old home movies

Once upon a time, in the 1980s and 1990s, we did not have digital cameras or smartphones or Skype. We used VHS tapes to visually record and share our experiences. In late 1985, when our oldest child was just a few months old and our home in Israel was under construction, we acquired our first VHS camcorder. It was bulky and heavy, and required the support of one’s shoulder or a tripod. Subsequently we owned smaller and lighter VHS-C camcorders, with improved video quality, but image resolution was still far behind that of today's technology. Over the next two decades, we amassed nearly 200 videotapes of family memories, mostly of our own creation, but also a fair number recorded by others, and including videotapes retrieved from my parents’ house. The collection fills up two large plastic storage bins. A…