For about 24 days now,  I have not written a blog post.  There’s been a scramble to find suitable health insurance (is there such a thing for someone not in a company group plan?)   I have now put us under the mercy of TennCare (hoping we can get approved sometime in the next several days),  since I have no income right now.  The income is another matter I am scrambling to jump start.

I have booked a flight to Chicago (credit card)  ,  since it was cheaper to fly than to drive and park at the hotel where RCC 2010 is being held next week.  RCC is the Religious Communicator’s Congress,  which is held once a decade.  I attended RCC 90 as a student at United Theological Seminary,  staying with my parents who had been in Nashville for about 7 years at the time (they still live in the Area,  in Franklin). 

This time I am going to do some serious networking.  I am still running ideas around in my head about what my “handle” will be for business cards I will get printed up to take with me.  I have also bought a Canon HD video camera ,  a microphone for interviews,  an add-on Beachtek Compact XLR adapter that attaches to the camera bottom between the tripod and the camera,  and is switchable between line and mic level inputs.   A couple of 3 hour batteries and a fast charger,  and some extra SD storage (32g to add to the internal 32g in the camera).

The idea is to capture as much as I can from a few presenters I have contacted,  plus roam the floor and get quick impressions from other attendees,  and use this footage to post-produce some segments that can be fodder for future Webcasts about the Church and the Web,  and how conversation  might be transformed by making it accessible to the larger grassroots consciousness,  and bringing more of that consciousness to the table that gets presented as content. 

To all this activity,  which is a source of many anxious moments,  add the grief of our family in the loss of my my wife Janet’s father,  John Dunathan,  March 22.   It was wholly expected to happen sometime soon after he took a sudden turn for the worse in his battle with Alzheimer’s that has been ongoing for 7-10 years.   What they had assumed was a stroke on the previous weekend about 9 days earlier (tests showed no signs of such) rendered him unable to stand or speak clearly,  and unable to swallow.  The funeral was the 26th.

John and I had begun a video hobby/passion about the same time at the beginning of my relationship with his daughter Janet.  I constantly integrated video into my Youth Ministry over the next 3 years,  and in 1989,  I went back to Seminary when I saw that United Theological Seminary had a Masters Program in Religious Communications.  I worked to organize the Audio-Video studio at the Seminary,  and began to gravitate toward the emerging Computer Communication revolution that was beginning as PCs began to appear in stores  (mostly Computer stores at that time….it took the mass retailers another couple of years to begin selling PCS and Macs).

My work became more Web-centric,  which was not particularly video friendly at the time,  since there was not much bandwidth in dial up to handle what we now take for granted in this era of You Tube and Hulu and even Flash.  Now it seems a convergence has happened for me in this time when I have been forced out of my routine day to day work in Web development,  and made to recognize that this original “geek passion” of mine for Video and Audio has been adopted into the Social Web.  Indeed,  it is a big part of what has accelerated the Social aspects of the Web.

When we got back from the cemetery to the home of Janet’s parents,  henceforth to be known more as “her Mom’s house”,  I went down to the basement where John’s “office” for his video activity was centered.  It was once filled with VCR’s ,  editing and special effects boxes,  and cameras.  The only thing that remains of all that is a hard case that used to contain his primary camera,  several hundred VHS tapes,  and an old Amiga computer monitor.  IN the past 2-3 years,  the rest of it was sold or given away as John became unable to operate it or perhaps even remember that he once passionately slaved away creating edited features,  mostly of family events.  

Standing there I felt myself taken back to a time 25-27 years ago when I would look around and see cameras, cables, portable VCRs, tripods,  and all sorts of pro-sumer video equipment.  And it was quite moving to feel like I was once again standing here about to venture out into a rapidly developing area of electronic communications. 

I’ve thought about this post almost constantly since that Friday,  and while I was alone in the house that next evening while the rest of the crew was out,  I took my new HD camera down to that same basement and walked around looking at pictures on the wall and titles on tape spine  labels,  perhaps something like a dedication of my future efforts to the memory of John, Janet’s Dad,  who was certainly the carrier and emitter of a “twinkle” that many people spoke of concerning their memory of him;  a “twinkle” that he certainly passed on to his daughter with whom I fell in love almost 28 years ago.  Of course,  this is something I must believe God is calling me to do ,  but now as John has joined the cloud of witnesses,  perhaps he is now somehow to be involved in encouraging me onward.  We already miss you, John.  We have been missing you for a while now,  but now you know fully where and whose you are.