As I prepared for Kathy’s art exhibit reception this coming Saturday, I knew there was a video tape somewhere of Kathy talking about her art. In 1990 or 1991 she was working with Pam Wilkins, an artist representative specializing in corporate and healthcare art placement. One of her pieces was sold to MassMutual Insurance for their headquarters in Springfield. To introduce the art to the employees they created a nice video showing the art and letting the artists talk about their work. I remember we watched the tape once.

Despite my praises, Kathy was always too embarrassed to show it to visiting family and friends. One time a few years later, we went into MassMutual to show our graphics portfolio, hoping to pick up some free-lance work. Her artwork was on display in the visitors lobby. I looked up at the art. And looked over at Kathy and smiled. And she stepped on my foot. Gently. She had moved on, I guess.

Finding the tape ended up being the easy part. It was with a lot of her resumes and typed statements. Those are already at the exhibit in a little binder. The problem was how to view the tape. It has been years since we had a VHS player. In fact, the last company that made them stopped manufacturing a few months ago. I brought the tape to the Wilbraham Library and told them I would like to play it at Kathy’s reception. They looked in the storage of old tech and said they no longer had one. I did find a service in the area that could convert it to DVD for about $30, so that was my next plan. Walgreen’s and Walmart do it too but it takes three weeks.

Then Facebook came to the rescue. I posted my search to my friends and received a few offers. One friend nearby had one that played both VHS and DVDs. So now I had a way to play it at the reception if the tape still looked good. It took me a while to get it to work with my TV and the attached sound system. First I could see the pictures of the artists talking. But no sound. Then I changed settings and cords and heard Kathy talking for the first time in many years. But no video. Finally, I just used the TV inputs and turned off the stereo and there it was.

I was a little worried that hearing her voice again would make me sad or depressed. But it was really great to hear her again. This was before Huntington’s Disease had really kicked in.

Kathy lost her ability to speak years before she passed away. It was gradual but steady. As she lost control of her muscles, speaking became too much work. She just said less.

I decided to buy a little ion adapter from Amazon so that I could convert the tape myself. I have another tape I would like to do too. I bought a ‘used’ one, to save money. The box was pretty beaten up, but the adapter and software were brand new. It worked fine right away. With a little trimming on the Mac, it was ready to go. The volume did come out a little loud but it worked fine.

One thing I realize now is that we should all try to record our lives when we get the chance. Back in the old days, families would dress up and go to a portrait studio once or twice a year. Later Kodak let us shoot snapshots of everyday life and later 8mm and super-8 silent movies of people waving at the camera. When the home video camera became popular it was almost alway aimed at children and pets. Maybe in the age of the selfie, we should start recording our speaking voices and our thinking voices for our families. It’s worth a shot (pun intended).