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Three Eras of Preservation and the Scourge of Magnetic Tape

In the Modern Age of Entertainment, we have — so far — sustained Three Distinct Eras of performance preservation. The First Era was Film.  The Second Era was Magnetic Tape. The Third, and current, Era is Digital. The most cursed of all the Eras, is the misbegotten second — Magnetic Audiotape and Videotape — where performances were not actually preserved, they were only perpetuated to die!

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A Memory of Thanks to Ebert and Siskel

With the passing of movie critic Roger Ebert this week, I have been trying to find a centerstone from which I can write about his death.  Here’s what I wrote about the man on February 19, 2010 in my article — What Roger Ebert Speaks to Our Students:

Now that Roger fights on to live to write and to watch and to read and to love over and over again — any sense of our self-pity or our internal mourning is forever put to rest in the example of his unbelievable fight for an imperiled life that continues to thrive against the belly of the beast best efforts of every malignant cell and troubled tissue to take him from us.  Every day we die a little, and each night, we dream a lot of the days yet to live.

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