Video Archiving with a Quistian

Since 1992 I’ve captured a couple dozen videos of myself. They incluced videos of me snow sculpting or doing School Board work or campaigning for office. The images were all on VHS tapes and of varying qualities. I stayed up till 1:30 on Sunday night reviewing them. I chuckled and cringed at some and picked out 16 that revealed something or other about me.

I took them to one of the best video techs in the state Monday and spent the day with him turning them into digital images that could be watched on my campaign website. Today I’ll put them in context and set up a page on my campaign website for watching them. I have to finish wrap up this web building stuff pretty soon because times a wasting. Yesterday Mel, who will be driving me to three late Summer events around the District Friday and Saturday sent me an email announcing that there were only 85 days left to campaign. Today it 84 days.

Working with Matt was great fun. He’s my daughter’s age and he too went to school in Mankato only at MVL. Minnesota Valley Lutheran is a Wisconsin Synod school. I’d never even heard of it when I was in public high school and met one of its graduates for the first time when I was attending college at Mankato State. Back then I think MVL had graduating classes barely in the double digits. Its grown since then as Matt was in a class of 70 students. Private schools are doing well.

Times have changed for MVL. The first MVL graduate I met told me that students didn’t dance such were the moral strictures of the Wisconsin Synod. Matt, however, is the official DJ for MVL’s dances which he puts on four times a year. I teased him that he was a sign of the Synod’s moral decline.

Matt learned his tech skills at Bethany College in Mankato. It was another tiny little school back when I was at Mankato State but apparently today it offers a first class video tech education. One of his teachers, Alan Quist, was the nemesis of Moderate Minnesota Republicans. I told Matt how back in the early Nineties I fought the Quistians tooth and nail as a soldier in Arne’s Army (Governor Arne Carlson). Matt thought the word “Quistian” was pretty funny and he was amused that the mild mannered Alan Quist could be regarded as such a threat. He and Quist’s son went all the way through school together and he was often over at Alan’s home, had him as an American History teacher and considered him a close friend.

If Matt’s any indication not every graduate of a conservative education poses a threat to the nation.

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