The recent passing of writer historian David McCullough brought to mind his visit to Lowell MA at the Middlesex Community College Celebrity Forum in May of 2003.  He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author on subjects ranging from the Brooklyn Bridge to Presidents John Adams and Harry Truman. You may remember him as the voice behind the Ken Burns Civil War documentary on PBS. On the day I met him he was with his wife Rosalee Barnes by his side most of night with President Carole Cowan introducing him to the guest and touring the Lowell campus. We had a moment just after the presentation photos and before his speech when he asked me about what I thought of photography going digital. This event was one of the last times I would shoot film at the Celebrity Forum. I was unsure where it was headed but I knew I would be going in that direction very soon. I remember his speech even focused upon the use of digital media over paper for the storage of documents and how it might effect the future of the archives he dwelled in. As I rescanned these negatives to make this blog post I realized the limitations film presented back then and how much better the quality of photography has become. So in a sense I prefer the progress but I realized how much may be lost due to the fragility of digital files and the inability to even open or view those files in the future without the machines and software that make it possible versus how easy it is to just open a book.