Archive for the ‘History and Memory’ Category
The craft and character of oral history
Final presentations of our oral history projects, in this last week of fall semester My oral history class ended today, with the last batch of final presentations by my classmates. I want to remember this class forever. It was inspirational to listen to my classmates over the semester, to hear their tales from the field [...]
December 1st, 2011Ten years later.
Taken at 9:59 a.m., New Yorkers witness the collapse of the South Tower. Each face is more powerful than the next. By freelance photographer Patrick Witty. We’ll call this the requisite commentary-on-the-anniversary blog. Probably every American is reflecting on that Tuesday, September 11 ten years ago, in their own way, to many different degrees of [...]
September 9th, 2011“History is a giant stone that lies on top of us”
What can films like Apocalypse Now tell us about our past? And if it’s all we’re getting, how can we think intently about where the Vietnam war fits in our historic and present day lives? Americans don’t tend to see the past in their everyday lives. If they do, it might be because of a [...]
February 1st, 2011Through the Disney lens
Atlanta got about five inches of snow last night, and in a city with very little equipment for clearing the roads and a populace that doesn’t often drive in snow, it means the entire city pretty much took a snow day. The free day allowed me time to finish up some projects around the apartment, [...]
January 11th, 2011More on the unsolvable morality of the atomic bomb
Remnants of a city, Hiroshima, August 1945 With the recent anniversaries of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there has been the inevitable stirring and rehashing of old debates. August 6 and August 9 (incidentally, the birthdays of my brothers Neil and Carl, respectively) marked military action of unprecedented extremity, and [...]
August 16th, 2010Stirring up old leaves, long settled: Willie McGee, family history, and good storytelling
Last Friday, while waiting to depart for Charleston, S.C. to visit my brother, I was listening to All Things Considered. Nothing too unusual for five o’clock on a weekday, until I heard Bridgette McGee-Robinson’s story, of an enduring curiosity and quest for answers regarding her grandfather, Willie McGee. In 1951, in the small town of [...]
May 12th, 2010