Tidying Up The Ol' Blog

 As part of my effort to revive this blog, I have been tidying up, deleting old links that no longer work.  It is sad to see so many beloved blogs that simply die of neglect.  I can't cast any aspersions, I too have had long absences from blogging.  

Part of the decrease in blogs is that they are somewhat obsolete.  Social media sites like X provide a lot of content, with commenting and debate available, and you can post pictures..  Feedback is more immediate, as well.  I spend a lot of time on X, but it is often like swimming in a cesspool, dodging the slings and arrows of nasty liberals.  

Another medium that is very popular is vlogging. creating videos like on YouTube.  This requires a good video camera, and you can use your iPhone or other phones for this purpose, and the quality is pretty good.  Then you need some video editing software, to convert the video to an uploadable format.  You can buy some online -- just Google it.

I plan to post some of my videos here for fun and to provide examples for those who may be interested in vlogging.

Faces In Death: Exploring Cemeteries

Cemeteries can be fascinating places to visit, even when the entombed are just ordinary people, not famous or well known.  The granite and marble tombstones, crypts and statuary are grief frozen in time by those left behind.  

Even for ordinary lives each grave represents a human being with a unique story.  Often their stories can be gleaned from the internet, from Find-A-Grave or from Ancestry.com or Newspaper.com.  

Some video bloggers have learned to put the two together to make YouTube videos that show selected graves and tell the stories of the departed.  Some of the best vids talk about crimes or disasters like fires that killed the entombed.  

My two favorite V-Loggers who do this include “Lamont At Large” (see pic above) and “Faces of the Forgotten.”  The latter enhances his videos with some great drone footage, a feat I hope to duplicate soon.

Check out these vloggers when you have a chance.

My Venture Into V-Logging: Making Videos for YouTube

Another new venture of mine is making videos for YouTube.  I have a YouTube channel called "Grumpy Meditations" and have posted a few videos thereon.  I am using and learning another Adobe program for this purpose, called Adobe Premier Pro.  It also comes with my Adobe subscription.  So the Adobe programs I am using and learning include Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition and Premier Pro.  Audition is for sound recording, I use it to record my band practices for upload to SoundCloud where band members can listen and improve.  Premier Pro is for editing videos that I take with my video camera to upload to YouTube.

Here is the best of my videos so far:

Kathryn Sevy's husband was Elliott Francis Marrs, who was a San Jose Policeman in the 1930s.  He died in 1981.