I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

And this is the slowdown.

Years ago, during a visit, my aunt unloaded a box of old photos. They belong to my grandmother.

I recently rediscovered the box rummaging through a closet. For an hour I distracted myself, peering into the faces of relatives and

strangers. None of the pictures had names written on the back, but I recognized my mother as a little girl,

socks bunched around her ankles.

My grandmother's singing group at Cutts Town State College, Uncle Bobby's at home wedding.

Their smiles are radiant, masking what I know were some difficult years.

With so much of our treasured moments digitized on servers,

it seems we've lost physical evidence of our lives.

Yet we own thousands more photos of ourselves

than our parents and grandparents.

Like many, I wonder what will happen

to the virtual record of our existence once we depart the earth?

Will we be only memorialized on social media?

Will our high school graduations, trips with friends to Turks and Caco's, leaping pets

with frisbees in their mouths remained frozen on our pages.

Today's poem conveys how our pictorial records reveal far more than what lies on the surface.

Sometimes only what time and hindsight can expose as truths.

Home movies, a sort of ode by Mary Joe Salter.

Because it hadn't seemed enough after a while to catalog more Christmases, the three-layer

cakes ablaze with birthday candles.

...