Nolan Pelletier of Connecticut, USA, has one of my favorite streams on Flickr, the owls go. It’s a collection of found photos and slides picked up at estate and garage sales – odd, poignant, charming, and adorable images of strangers from eras past.

Here, Nolan offers a few home movies his picked up in his collecting travels. Because they’re found films, details can often be hard to come by, but Nolan offers a description of this particular gem:

This film is from the estate of a family who lived only 2 or 3 minutes from my house. It’s very odd to see the neighborhood they lived in 50 years ago. From what I can gather, this film was taken by the mother. She worked for the American School for the Deaf, and these were taken there. There are several reels of footage of all the children gathered for different occasions. They were all taken in the mid to late 1960s. I would love to know where these kids are today. They’re all pretty adorable.

The American School for the Deaf was founded in 1817 and is based in West Hartford, Connecticut. Students there also made this quite interesting website, Deaf is….

This post is among the last new entries Lost in Light will be making, as we prepare to retire the project. It’s been a wonderful year and a half, but our lives beckon us toward other projects. The site will remain up and complete as an archive of all these wonderful films we have collected. thanks to everyone who has participated in this labor of love.

This week, some great shots of huge turtles, a snoozing alligator, Mt. Rushmore, and vistas of the Grand Canyon. All from our contributor Ashima, who adds this:

My mama had a hard time remembering the year, but she thinks it is 1977. I do clearly remembering waking up that alligator in my little brown suit. I didn’t want to get mud on it! We took this trip from Chicago to California and these were some stops along the way. I think the trading post at the end of the video is the Hubbell Trading Post, a national historic site. Honestly, I have no idea where the turtle and alligator were located. I asked my mama and she cannot remember either. BUT, doesn’t that guy look like Steve Irwin only skinnier? I doubt it was him…

The Hubbell Trading Post is the oldest operating trading post in the Navajo Nation of the U.S., located in Northeastern Arizona.

For high-resolution footage of this film and more, click the “MPEG-2″ link above to access the Internet Archive.

In this film full of delicious looking food, our contributor Ashima turns one year old. She tells us more:

My 1st year birthday party (1969) in Albany Village which is student housing in Berkeley, CA. My father was working on his PhD at UC-Berkeley (Industrial Engineering).

This was a typical Indian gathering, outside and with lots of food. Mama made a lot of the Indian food, but she got the cake and sandwiches catered. There were probably 30+ people in attendance.

There is a man holding me whose name is Russ. He was friends with my Leo Uncle. Leo and Ruth were two individuals who became like my Papa and Mama’s second parents in the US. We always had Easter and Thanksgiving with them when we lived in CA.

Anyway, Mama is wearing a sari that Papa gave her as a wedding gift. She still owns it! The two older girls are Raman (who lives in Detroit now) and Sunaina (not sure where she is now). Then, the other two babies I’m sitting with her friends I used to play with a lot. Mama couldn’t remember their names. The blue outfit I am wearing was sent to my Mama by her Mama. Ruth Auntie and my mama found the tights at a dime store called Kresge.

Interestingly, the Kresge dime store was the forerunner to the modern Kmart. Here are some fantastic recordings of the in-store background music to truly put you back in the 1960s Kresge experience. Read more about the history of the Kresge and Kmart stores here. And the Kresge Foundation website is here.

Click “MPEG-2″ above for a high resolution version of this film and more from Ashima at the Internet Archive.

This week, a charming tour of one of my favorite childhood haunts in the Bay Area, Children’s Fairyland. Located near Lake Merritt in Oakland, California, this theme park based on children’s literature is still very much alive, and not much changed from what we see in this film, submitted by Ashima here in Grand Rapids.

Ashima has a few words to add:

Must be 1968 and my Papa is holding me in the beginning. Papa was always wanting to use his camera to take pictures and video of me. Mama said that they had planned to send them to India, but never did.

Here’s another great set of photos from this unique place. A fun YouTube home movie that takes us down the rabbit hole in the Alice in Wonderland section. Here‘s a current bird’s eye view of the park, and an aerial view from Google maps.

Click the MPEG-2 link above for a high resolution version of this home movie on the Internet Archive.

This week, a beautiful and tender movie of a mother clearly in love with her new baby. Submitted by Ashima here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the film features footage from California’s Bay Area in the late 1960s. A bit more detail from Ashima, who was the baby in the film:

Circa 1968 at Albany Village. Outside the apartment, the red car is what my parents used to drive. The red dress I am wearing my mama made. She used to make a lot of the clothes as long as the fabric cost less than $.25.

Next, outside on the lawn on the University campus. The pram was used for both Ashima and Shailesh [Ashima's brother, born later]. Sari was silk given by Mama’s mama when she got married. Building is near or around Berkeley campus. Hippie is some guy playing the guitar on Berkeley’s campus. My mama said that she didn’t think of him as a hippie, he was just a nice person playing pretty music. How sweet is that?! I love that shot! My mom in a sari and this dude playing guitar! Cultures come together peacefully!

Albany Village is now known as UC Village, a student housing complex just outside of the University of California at Berkeley campus. Ashima’s father was was then working on his Ph.D in Industrial Engineering.

Click the “MPEG-2″ link above for high-resolution footage of this lovely film from the Internet Archive.

I love this week’s film from the 1950s. A simple haircut produces tremendous drama. Our submitter, Susan S. of Louisiana, USA, sums it up best:

My Dad, Carter, is giving my brother, Stephen, his first haircut and I am sure that Mom is taking the pictures. Dad was always the one to give haircuts, bathe us, trim nails etc. I think he was way braver than mother would have been with those scissors! My brother never did like haircuts but Dad continued to be his barber until the ’60′s when he let his hair grow! I think it’s funny at the beginning of the film, that Dad thought Stephen was going to just sit in that chair with the towel around his neck and be cooperative!

Click the “MPEG-2″ link above for a high-resolution version of this film, available for download and re-use under a Creative Commons copyright license through the Internet Archive.

This week, a charming film from Susan S. from Galveston, Texas, in the 1950s. It’s all about the reactions to those boots! From Susan:

I remember having those red boots! Funny how you remember certain things! Also, I can tell from the wallpaper and a pink rose vase on the table behind me, that we are my grandparents house, Henry and Lillian Schultz, on 49th street in Galveston, Texas. Must have been my 4th birthday so it’s 1953. That is my 1st cousin, Zeb, in the bow tie, and my brother , Stephen, in the high chair. Also in the film is my very handsome Dad Carter Shirey, and my grandparents, paternal grandmother, aunt and uncle. Mother, Betty Shirey, is sitting next to me and helping me unwrap presents. I can’t think of who might be taking the pictures since the whole family is in the film! My grandparents lived in that house until I was 16 – it was built on stilts like most of the houses in Galveston after the storm of 1900.

A reminder that we’re now showing films without sound to more accurately present them in their original form. High-quality raw footage of this film and more is downloadable from the Internet Archive. Click the “MPEG-2″ link above.

Our short hiatus ended up being a bit longer than anticipated, but Lost in Light is back in action. In this second year of the project, we are striving to present films in their original form as much possible, so we’ve decided to present silent films as silent, without our editorial addition of music, and with minimal editing on our part. We return with this wonderful film from the early 1950s U.S. Gulf Coast.Susan S., one of the children in the film, provides this background:

My parents were living around the Gulf Coast area-Galveston, Texas City, Sabine. I think that the sawfish is on the beach in Galveston. I remember my Dad telling us about the things that the fishing boats would drag up that was caught in their nets. Anytime it was something big , a crowd would be gathered around taking pictures. Once it was a huge whale that had beached itself. I am the topless brunette so it’s about 1951. Mother is the beauty getting into the car. About New Orleans, Mother doesn’t remember but I think there are some things in the film that you can’t see in New Orleans anymore – will need to do a little research!

If you have observations about parts of New Orleans depicted in this film that don’t exist anymore, please leave them in the comments. Certainly the city has changed overwhelmingly since this film was taken – makes me appreciate films like this all the more.

Interestingly, sawfish are now an endangered species and international trade is banned.

As always, a complete, high-resolution version of this film is available for download at the Internet Archive. Click “MPEG-2″ above for the link.

Things I love about Old Christmas’: Ashtrays, metal toys, stockings for Porky, miniature bowling alleys, blinding light, ice in tumblers, gravy boats, modeling for moms, Cookie Monster slippers, babies trapped in rolling apparatus, aunts, AM radios, weapons, little bakers, mesmerizing toy packaging, cat tails, typewriters, ez bake ovens, kids buried in wrapping paper, 6-packs, 60 lb. radio controllers, floral house coats, moms who like everything, and easy to please grandpas.

Music: “Blue Christmas” by Jack, Tanner, and Anja. More songs here. Check out Anja’s website which is chock full of her beautiful original artwork, vintage clothes, found photos, and fun blogs.

This footage is from the Fort Worth Zoo back in 1979. There used to be ‘rides’ at the zoo, and some of my earliest memories are of spending time out there… I know I must have been taken there quite often….

… my mom had that camera and took lots of pictures back then.. she must have been about 21 years old during this video… the guy in the clip was her boyfriend of the time, “Ronnie.” That’s us at his house in the end… his sister and mom and little dog are there too… I remember them being really nice, and loving that little white dog a lot… they took me to the Shrine Circus too once, Ronnie’s whole family did…

… the sad thing about that video was my understanding of Ronnie. My mom and him split and went their separate ways not long after this video was taken. I remember always thinking that Ronnie was my biological father, and I had these vague memories from before and around age three… Even though I was so young, I remember feeling he was great to me, taking me to the duckpond with loaves of bread, buying me the Snoopy Snow-Cone Machine, letting me sit on the back of his motorcycle with his blue helmet on… I just remember being happy around him. Only when I was maybe 11 or 12 after he’d been gone for 8 years did someone tell me that Ronnie wasn’t my real dad after all…

This film and more from Joshua’s films are available as high-resolution download at the Internet Archive. See our File Directory for links from this entry and others.