Digital Photo Frame

Above - Waterman Street Grammar School, Marietta, Ga.

Several months ago I received as a gift a Digital Photo Frame from Rocky and Sabrina. It comes with its own built-in hobby.... picture collecting and picture dating.

When I received it there were already quiet a few pictures in it that Rocky and Sabrina had downloaded. Then I started putting pictures in and got the picture fever.

My hoggish compulsive state of mind took over.

There is a connection on the back that allows you to put several types of memory cards – which will give you more memory. I decided to use a memory card.

First I decided I wanted the pictures in categories. My pictures were already sorted digitally in categories of the different surnames we were related to – but the categorizing got complicated in the Immediate Family group. To start with there are two immediate families: Anna’s and mine. Then comes a third immediate family after we married and had kids.

Then the way I figure it a sister-in-law of a late brother-in-law would be part of the immediate family, but her with her kids, as a whole, would be part of the extended family.

Uncles and aunts would be one of the surnames extended families. Of course our parents would be part of the immediate family, but before they were married they would be part of an extended family. I get confused just thinking about it.

Then, I gave a roughly estimated date to each picture that didn’t already have a date. Then, I had pictures in categories that lined in chronological sequence.

I had about 1600 pictures loaded which not only had ancestors, relatives, and friends, but also vacations and special occasions.. According to my planning, the groups or categories would come out one at a time and be shown in date order.

Wrong! They randomly appeared without any sort of sequence order.

Then I went back, and changed the name of each picture to a number only. The earliest picture is the postcard of John Hunter’s cabin built in 1835 or so. No pictures had names, they all had numbers. Looking at the line-up on the pictures, all the pictures fell in order that I had plan.

But when I plug the memory card in the digital photo frame the first thing was my uncle and aunt Leonard and Jeannette Petty’s 50th wedding anniversary, which was in the early 1990s. The pictures mostly stayed in categories or groups but in no order that I can tell. However, each time I turn it on, it follows the identical sequence as far as I can tell. It always starts out with the Petty’s 50th anniversary and so on.

I think of it as a pleasure to have it on running and half way forget it is there, and you happen to look up and see a picture of a person or a scene that you haven’t thought about in a long time… It think it is just the pleasure of seeing something or someone familiar that is not in the on-line memory of your mind anymore and you get a warm feeling inside.

So, does a good snort of Jack Daniel’s.