Remembrance of Things Past | The Frontline Newsletter

1 week ago

How could you forget? The mysterious, mischievous memory-machine

Whether we are trying to pull off a pickle recipe for our family or trying to impress a gathering with a well-timed joke, a large chunk of our daily cognitive, social, and communicative activities are invested towards making memories, and retrieving old ones. It is safe to assume that one cannot study memory sans a study of forgetting, that commemoration …

Memory Remember Forget Original Experience Memory Studies

1 month ago

Not a Story to Pass On | The Frontline Newsletter

The Hindu

Published : Feb 19, 2025 20:01 IST - 6 MINS READ Dear reader, Let me tell you about trauma. The final lines of Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, an agonisingly beautiful work that I revisit at regular intervals, include this seemingly embarrassing, self-flagellating line: “It was not a story to pass on.” Beloved, as you probably know, is a disturbing thesis …

India Trauma Holocaust Collective Morrison Collective Trauma Not A Story

Tips on overcoming the loss of cherished, personal belongings in disasters

Associated Press

Losing important sentimental belongings — those items that represented who you are — can be traumatic for those who go through disasters that destroy homes. “Our body also takes time to absorb the blow.” Recovering from loss requires “understanding the impact that it’s having,” says O’Connor. Document the stories,” says Matt Paxton, a decluttering expert and author of “Keep the …

Things Paxton

2 months ago

How images, music and material keep memories alive

The Hindu

What does a woman rolling a giant concrete slab over an open land have to do with a woman sitting at a table with multiple versions of herself — folding and refolding a napkin in different ways? Through film, art installations, recorded music and a non-formal performance, Nimi led the audience through the journey of making this layered work even …

Work Mirror Remember Her Mother Forget Nimi

2 months, 1 week ago

Are We Forgetting to Remember in the Digital Age?

The Hindu

Published : Jan 14, 2025 21:39 IST - 4 MINS READ In my childhood, memory was something valuable. Memory no longer lives in our hearts and minds but in our phones, hard drives, and in the invisible “cloud”. In contemporary times, “memory” is not contained in one person or even in a single entity. Perhaps it is only the memory …

Memories Memory Age Digital Remember Our Memories Our Hearts

3 months, 3 weeks ago

Echoes of survival: how witness literature confronts history’s darkest chapters

The Hindu

With her groundbreaking win of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, Han Kang has carved a unique place in history as the first South Korean and woman Asian writer of this esteemed award. Han’s writing is a prime example of witness literature — a genre dedicated to documenting the lived experiences of those impacted by trauma and historical violence. Collective …

Literature Historical War Witness Palestinian Han Human

4 months ago

Memory, starring Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, is a tender film about love, family and forgetting

ABC

Memory is the scaffolding that underpins our lives, inaccurate or unreliable as it may be. Fast facts about Memory What: An emotionally moving treatise on remembrance and being seen Director: Michael Franco Starring: Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard, Merritt Wever, Jessica Harper, Elsie Fisher, Josh Charles Where: In cinemas now Likely to make you feel: Tender and moved Memory plays with …

Relationship Memory Jessica Olivia His Brother Isaac Sylvia

4 months, 2 weeks ago

Forgivance, forgetting and the Constitution

New Indian Express

While our life continues to change with the ebb and flow of time, each of us finds meaning in new and different ways, with some aspects of our identities being forgotten—much like dust in the wind. Friedrich Nietzsche, in his seminal work ‘On the Use and Abuse of History for Life’, emphasised the importance of forgetting as a fundamental component …

Forget

7 months, 2 weeks ago

A childhood memory sent her father to prison for murder. Was it real?

LA Times

The memory of the murder, buried in her mind for 20 years, came back in a flash. But the contradictions did not cause jurors to disbelieve her, said Harry MacLean, who wrote about the case in the book “Once Upon a Time: A True Story of Memory, Murder and the Law.” “The problem was, the jury sat there and took …

Memories Murder Memory Case Franklin Janice Father

8 months ago

Review of Charan Ranganath’s Why We Remember: We are designed to forget

The Hindu

For Marcel Proust, it was the taste of a madeleine dipped in tea that triggered vivid childhood recollections. The pertinent question, then, is not “why do we forget?” but “why do we remember?” Malleable memories Memory, as he illustrates, transcends a mere recollection of the past; it is a lens through which we perceive ourselves and the world, guiding what …

Memories Information Memory Remember Charan Ranganath Ranganath Why We Remember

8 months, 1 week ago

The people we like can influence the connections our memory makes

Hindustan Times

Sweden), Memory is so much more than a storage unit in our minds. The people we like can influence the connections our memory makes Our memory helps us learn from experiences and develop new knowledge by integrating and updating information. However, before our study, it was unclear whether this phenomenon extends to the brain’s ability to connect information from different …

Information Memory Knowledge Influence Groups Different Maria

8 months, 3 weeks ago

PTSD Awareness Day 2024: Date, Theme, History, Significance & Activities

The Quint

The history of PTSD dates back to the 50s, when Hippocrates wrote a poem about a soldier who was haunted by PTSD-like combat flashbacks. During this time, soldiers returning from the war were plagued by shell shock, which was believed to be caused by PTSD. However, it was the Vietnam War that provided a new understanding of the link between …

Ptsd

11 months, 2 weeks ago

Opinion: Think life just keeps getting worse? Try being nostalgic — for the present

LA Times

Yellow film storage boxes holding Kodachrome vintage transparency slides. In general, nostalgia is deemed a healthy coping mechanism in psychology research, at least the classic form known as “personal nostalgia.” When the present feels painful — lonely, lacking in direction or meaning, even just too cold — we naturally sink into a soothing brain bath of positive memories to feel …

Memories Nostalgia Life Present Routledge Past Nostalgic

1 year, 1 month ago

How ‘rememory’ acts as a literary tool in confronting America’s racial past

The Hindu

“Sethe gathered hair from the comb and leaning back tossed it into the fire. Utilised within literary narratives, Rememory serves as a poignant medium for storytelling, delving into the harrowing past of African-American enslavement and the suffering upon which the country’s foundations were laid. These words by Morrison encapsulate how an individual’s memory of their past resides within the collective …

Trauma Historical Memory Healing Past Experiences Morrison

1 year, 1 month ago

10 common reactions to trauma we should be aware of

Hindustan Times

When we experience trauma, it can deeply impact our daily functioning, the way we think and our behavioural patterns. Understanding common trauma responses is a pivotal step towards healing and self-awareness," wrote Therapist Linda Meredith. 10 common reactions to trauma we should be aware of Common reactions to trauma that we should know about: Replaying events: When we are traumatised …

Trauma Feel Reactions Common Reactions

1 year, 1 month ago

The book of memory

Live Mint

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them, and perhaps this is not entirely untrue. Commissioning a writer to trace the family history, the book was their pilot and an experiment, and a “mind-blowing experience” with the depth and breadth of stories and memories they gathered. Of her first book, …

Family India Personal Bengaluru Publishing Life Mother

1 year, 7 months ago

Review: In sci-fi thinker ‘Aporia,’ altering the past has personal consequences

LA Times

When it comes to time travel, the go-to scenario is usually, of course, snuffing out Hitler. It’s that opportunity that provides the tightly wound cause-and-effect power to writer-director Jared Moshé’s small-scale fantasy “Aporia.” A mix of rough-around-the-edges logic and heartfelt suspense, it likably reclaims sci-fi’s speculative, moral heft from the province of shiny, plastic world-ending epics, dropping it squarely onto, …

Sophie Greer Aporia Moshé

1 year, 8 months ago

All Wars Are Fought Twice (2022) : Throughline

NPR

All Wars Are Fought Twice Enlarge this image toggle caption Nik Wheeler/CORBIS Nik Wheeler/CORBIS "All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory," writes Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen. A refugee from the Vietnam War, Nguyen calls himself a scholar of memory — someone who studies how we remember events of the …

War Nguyen Viet Thanh Nguyen 2022 Throughline

1 year, 11 months ago

Memory as a mood-map: review of Naveen Kishore’s Mother Muse Quintet

The Hindu

Naveen Kishore’s Mother Muse Quintet is a moving ode to the inevitable passage of time, to individual memory as it attempts to mark this passage, to the love that is careful remembering and to the loss that is forgetting. In employing a metaphor straight out of Hansel and Gretel, the opening lines of Mother Muse Quintet foreshadow what is to …

Memory Mother His Mother Mother Muse Quintet Quintet

2 years, 2 months ago

Three films that hold a mirror up to our own troubling times

LA Times

A number of established filmmakers this last year unveiled their most personal works to date. Christian Bale, from left, Margot Robbie and John David Washington star in “Amsterdam,” a movie in which Robbie and Washington’s characters cannot be together in 1930s America. “It’s profoundly ironic and even tragic that two people cannot be together in this country because of different …

Amsterdam Empire Black Movie Washington Way Paul

2 years, 7 months ago

Review: Savi and the Memory Keeper by Bijal Vachharajani

Hindustan Times

Savitri is a grumpy teenager, forced to abandon her friends and move to Shajarpur “a city with the best climate in the world” while mourning the loss of her father. I was cold and hard to everyone.” Vachharajani lays bare the coping mechanisms of Savi’s entire family and shows the loneliness and isolation that loss brings. Something was always more …

Nature Book Her Father Savi Shajarpur Vachharajani

2 years, 8 months ago

Joy Harjo picture book ‘Remember’ to come out next year

Associated Press

NEW YORK — Joy Harjo, who recently completed a three-year run as the country’s poet laureate, will have a picture book out next spring. Random House Children’s Books announced Wednesday that Harjo’s “Remember,” adapted from her celebrated poem of the same name, is scheduled for March 21, 2023. Admirers of “Remember” extend beyond the poetry community: NASA announced last year …

Harjo

2 years, 10 months ago

Watching her mother's dementia motivated Noga Arikha to study when the "self" ceases to exist

Salon

We are who we tell ourselves we are. While Arikha was studying the mysterious conditions of a group of patients in a Paris hospital's neuropsychiatry unit, her mother, the poet Anne Atik, was meanwhile navigating through her own experience of dementia. Then I was getting into the research on interreception and the science of the embodied sense of self, which …

Science Loss Dementia Memory Experience Covid Book

2 years, 10 months ago

Excerpt: In The Language of Remembering by Aanchal Malhotra

Hindustan Times

The Hindi writer Krishna Sobti, born in Gujrat, present-day Pakistan, had once said that Partition was difficult to forget but dangerous to remember. “No matter how nuanced a memory we may collect from another, no matter how close it may feel to us, no matter how deeply it may inform our understanding of the past, it will never truly be …

Family Pakistan Memory Partition Jammu Remember Matter

3 years, 6 months ago

9/11: As the decades pass, the act of remembering evolves

The Independent

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “Our present influences how we remember the past — …

History Memories Memorial Long Sign Act Past

3 years, 6 months ago

Your memory of 9/11 is probably wrong

Salon

In my first recollection, the boom and the rumble when the plane hit the first tower were ominous. Writing in Salon back in 2018, Dr. Jack Debeic observed, "Memories are biological phenomena and as such are dynamic… Reactivated memories are susceptible to modification." Fox News' Steve Doocy then corroborated the assertion, saying, "I actually remember things like that… According to …

Memories Events Memory Giuliani Remember Morning That Day

3 years, 6 months ago

9/11: As the decades pass, the act of remembering evolves

Associated Press

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. — Across the vast field where the plane fell out of the sky so many years ago, all is quiet. “Our present influences how we remember the past — sometimes in ways that are known and sometimes in ways that we don’t realize,” says Jennifer Talarico, a psychology professor at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania who studies how people …

History Memories Memorial Long Act Past Remember

3 years, 7 months ago

Existence, anxiety, and collective memory: Traditional Judaism’s salve for suffering

ABC

The predominant characteristic of contemporary Western mass-consciousness is anxiety. One such approach — one that holds particular relevance for our situation today through its conceptualisation of the human struggle as cyclical and metaphysical, rather than linear and historical, and its emphasis on shared practice, experiences, and values, community embeddedness, and spiritual transcendence — can be found in the Jewish tradition. …

History World Memory Traditional Jewish Jewish History Anxiety

3 years, 7 months ago

Man Loses 20 Years of Memories In a Single Night

News 18

A man from Granbury in the US state of Texas woke up next to his wife, Ruth, just like any other morning in July last year. Daniel Porter, who was 36-years-old then, thought he was “either drunk,” slept with a random woman or worse he had been kidnapped by a stranger, his wife told Daily Mail. In a night, Porter’s …

His Wife Porter Ruth

3 years, 8 months ago

An artist who weaves memories of the Partition in her work

Live Mint

Ideas of borders, migration and identity often evoke emotions that might be complex to express. How does your paper work weave “the warp of memories with the weft of politically charged statements to create a fabric that questions identity and existence”? In my works, one of the layers is always derived from memories and past, while the other layer depicts …

History Memories Work Partition Past Works My Grandfather

3 years, 9 months ago

We are too focused on nostalgia when we should be looking to the future

The Independent

There’s a cognitive phenomenon called rosy retrospection. It isn’t unfathomable to understand why this entered the millennial psyche – when the future is uncertain, the knowable nature of the past can be unchallenging and soothing. From Donald Trump’s campaign to “make America great again” to Brexit, many long for an idealised time that may or may not have ever existed. …

Past

3 years, 11 months ago

Op-Ed: Remember Artsakh but never forget the Armenian genocide

LA Times

A funeral detail in Yerevan, Armenia, with the casket of a volunteer fighter killed in October in the conflict over Artsakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, an autonomous region in Azerbaijan. All the usual emotions that accompany April 24, Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day — anger, sadness, frustration, isolation, honor and more — will be on display Saturday, but this year in …

Genocide Turkey Azerbaijan Armenia Armenian Armenians Artsakh

3 years, 11 months ago

Op-Ed: ‘Never forget’ commands us to remember Holocaust horrors, not just the bravery of survivors

LA Times

Rose Schindler, in 2019, showed the identification number tattooed on her arm by Nazis when she arrived at Auschwitz in 1944. The findings prompted Gideon Taylor, president of the Material Claims Conference, to call the survey “shocking and saddening” and to question why America hasn’t done a better job of Holocaust education. “To the traditional sources of anti-Semitism,” the AJC …

History Holocaust Jews Holocaust Remembrance

4 years ago

Why lockdown is making us nostalgic

The Independent

Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about …

Nostalgia Writing Pandemic Photos Cent Past Our Weekly Guide

4 years ago

In Memory of Memory: Maria Stepanova shares scraps of her familial past and paints a poignant portrait of her roots

Firstpost

By John Williams Russian poet and journalist Maria Stepanova’s Aunt Galya died at 80, surrounded by “layered strata of possessions, objects and trinkets.” Years before, Galya had begun “the process of decluttering her apartment, and this gradually consumed her,” Stepanova writes, an endless cycle of “tidying and reevaluating” during which “there was no longer any deciding whether a particular thing …

Family Book This Book Maria Stepanova Sebald Stepanova Writes In Memory Of Memory

4 years, 5 months ago

Why Parents Take Remembrance Photos After Pregnancy Loss And Stillbirth

Huff Post

LOADING ERROR LOADING Chrissy Teigen and John Legend shared their heartbreaking pregnancy loss news late Wednesday with an emotional message and remembrance photos taken at the hospital. — doreen st. félix October 1, 2020 “Photos can help us remember details that we don’t remember because our emotions were so powerful and all-encompassing during the crisis period,” Reidenberg explained. “I have …

Pregnancy Parents Loss Photos Pain Sharing Baby

4 years, 6 months ago

Invaluable memories

The Hindu

S eldom do academics pen autobiographies; this is perhaps so because they spent most of their lives thinking “about” the world in all its macro and micro dimensions so much so that they often avoid themselves. It is in this context that Oommen’s autobiography, Ormapadikal, assumes significance, both for readers interested in the history of academic institutions in Kerala and …

Research Social Kerala Academics Economics Life Academic

4 years, 6 months ago

Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police is a terrifying chronicle of a totalitarian regime, examining remembrance as protest

Firstpost

My grandmother who turned 84 this year, lost her elder sister a little over a month ago. When I heard this news I found it ironic that I was in the middle of reading Yoko Ogawa’s minimal yet visceral novel The Memory Police, which deals with big ideas of authoritarian regimes and vanishing memories with a kind of lightness of …

Memories World Memory Remember Novel Her Sister My Grandma

4 years, 10 months ago

After a week of grief, remembering Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life, which promises a happy eternity

Firstpost

At a time we are surrounded by mortal fear, it’s perhaps natural that the mind drifts towards death, which has inspired some of the most inventive cinematic narratives. As soon as you’ve relived your memory, you will move on, taking only that memory with you.” And the social workers are not kidding when they say they’ll “recreate it on film”. …

Film Life Memory Man One Memory

5 years ago

What will you remember at the end of your life?

Al Jazeera

A therapeutic musician finds that while the details of end-of-life memories may differ, the themes are often the same. “That was my mother’s favourite song,” one woman, who did not know her own name, tenderly said. “Oh honey, I don’t know.” ‘I know why I’m still alive’ One of the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s is the inability to acquire new …

Sky Memory End Feel Woman Your Life Lost

5 years, 1 month ago

At Weinstein trial, defense takes aim at accusers’ memories

Associated Press

NEW YORK — With Harvey Weinstein’s fate hinging largely on what his accusers remember about alleged sexual assaults years ago, his lawyers Friday turned to an expert known for studying false, repressed and unreliable memories. “It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to know that memory fades over time,” cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus told jurors at Weinstein’s New York City rape trial. …

Memories Sexual Weinstein Loftus Sciorra

5 years, 3 months ago

Why our memory fails, and how to improve it : NPR

NPR

Did That Really Happen? Perhaps the most pervasive false belief, held by about 60 percent of Americans, is that memory works like a video camera. Memory is not like a video camera; a better way to think of it is as an act of reconstruction, or what you might call "mental paleontology." More resources: The Cognitive Aging and Memory Lab …

Memory Fails

5 years, 5 months ago

Mystic Mantra: Letâ€™s devote ourselves to forgiving and forgetting

Deccan Chronicle

Life brings us many disappointments and challenges. Second, anger not only upsets us emotionally, but it has a deleterious effect on our physical body, causing stress, which in turn contributes to stress-related ailments. Instead of keeping our attention on what can help us, such as thinking of God, meditating, doing selfless service, and achieving spiritual benefits, we have wasted the …

Hurt Forgive Forget

5 years, 7 months ago

Why memorising poetry still matters for human connection: Done right, the classroom habit has several benefits

Firstpost

Done right, memorising poetry is an intellectual exercise that illuminates the structure and logic of the text. Understanding our own sentiments through someone else’s words can also provide a thrilling sense of connection, of shared humanity across time and space. Here are two lines from that poem: And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me–filled me …

Poem Memorising Poetry Memorising

6 years, 5 months ago

Memories of trauma are unique because of how we respond to threat

Salon

Most of what you experience leaves no trace in your memory. Researchers believe traumatic memories are a kind of conditioned threat response. Explicit memories of trauma reflect the terror of the original experience and may be less organized than memories acquired under less stressful conditions. Retrieval of traumatic memories under safe conditions when levels of stress are relatively low and …

Stress Brain Threat Experience Responses Amygdala Stress Hormones

6 years, 6 months ago

Lost a loved one recently? Then be a part of this initiative

Live Mint

Photo: HDFC Life The death of a loved one is never easy. You could also find solace in the beautiful life lessons and values left by the person you’ve lost. After all, when you live the values and implement the life lessons your loved ones have taught you, you bring them back to life. Some of the people connected with …

Life Loved

6 years, 8 months ago

Are 40 per cent of us possessed by fictional memory?

India Today

In a recent survey on people's first memories, it has been found that nearly 40 per cent of people on whom the research was conducted had a fictional first memory. The study from researchers at City, University of London, the University of Bradford and Nottingham Trent University found that around 38.6 per cent of a survey of 6,641 people claimed …

Memories Memory Early 40

6 years, 9 months ago

Looking Back: Reflecting On The Past To Understand The Present

NPR

Looking Back: Reflecting On The Past To Understand The Present Enlarge this image toggle caption Gpointstudio/Getty Images/Cultura RF Gpointstudio/Getty Images/Cultura RF In a way, all of us are time travelers. Sponsor Message Hidden Brain Looking Back: Reflecting On The Past To Understand The Present Looking Back: Reflecting On The Past To Understand The Present Listen · 50:27 50:27 "We're chewing …

Nostalgia Past Regret Ted Present Routledge

7 years, 2 months ago

With everything recorded in books, what happens to memory?

Deccan Chronicle

The art of writing was discovered initially in Mesopotamia and then in Egypt. Though people would like to believe that writing travelled from Mesopotamia to Egypt through the trade routes, it’s a fact that the Egyptian scripts and writing developed separately. While writing was developed to record facts on government and culture, it’s said that when the Egyptians rushed to …

Books Memory Egypt Able Remember Showroom Mendel

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