New Beginnings: Kim, Kris & Irene.

What a Weekend!


Kim & Kris got hitched and Irene got spawned in the Eastern Caribbean. The Monday morning news editors are jockeying to give both stories the visibility they deserve, and while there's a shortage of data to predict the future of Hurricane Irene and its potential affect on the U.S. mainland, there's plenty of information (and more to come) about the Kim Kardashian/Kris Humphries wedding.


When you're a star on reality TV or a professional basketball player, everything you do--good and bad--is documented on film, videotape, and in print. No so for the rest of us. We have our favorite photographs and some video of our kids and grandchildren growing up, but our entire collection of video doesn't get close to the amount of  video taken from multiple angles of the Kardashian-Humphries gala affair. 


Imagine, the images from your kids' lifetime don't add up to those of an evening of a lifetime. More important, when there's huge commercial value to your video, there's a plan to take care of those images so that they're protected from loss. With Irene swirling in the Caribbean this week, they'll be plenty of heartbroken people who lose lots, including their family's wedding photographs, as wind and floods invade the security of their homes. 


As you make a plan, build a kit, and stay informed in anticipation of a natural disaster, give some thought to how and what photos, video, color slides, and documents you want to protect . . . . unless your last name is Kardashian or Humphries. Then you can let others do it for you. If you're on your own though, check out our Important Things Index or the EvacuPacket, a Do-It-Yourself kit. If you decide to buy one, commemorate the first hurricane of the 2011 season and use coupon code ZCBA3B to save $10.00.


Have a memorable day!

Bye-bye Emily.

Greetings from South Florida!

Yeah! We dodged Emily!

Boo-o-o. The National Weather Service added a couple of storms to its prediction for this hurricane season.

What have you done to protect the things you want to enjoy and ensure that they're available for your children to enjoy? Digitize now. Take the photos on display in your living room. If you have the negatives or files and you've locked them away in your safe deposit box, good for you! If you’re like me, and you don’t know where they are, it would be a good idea to scan and make digital files of those photos now.

After all, if those photos are on display in your home, they’re the ones that you like the most. Make sure that they’ll be there for your children and grandchildren . . . all your grandchildren because once you replicate a photo electronically, you can make as many duplicates as you want. It’s easy.

Have a memorable day. 

Disaster Preparedness: Another Reminder

Tornadoes and floods devastated hundreds of thousands of acres this spring with more devastation sure to come as the crest of the Mississippi moves down river at record levels to Louisiana during the next couple of weeks. 

Damage from this extraordinary weather leaves television news commentators searching for new adjectives to describe the destruction, yet words can never convey the damage, personal, and communal grief like the photos and video images that they broadcast. 

Images are very powerful communicators.  While its nice that we can use Facebook to post images of found photographs to try to reunite an owner and his/her photos, it's safer and more reliable to care about our own legacy by creating digital files of our favorite photographs, color slides, and important documents, and storing them in a safe place, like the cloud. You can learn more at OurHeritageVault.com. 


Kimberly Lankford, Contributing Editor, Kiplinger's Personal Finance, offer some very good advice about disaster preparedness for the upcoming hurricane season and other calamities on the Kiplinger web site.

2011 Hurricane and Tropical Storm Forecasts

During the past week, some of the most well-known tropical storm and hurricane forecasters announced their expectations for the 2011 season that begins on June 1. While their early spring predictions generally lack pinpoint accuracy, they all indicate an active season with 3-5 intense hurricanes. New technologies and forecasting enable forecasters to watch storms develop and predict landfall 3-5 days before a storm comes ashore. Public safety sources encourage people to prepare for shelter-in-place emergencies and for evacuation. If required, you should plan to evacuate 2 days prior to the expected landfall.


2011 Hurricane and Tropical Storm Predictions

• Colorado State University
• Tropical Storms: 16
• Hurricanes: 9
• Intense Hurricanes: 5
• AccuWeather
• Tropical Storms: 15
• Hurricanes: 8
• Intense Hurricanes: 3
• Tropical Storm Risk
• Tropical Storms: 14.2
• Hurricanes: 7.5
• Intense Hurricanes: 3.6

2010 Actual Hurricanes and Tropical Storms

• Tropical Storms: 19
• Hurricanes: 12
• Intense Hurricanes: 5

61 Year Average of Hurricanes and Tropical Storms

• Tropical Storms: 10.5
• Hurricanes: 6.2
• Intense Hurricanes: 2.7

Making the Most of 30 Minutes: A Challenge Inspired by the Japanese Earthquake

Reports from Japan indicate that the residents of northeastern Japan had no significant warning in advance of the major earthquake that struck their communities on Friday, March 11 and about 30 minutes to prepare for a tsunami that followed. Further away from the epicenter of the earthquake, people had between 60 and 90 seconds to prepare for it, just enough time to turn off natural gas and find a place to hide and survive.

Whether it is seconds before one disaster or minutes between two, figuring out how to survive becomes almost instinctive, putting to good use the planning and training that you practiced. With so little time, there is no time for anything else.

Our Heritage Vault is an advocate for planning and preserving family photographs and important documents. It takes time to do a good job of selecting old photographs, digitally scanning them, creating electronic files of your favorites, and saving those files on the Internet. It is also important to create electronic files of documents ranging from your estate planning to insurance policies to deeds and titles, and much, much more.

Here’s the challenge. Take 30 minutes to identify the things that you would miss if you were among those who lost so much in northeastern Japan. Need help? Visit our website and look at the Important Things Index, a comprehensive list of things that we care about. If you live in an area prone to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and flooding rivers and streams or if you are otherwise susceptible fires, floods from broken pipes, and careless neighbors, take the challenge. 

Find out what you will miss and think about how you can prevent loss. Let us know if we can help or leave a comment about the things you'll miss. 

        

Sun Rays Can Damage Old Photos Just as Much as Hurricanes and Floods.

Although the start of 2011 hurricane season is still a few months away,  it may not be a hurricane or flood that sweep away the photos that trigger your favorite memories but something far less dramatic than fury of a tempestuous storm. There may be little things that can adversely affect your collection of old and vintage photographs with the same catastrophic effect as a major flood.

A color snapshot from 1967

One of those things is sunlight. Did you know that the sun's rays will cause more deterioration to photographs than storm clouds? Older color photographs are especially susceptible to the sun’s rays. Fluorescent lighting is also a problem and as more people use of energy efficient compact fluorescent lamps (CFL), photographic images that are on display may deteriorate more rapidly.

  

There are companies that can restore, or attempt to restore, images to their original look but it’s very expensive. Capturing a digital scan of an image before significant deterioration or damage makes a lot of sense. The size of the scan and the equivalent dpi (dots per square inch) will enable you to create a print of an image that is compatible with the original. Waiting until after there are faded colors make it much more expensive to achieve comparable results. Water damage and scratch removal will also add to the cost of restoration too.

Consider creating digital scans of your favorite 25 photographs at 600 dpi. If something happens, you can create print replications that will preserve your memories and you'll have the capacity, if you desire, to enlarge the original to a new image.

For more ideas about what you may want accessible in electronic file form, visit Our Heritage Vault. Our Do-It-Yourself (DIY) package, the EvacuPacket provides guidance, templates, and an emergency organizer for your favorite photos and important documents. Save $10 off the retail price of an EvacuPacket by using the code TB2HEG at the checkout counter.