Filming the Transfiguration

Just when you think that it's safe to convert your Super 8 movies to video, they come along with DVD. Historians are having similar problems as technology advances so fast that they face the dilemma of how to store history. Peter, like us, faces the same crisis: How should we preserve the mountaintop spiritual experiences that come into our lives?

Paparazzi Peter.

He's peering at Moses, Elijah and Jesus. This is a career-maker. But there's a problem. No camera. No film. No nothing.

We can sympathize with Peter's predicament. Let's be frank: Peter would've done us all a big favor if he had been better prepared. We could visit today his shrine built to immortalize the moment if only he had been ready.

Imagine your grasp of history without Abraham Zapruder's 26 seconds of film, shot with an 8-millimeter camera on November 22, 1963. We'd be stuck with Oliver Stone's revisionist montage in his film JFK.

Or without the grainy footage of Neil Armstrong taking "one small step for man" replete with scratchy audio.

Or without your LP of Tommy, the world's first rock opera.

It's a good thing that The Who is now available on redigitized and remastered compact disks - along with every other LP in your collection - because it is increasingly difficult to locate a working stereo phonograph. And if you own a copy of I Love Lucy...