In this video‑blog, Tom Guarriello records a single‑speaker response to his friend Nadieh (Niti) Bonn’s recent podcast, which itself was a reaction to a blog post Tom wrote about the Geriatric1927 video series. Tom reflects on the moving story Niti shared about her Indian grandfather’s simple yet profound advice—“Follow your art” and “Do what’s right” (meaning avoid disgracing the family and avoid jail)—and how that guidance resonated with her. He uses the anecdote to illustrate how modern, low‑tech video tools let people connect across complex personal and cultural networks from a modest office in Connecticut. Tom then praises the broader community’s enthusiastic response to the Geriatric1927 series, noting the diverse age groups and backgrounds of viewers. He compliments Niti on her podcast, corrects a minor spelling detail of his own name, and encourages her to try video‑blogging himself, asserting that if he can do it, she can too. The vlog ends with a friendly farewell.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Tom Guarriello. I'm recording a video blog response to my friend Nadieh Bonn, who yesterday recorded a podcast in response to a post that I made on my blog about Geriatric 1927. Excuse me. That's a pretty complicated set of twists and turns, but that's how, that's how we do things nowadays. Connect with one another in complicated ways. But given the simplicity of the technology— witness the fact that I'm able to do this here in my little office in Connecticut— anybody can do these things nowadays. Nidi's podcast about her grandfather and the role that he played in allowing her, giving her permission to go to engineering school was really touching. You know, here was a young woman in India living in a very traditional culture. Her family was understandably concerned about her leaving home to go to school in a strange place, doing things that they had no no way of knowing about. And her elderly grandfather made it possible for her to do so by giving her two very simple pieces of information: "Follow your art," and, you know, "Do what's right." And "do what's right" meant two things: don't disgrace your family and don't end up in jail. I chuckle about those two pieces of advice because they're so simple. And yet they really contained a wealth of important meanings for Nitti to hear her grandfather say those things. She knew exactly what he meant. Don't disgrace your family. Lots of ways to disgrace your family. Don't do that. Don't end up in jail. Lots of ways to end up in jail. Don't do that. So all of this was in response to Geriatric 1927's series of videos which have been really remarkably responded to by people on YouTube. And all of us who are watching what's happening in the development of these new ways of communicating with one another can't help but be really impressed by the kind of response from people of all ages, all kinds of people to Geriatric 1927's series of wonderful stories that I wrote about briefly in my blog yesterday. So I just wanted to be able to say to Needy, great job on your podcast. You pronounced my name really well, Guarriello. One little quibble, two R's when you spell it on your blog. And I'm really glad that you did that and I decided I needed to respond in this way so that now we can figure out how to get you to be video blogging as well. Because if I can do it, Needy, you can do it as well. So take care, best bye.
