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Lara Hanson of Kent has created an innovative Memory Coin to digitally preserve important memories.
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Lara Hanson of Kent has created an innovative Memory Coin to digitally preserve important memories.
KENT—Back in 1973, Jim Croce sang, “If I could save time in a bottle / the first thing that I’d like to do / Is to save every day till eternity passes away / Just to spend them with you.”
Everyone occasionally has that feeling. Time is fleeting, our lives ephemeral, their meaning lost in the ether.
Lara Hanson, a Kent mother and innovative technological whiz, may not have a bottle in which to store memories, but she has a 21st-century answer to Croce’s plea —Vaulted Memory Coins, each about the size of a quarter, that can be easily pressed onto any object, storing the memories associated with that object.
Suddenly, stories about the table in the hall that has been coveted by successive generations, or the buggy in the barn that great-great-grandpa drove when courting his bride come to life, played back on our mobile phones with a tap.
Birthdays, weddings, youthful adventures, sun-filled days at the beach with our babies, and those final, tender, end-of-life memories can be stored and shared forever. Pressed on a personalized Christmas ornament or a birthday card, they can become a wonderful vehicle to record the happenings of the day.
The idea of creating these little “keepers of memories” developed after Hanson suffered a near-death experience following an ectopic pregnancy. “When I nearly died, I realized my kids wouldn’t know my stories,” she said. “Thirteen years ago, I went and stayed with a tribe in Panama — my kids wouldn’t have known about that. Videos are really helpful, and the coins can link to sources such as YouTube.”
But it doesn’t have to be videos of major events. “The connection between memories and keepsakes is profound,” she said. “We have Ancestry but there was no way to share the memories of things in the household. There is a little wooden bird on my bedside table that belonged to my great-grandmother. I wanted to connect that little hummingbird to her poetry book, which she wrote at the turn of the last century. My children would never have made that connection —that was the backdrop on creating this.”
She said many people use Facebook to store memories, but with so much content on that site after only one year, most people can’t find photos of their last birthday. By contrast, each Vaulted memory coin can hold up to 10 memories, which are then stored in a “vault.” “If you want to add another coin, you can do it,” she said. “The vault is limitless.”
“This brings everything to life. It’s important to preserve these memories,” she said, predicting that they could literally recast the lens of American history.
She recalled that her father served in Vietnam, a land she later visited. “We know it was the subtext for a lot his history, and now my children can hear about it from someone who was in Vietnam. I have another vaulted memory about my mother’s cookbook and the stories about it. I want my children to know the family history.”
To vault a memory, users scan the coin with their smartphone and register the related object in the accompanying app. Users can then add images, videos, audio, and text to capture the history of the given object, which can then be played back by any future users who scan the coin.
For her memory chips, she adapted a former digital development used to authenticate product brands with the mobile phone.
Each coin is $5; Vaulted offers storage at no additional fee.
She also works with institutions such as White Memorial in Litchfield, universities, corporations, sports programs and other organizations to permanently store their legacies.
Last year her new business announced its participation in Techstars’ accelerator program. “It’s a pretty exclusive thing,” she reported. “It’s sponsored by JP Morgan and supports new technology companies.”
Abstract art display in Wassaic for Upstate Art Weekend, July 18-21.
WASSAIC — Art enthusiasts from all over the country flocked to the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley to participate in Upstate Art Weekend, which ran from July 18 to July 21.
The event, which “celebrates the cultural vibrancy of Upstate New York”, included 145 different locations where visitors could enjoy and interact with art.
On Saturday, July 20, The Wassaic Project hosted numerous community events. Will Hutnick, the director of artistic programming, said “We’ve been a part of it since the beginning, this is the fifth year of UPAW.”
Most of the action was based at Maxon Mills, the seven-floor grain mill located in the heart of Wassaic. On exhibit was work from 30 artists, 18 of whom were past residents of The Wassaic Project. “Artists can come and do a residency here, meaning they live and work with one another for a couple months at a time,” Hutnick stated.
The first floor held work by Petra Szilagyi, who uses dirt and linseed oil to construct images of paranormal concepts, most of which include bats. They reflected that a recent trip to a fifth sense competition in Vietnam was the influence behind the exhibit.
Across the floor was Tiffany Smith’s interactive installation which incorporated plants and wicker chairs, all of which were objects associated with her Carribean upbringing. “The room being filled with plants is symbolic of hurricane prep which often included bringing the plants from outside into the house,” Smith said.
As visitors made their way up the narrow wooden stairs, music could be heard from behind the walls. The echoing music was Daniel Shieh’s installation, entitled Mother’s Anthem, which played a recording of the American Anthem in 30 languages. The languages ranged from Spanish and Italian to Navajo and Bengali.
Each floor was filled with artwork of all mediums, including painting, fibers, collage and photography. Rachel Bussières, who switched her concentration after watching the 2017 solar eclipse, uses varying light sources to produce lumen prints. During the wildfires, she recounted that she “made a new exposure each day to capture the changing air quality”.
Luciana Abait also incorporates the natural world into her pieces, instead using maps. An environmental activist originally from Argentina, Abait’s work highlights “environmental fragility, specifically the impacts it has on immigrants.” Her installation that is currently on display at Maxon Mills, takes the form of a mountain range built solely from maps of the US and Argentina.
Throughout the day, visitors could “Arm Wrestle 4 A Popsicle”. Winners had the choice of 3 playfully flavored trout-inspired popsicles - Nightcrawler, Power Bait, and Salmon Roe. Artist Katie Peck, who spent the day in costume as a rainbow trout, encouraged guests to step up and try their hand at an arm wrestle.
Shibori Indigo dyeing, group meditation, and dance workshops were open for community members of all ages as well.
While the daytime activities fostered appreciation of fixed art, a dance party until midnight at The Lantern Inn offered guests a space for performative art.
When describing the environment of The Wassaic Project, Smith emphasized, “It’s all community, it’s all love.”
A serene scene from the Amenia garden tour.
AMENIA — The much-anticipated annual Amenia Garden Tour drew a steady stream of visitors to admire five local gardens on Saturday, July 13, each one demonstrative of what a green thumb can do. An added advantage was the sense of community as neighbors and friends met along the way.
Each garden selected for the tour presented a different garden vibe. Phantom’s Rock, the garden of Wendy Goidel, offered a rocky terrain and a deep rock pool offering peaceful seclusion and anytime swims. Goidel graciously welcomed visitors and answered questions about the breathtaking setting.
Amenia Finance Director Charlie Miller welcomed visitors to his Bog Hollow Road garden in Wassaic, a manicured expansive yard with well-placed garden beds framing a far-reaching view. He said he plans carefully each winter for the next spring’s improvement.
The organic, environmentally responsible Maitri Farm was next, a lesson in coordinating agriculture with natural balance. The farm stand and a walk among the greenhouses brought visitors together.
Near the center of Amenia was the garden of Polly Pitts-Garvin, offering a chance to visit a robust vegetable garden with raised beds to be envious of and a remarkable absence of any insects or usual vegetable garden problems.
At Chez Cheese, the vast garden acreage surrounding the 1850s historic home of Joan Feeney and Bruce Phillips in Millerton, visitors could begin at refreshment stations where walking tour maps of the 15-acre property were available. There were streams and ponds with docks, and a dozen bridges arranged around the landscape. In the 19th-century, the property had been the home of the Wilson Cheese Factory, inspiring the name of the estate.
The Amenia Garden Tour was supported this year by Paley’s Garden Center in Sharon.
Gary Dodson working a tricky pool on the Schoharie Creek, hoping to lure something other than a rock bass from the depths.
PRATTSVILLE, N.Y. — The Schoharie Creek, a fabled Catskill trout stream, has suffered mightily in recent decades.
Between pressure from human development around the busy and popular Hunter Mountain ski area, serious flooding, and the fact that the stream’s east-west configuration means it gets the maximum amount of sunlight, the cool water required for trout habitat is simply not as available as in the old days.
This is not a new phenomenon. It does seem to be getting worse, though.
Gary Dodson and I convened where the creek makes its final run into the Schoharie reservoir, part of the New York City water supply system, on a semi-broiling Thursday afternoon, July 11.
The goal was simple. Catch smallmouth bass, which abound in the lower section of the river.
This was hot stuff — as in an 80-degree water temperature.
The air temperature was actually slightly less at 77.
After negotiating the intensely slippery rocks, festooned with treacherous algae, the first major pool presented several difficulties, with a back eddy competing with a main flow and several large trees draped about the whole thing.
I hit on the simplest strategy, which was to flip a weighted attractor fly called a Tequilley into the start of the eddy so it would proceed slowly but steadily into the maelstrom, sinking all the while.
This worked. A proper adult smallmouth, with bronze coloring and vertical stripes, took the thing.
The point-and-shoot camera finally died, however, and I was not going to try to fumble my phone out for a nice but routine fish photo.
Why not?
Because I guarantee the fish would have made a sudden, last-moment bolt for freedom, causing me to drop the device into the drink.
Gary moved downstream while I continued trying to annoy the residents of the pool, succeeding a couple of times with different colored Wooly Buggers.
Then we all got bored and I moved off, where Gary was catching rock bass and cussing them out for not being something else.
I have to admit, they are not the most compelling critters. Something about the red eyes.
This latest trip was dominated by extremely tedious and distasteful Harry Homeowner activities, but on both Wednesday and Thursday mornings I prowled Woodland Valley Creek. By “morning” I mean “dawn,” because that was when the water temps were down to a barely acceptable 64.
I made the acquaintance of several stocked browns and of a handful of their wild cousins. The wild fish are smaller and nimbler.
The successful ploy was an Adams wet fly, size 16, drifted behind something big, like a Parachute Adams or Stimulator.