Job Profile: Barbara Michael, Pet Minister

Wow - it's been a while since I posted anything to this blog. I have been remiss. For my latest project in Picture Story, the job profile, I was able to feature Barbara Michael, who leads the pet ministry team at the Unity Center here in Columbia.

What's a pet ministry, you might say? It's a ministry in the church that focuses on giving to its animal lovers. Michael annually provides a pet blessing ceremony (in the spring, as close to St. Francis' Day as possible) and a pet bereavement ceremony (in the fall), as well as providing comfort to those members who have lost furry friends. While she doesn't marry animals, she will do a ceremony similar to a baptism.

Barbara Michael, Pet Minister from Elisa Day on Vimeo.

When I asked Michael why her ministry was important, she stressed that it helps promote better human-animal and human-human relationships, while providing a space for people to feel accepted and validated in their love for their furry friends.

I loved Michael's enthusiasm for her work and for the animals (and people) that she gets to interact with. Much appreciation goes out to her for her flexibility in letting me come out and videotape her.

Although I am going to be doing another edit of this video, I have to say that I am GLAD that this assignment is over. In retrospect, I think putting this video together took me the shortest amount of time yet - which was lucky, otherwise I wouldn't have finished for class.  There were many things that went wrong:

1.  MU's lovely mail issues - where getting my e-mail seems to be hit-or-miss - lead me to miss Michael's reply to me that she sent 2-3 days after I e-mailed her. So I didn't read it until this past Friday. (Bright spot: Barbara e-mailed me the day I responded and we set up for later that night for me to tape her interview. She was really great throughout the entire process.)
2. The camera I got, I don't know if it was just a jinx on me, but the thing didn't seem to like to hold a charge (or something). When I went to film some of her action at CMHS, the battery died so I had to plug it in to charge during about 1/2 of the walk Barbara and Perra (the black dog) took.
3. Someone was nice enough to change the setting in camera from headphones to AV, so that anytime I tried to listen to playback, all I heard was an annoying buzz. 
4. One of the most frustrating thing about this whole assignment was the fact that I could not seem to be able to get the files off of the video camera onto my laptop so that I could edit them. I tried for over 4 hours to try to work a solution last night, to no avail. The cable supplied with the camera connects readily to Macs, but I own a PC (which I prefer). The other cables that came with the camera that might allow me to connect it to my computer were gone. I tried looking through all of my cables to see if one would work. They did not. I tried going to 2 different Wal-Marts to purchase a cable that the manual said were "sold commercially." No dice. I went over to campus, to the convergence lab, to use one of the computers there, and that just lead to more problems. 
5. On campus, I could readily download the files, but then transferring them to something that I could leave the machine with - Hah! The backs of the Macs won't connect to my hard drive's fire-wire cable. I tried putting the files on Bengal, but I couldn't find a link to MU's Bengal space anywhere (and no I don't have the address memorized to Apple-K to it. I couldn't find a way to FTP to my website, so I decided to upload the files to a folder on the class folder, because I can access those and download them. I thought the problem was solved, but no!
6. I get home and attempt to connect to the class server, which I've done several times before, and it won't. And there's nothing wrong on my end!!! (And I can access it just fine today.)
7. I try to log my footage, so that at least I can plan out exactly what's going where and the buzz makes it difficult. I can barely hear it through the speakers on the camera, and then stopping and starting the video so I don't miss anything - a joke. After about 10-15 minutes of stop-starts, I gave up.

I want to send out a big thank you to Barbara for being so flexible and understanding in the face of some hiccups (including my foster dog letting my own dogs loose out of my yard because of a hole he pushed in my fence - I spent about 30 minutes hunting them down.) She was very congenial and made getting to know her very enjoyable.