with the elderly woman I was to work with for the project. I did still visit her on a regular basis to give her companionship and make sure her physical needs were being met.
Provide peace of mind to this woman when the time comes for her to depart from this life.
Ease the burden of her family at that difficult time and allow for joyful moments as they reflect upon her life.
Because the woman’s health quickly deteriorated and I was not able to work with her on this project, the outcomes listed above were not achieved exactly as stated. However, I do feel that I met some of these objectives in a different way.
I did create a catalog of memories for my family, both current and future. In doing so, I also created a website showcasing pictures from the past two decades of our relationship together as a gift to my husband and to share with friends and family as part of our 20th anniversary celebration. I also created a hard copy of some of the most important memories my husband and I share from the beginning of our relationship.
This project actually took much longer than anticipated. Part of it was due the amount of time required for all the parts of this project. Selecting the exact pictures to use and arranging the correct digital formatting for the photobook was more intense than I thought it would be. The other part of that was due to the health needs of my daughter and the intensive program our family was involved in with her care, requiring a great deal of time traveling and out of town on a regular basis.
My own health even became an issue at one point. I had hoped to spend a concentrated amount of time on this project during the winter break from both school and work, but instead ended up very ill and in bed for days. In addition, my husband and I were having some issues with our relationship and decided to enroll in a program to help us with our communication skills. This was also on a weekly basis and required a lot of travel time, but it was truly helpful and needed.
In actuality, the fact that my project ended up focusing on the beginnings of the relationship with my husband helped me to remember why I fell in love with him in the first place. It reminded me of the good qualities about him and brought a great deal of joy to me as I worked on choosing pictures for the photobook and documenting our story in writing. As I reflected upon the first year of our relationship, as well as other challenges we overcame in our first few years, I was reminded of just how much we have worked through together and that we can continue to do so. I know I am meant to be with him, but the steps involved in my EDGE project were a needed reminder to me of this fact.
In addition, peace of mind was brought to me and my husband knowing that our pictures of the past were digitized and backed up online, reducing the concern of something happening to those precious photos in the potential event of theft or disaster.
The clutter of the papers and memorabilia from the past has bothered my husband. Reducing this clutter brought peace of mind to him. Digitally preserving the pieces composing this clutter is something that has brought peace of mind to me. I know that we will be able to access these in the future as needed. Yet having digital access to them has already made it easier to review them more regularly and share with my family. It has also enabled me to create a valuable keepsake of the most important pictures and memories through a printable photobook.
As stated above, working on this project actually helped to deepen the relationship I have with my husband. I may not have focused on the immense value of the person I had originally planned for, but I feel that things worked out to show me the immense value of my husband and the relationship we have together.
Deliverables
Originally, I had planned to produce a USB drive with the digital complication of memorabilia, memories, and treasures which will allow for easy distribution to the elderly woman’s family. All digital files were to be saved in universal file types. I also planned to provide a digital copy of the photobook I would have completed for the woman and her family in the format of a slideshow.
Even though I did not work with the intended person, I did produce a digital complication of memorabilia and memories for my own family. The files were saved in a universal file type and backed up on a USB drive, and the most important files were also backed up in a Google photo account. I also produced a digital copy of the photobook I completed in the form of a slideshow, as well as the photo gallery section of the website I created for my husband as part of our 20th Anniversary. These deliverables can be found with the following links:
Google Photo Account showing most of the important photos digitized – account will be shared with Debra Johnson-Davis to view files. https://photos.google.com/u/4/albums (Name of Google account: heatherdonahoe.edu@gmail.com)
Screen shots showing the number of folders and files of the pictures on my computer. https://sites.google.com/view/heatherldonahoe/personal-projects
Slideshow of Photobook https://sites.google.com/view/heatherldonahoe/personal-projects
Photo Gallery of 20th Anniversary Website https://sites.google.com/view/donahoe20years/photo-gallery
Additional Details
In project pre-reflection I had stated that when all was said and done, I had hoped with this project to show the ability I have to care for the one – to see the needs and the good and the strength of another person and reach out to them in compassion and love to remind them of the value they possess. This project helped me to see the value of the relationship I have with my husband and the needs, the good, and the strength of our life together. For this, I am thankful.