I haven’t blogged in a while. Well, obviously. But it hasn’t been for lack of news. It wasn’t because I’ve been so incredibly busy that I just didn’t have time to write. I just.. I don’t know. I couldn’t. I tried several times and whatever came out just didn’t feel right. Who knows, maybe this will just be another unfulfilled attempt, but we’ll see.

    I’ll try to start with getting through the various bits of news that have transpired since I last wrote. As you might have noticed, several months ago I augmented the links at the top of the page to include a video section. I’ve posted a random assortment of videos that have tickled my fancy, including a smattering of Scopitones, vintage European music videos mostly from the 1960s. The very first scopitone on the list is my personal favorite; “Quando Quando”, a bewitching little number performed by Alice & Ellen Kessler, twin sisters from Germany who performed to wide acclaim throughout Europe. To this day they’re considered national treasures in Germany and Italy, the two countries they call home. When I first saw that scopitone I was fascinated – these two blonde identical twin sisters were captivating, and yet I couldn’t find much information about them at all online no matter how dilligently I searched. But just as I had given up trying to find out more about them, I happened to receive an email from a perfect stranger who had seen the scopitone as a child and had always wanted to see it again. He wrote to me to thank me for posting it online, and as a token of his gratitude, he sent me an address for the Kessler sisters. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but needless to say I was excited at even the slightest chance of being able to contact them.

    So I spent two hours late one night drafting a letter in German. Now, I don’t speak much German. Hardly any. But I do at least have a basic understanding of the language’s grammatical structure, so with the help of AltaVista’s BabelFish feature, I laboriously translated and retranslated what I was trying to say until I was confident it at least made a bit of sense in German. I wrote the letter out by hand and mailed it off to Germany.
    Not three weeks later, I got a small envelope back, and at first glance i was entirely befuddled – who would be sending me a letter from Germany? Then it dawned on me! My memory turned back to that late night of translating, and suddenly my heart started racing as I carefully peeled open the letter. Sure enough it was a response from the Kessler sisters – they had gotten my letter, and in return, they sent back a cute picture of the two of them, personally signed with immaculate penmanship. What fun, eh? I’ll scan it later so you all can take a look, but I have to say, that made my day.

    I have another story to tell you about sending off a letter and hoping for a response, but this has gotten long enough. And frankly I’m afraid that if I try to write any more I’ll just chicken out and then nothing will get posted. I’m having a kind of love-hate relationship with my blog right now. On the one hand, I’ve met so many wonderful people through this website. Some of my best friends, in fact; you know who you are, ye few who happened along thanks to Google’s helping hand, and have been kind enough to be my friends ever since. But on the other hand, I’ve been betrayed by a few who met me through this blog, those who studied it for months on end, only to meet me and hurt me in some way. I’m a little confused, definitely hurt, and left wondering about intentions, honesty, and what the truth of the situation truly is or was or whatever. I guess things just look a little hazy, and I don’t like it when I can’t see something for what it really is.

    So here I am, left stammering, not knowing what to give away and what to conceal. Because I’m tired of being hurt by people, I’m tired of being studied and then lied to. I want to keep blogging, but I guess there are some things I need to get over first before I can really blog like I used to.

    Before I go, I do have to mention one more thing. I was interviewed by a very nice lady from The Christian Science Monitor a while back and fairly soon an article should be appearing about vintage educational films and how they’re now being used for art and entertainment by the younger generations. I was interviewed in regard to my podcast that I’ve been working on. So yeah, as soon as I find out more about when it’ll be published or if it was already, I’ll let you know. But keep an eye out for it if you already read the Monitor, and yeah, that’s all fun and stuff.

    Anyway. I’ll be back with more later.