Ken Burns, World War II, Dad, and the Untapped CGM Treasure Chest

I've yet to produce a wildly entertaining or viral video on YouTube, but that's hardly the point in most of my own CGM2 (consumer-generated multi-media) endeavors.  Like millions of others on the web, I'm creating content that is meaningful and significant to me, and perhaps to my circle of familiars (friends and family).  Over the past four years, I've been diligently recording hours and hours of interviews with my parents, empowered in no small measure by the proliferation of CGM2 tools, from Apple's iMovie to YouTube.  Every conversation counts, it's painful and unnerving to admit.  My mother is in the early stages of Alzheimers, and every video interview seems to reveal a gradual decline in her condition.  My father, now 83, has far better memory, but he recently underwent surgery for colon cancer and he's he's clearly showing age and fatigue. 

When I first read about Ken Burns producing a documentary on World War II -- an endeavor motivated by the realization that my father's World War II generation is passing away at an alarming rate -- it was hard not to find myself thinking about the dozens of stories my father has shared about World War II.  I've always been infatuated with those stories, and I'm far from finished recording them for the permanent digital record.  While my father was fortunate  enough to escape combat (barely), his stories, nevertheless, have always captured my imagination, and they have served as wonderful fodder for deeper conversation on a range of topics.  One story I always loved, captured in this recently produced video (timed with the first segment of Ken Burns documentary) recounts how my Godfather Al Dole (who I regrettably only met once or twice) constructed, while stationed in India with my father, a modern concrete pool in the middle of the jungle.  The pool apparently served as a special secret "escape"  for my fathers friends who spent two years in India servicing large planes headed over the Himilayas to China.  The pool, as my father recounts, was one of the few joys he and his friends experienced during his three or so years of service.  Here's my father telling the story:

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Loved the first one, love the second one.