Steve: [00:00:30] The reason that I wanted to sit down and talk to you and have a sort of interview style thing, I don't actually know if I'm going to publish this at this point, but it's really important to me that I get to document some of the stories.

You spent a lot of my growing up years telling me really, really great stories and so to have little cool like call versions just sounds like a lot of fun to me. We've been getting breakfast now for over a year, multiple times a week. Part of the reason that I live in Colorado and then I'm based here is that I really love spending time with you guys.

I lucked out to have parents that I'm actually friends with. You're very cool people. I. Want to continue that I figured if we're going to be doing, you know, digital calls anyway, why not make it a bit of a production and have some fun along the way.

And so we're recording our zoom calls and we can tell some stories, and at least this one, I think I might publish as a part of the interview series that I'm doing, where I sort of share meals with people and have. The same sort of these conversations, but with people that I would love to share meals with from all over the world because of the unique time we're in now.

Donna: [00:01:29] Right. Really very special time. And I think just to be aware of it, to be looking for alternative ways to still maintain those connections. I mean, our social closeness with other people is what makes humanity so unique. Now we're being told to keep our distance. So this is a great way to bridge that gap.

Yes.

Steve: [00:01:51] As much as social distancing is happening, perhaps we can also still be digitally together. That's the hope. main curiosities I have for our conversation are, I know that video has always been important to both of us, but I don't know that I have the complete picture on why yet.

And so I'd really like to talk to some about your father, my grandfather. who you can tell us a bunch about, so I won't go into any detail there. was basically the big video nerd in the family. I feel like.

Donna: [00:02:20] Yeah.

Steve: [00:02:21] Collaboration with Joe really got us all into. This video world, like, why is this important?

Why is this cool? Why is this something we should be paying attention to, which has affected your life and my life really dramatically. I now do a whole lot of things with online video because of, I think this. Lifelong passion that you shared with me initially. And so I really want to get into some of those stories cause I think that'll be a lot of fun for me personally, but also be fascinating for people to hear how you grew up in that 50 sixties right? And then I also want to kind of move on to how that affected your life and how that affected my life growing up and, and the ways we're seeing online video now blossom this. Video series being a great example of that actually.

So that's kind of the course I want to explore with the conversation, but yeah. Why don't you get to start it? How, how, how do you think about, in your mind, as someone who grew up in the second half of the 20th century, how do you think about when video hit the average person? Like when did it become something that like a person could.

Donna: [00:03:18] Oh. I think what's very interesting is that a lot of families in the early 1960s middle 1960s became very intrigued with. Super eight an eight millimeter home movies. So I remember that the stories that are most special to me in regards to that was my oldest brother Joe came home from Vanderbilt and he brought a little eight millimeter movie camera and said to my father, Hey dad, look at this.

We can make home movies or Christmas when we get together, blah, blah, blah. And my dad was like, Oh yeah, I gotta get one of those. Maybe we maybe get that as an after Christmas present or let's get hold of that right now and start making moving pictures. why my dad was so intrigued by that. He had grown up as a.

Son of the founder and editor of a little weekly newspaper in little rural town in Southwest Georgia. My grant, my grandfather on Milton. Well was born in 1869 my

Steve: [00:04:26] grandfather, not to interrupt you there for a second, there are a whole bunch of dates. 1869 first of all, we have to take a moment to just like since, I'm sorry.

Your grandfather was born in 1869 not like your great, great, great grandfathers. My grandma's family has been doing this, like have kids at 40 years old. That's a mess. Okay. But before we get into that, like personal family history, this is really interesting. It just hit me that even our cultural memories of sort of our nation's shared memory are really very informative when it comes to when people got video or got photos, right?

When we think about the tens and twenties and thirties we see those in like still black and white pictures. A lot of us, right? If you think about like the great depression, what picture comes to your mind? Right? It's a separate picture of people standing outside of a bank, probably for most people. when you think about, okay, thirties forties, 50s we don't really have concrete, like cultural video memories of those moments.

There are a couple, like maybe television broadcasts that some people might have if they're there a decade or two older than you, but really like when we as a culture, remember. The 60s it's very beginning of color, video, not necessarily with sound, but with, with, you know, eight and super eight. And so like the March on Washington,

Donna: [00:05:46] the March on Washington, almost filmed in black and white, black and white.