Posts

On Priorities

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With a new semester, it begins again.   I am not talking about the classes, the meetings, the students, the committees, the scrambling to pick up loose strands left over from last semester. I am talking about the promises we make to ourselves.  It is our new year's ritual in a world of busy, whether it is manufactured or organic busy.  Everywhere I turn, people are making bold declarations. "I will say 'no' more often."  "I will only check email twice a day." "I will remember to stop and breathe."  "I promise to make time for what matters to me and to stop wasting time on things that don't matter."  "No more Facebook!"  "No more Netflix." "No more letting people dump stuff on my shoulders.  I choose me!" Everywhere I look, people want off the habitrail… Looking for meaning.  Purpose. Authenticity.  Time for the people and things we love.  The sense that we are in the right place, doing what we sho

The Irish Famine: LOL?

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They say comedy = tragedy + time .  A proposed television series set in Ireland during the Famine (1845-1852) has raised interesting questions about how to attribute meaning and weight to each variable in this particular equation. When screenwriter Hugh Travers, a Dublin native, mentioned in an interview that he had been given an open commission to develop a television program by Channel 4, and was working on a tragicomedy set during the Famine, he referred to it as a "kind of Shameless , set during the Famine."  Reaction was speedy, and quite what you would expect.  Most stories ran photos of Rowan Gillespie's Dublin memorial to Famine victims. The Daily Mail  led the race for the headline with, "Is this the Most Tasteless Idea for a Sitcom Ever?"  while IrishCentral.com's Irish-American pundit  Niall O'Dowd forgave those who thought this was an April Fool's joke . The Irish Times interviewed writers and historians who said it was in poo

The Historic Salem Re-Photography Class Photo of 2014

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There  was drama from beginning to end.  Getting desks and chairs and setting them up outside Old Town Hall.  Getting  bunch of parking tickets at 8:23 a.m. (OK, I admit I am posting this in part to provide a link to it -- so I can prove to the Parking Hearing Officer that my entire class was downtown to set up this photo. I am hoping s/he will have mercy on me and my promise to protest or pay all the tickets!)  Getting wet on the rainy, slushy way to and from our site to take a photo to enter into a contest for first year seminar class pictures.  Since our class was on The City: History, Memory and Imagination, I think we did OK.

Depression Under the Sofa: Trauma, Post-Memory and Antidepressants in Northern Ireland

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Prescription records in the United Kingdom were released recently by the Health and Social Care Board . Much has been made of the rates at which  antidepressants are prescribed in Northern Ireland -- at  two  and a half times more than in England, it turns out that the Northern Irish are being medicated to address anxiety and  depression more often than in almost any other region in the world.   Journalists have been quick to make knee-jerk observations about use by patients who are too young to be directly affected by the Troubles.   "The disparity is so huge that it warrants closer examination," said Steven McCaffrey of The Detail. The insinuation in both The Irish Times and t he BBC is that the Health Service in Northern Ireland is over-prescribing.   Health care professionals in Northern Ireland have noted for several years that patients who come to see a professional about mental health concerns tend to expect a prescription and are averse to alternative t

Nostalgia: A Cost/Benefit Analysis

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I am one of those extremely lucky people who is graced with an old friend. A longtime friend.  A friend who has known me from the pigtails  -- to the dreads -- to appropriately adult hair -- to the hair coloring conundrums of the moment.  A friend who remembers my fascination with Fisher Price "little people" and deep love for roller skates, who sat in the beater cars, offered kleenex in the wake of disastrous love affairs, celebrated victorious moments, made me laugh in the face of ordinary griefs.   Nothing I do or say will ever surprise her, quite simply because she has seen it all.  And, I like to think, vice versa. Lisa, my grandfather and I on a fall day long ago Last week, I was complaining about my life.  Why so little of this?  Why so much of that?  Why so difficult? Blah blah blah.  And my friend, my dear friend of these four decades, said, "You've got to stop it. You have to let it go." "Stop what?"  I asked. She said, "

The Salem Witch Trial Memorial - “What's This Memorial Really About?”

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I was supposed to give this talk today, but it got rained out.  I may have the chance to give it again sometime soon, but I thought I'd post this here in case anyone is interested. The Salem Witch Trial memorial was erected in 1992 to mark the tercentenary of the witch hysteria. It was designed as the first physical structure in the city of Salem to commemorate the trials and the execution of twenty innocent people suspected of witchcraft in 1692.    What a beautiful, reflective, introspective space.  People often forget just how long the memorial was in coming to fruition.   Historic Salem, Inc. created a committee in 1963 to commemorate what they then referred to as the Witch Delusion.   The idea was that the memorial would rest on Gallows Hill, where the hangings are believed to have taken place.   At that point, the Essex Institute, now part of the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Massachusetts Society for the Preservation of American Antiquities, now Histo

"Humbling Moments" at the Oral History Association Meeting

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While I wait in the airport for my husband to finish running a half marathon and then drag himself to come get me,  it's a good time to write a quick post about the 2014 Oral History Association Meeting in Madison, Wisconsin.  It was my first OHA meeting.  Seasoned oral historians and experts on reflection and analysis of the interview process Stacey Zembrzycki  and Anna Sheftel  invited me to participate in a roundtable conversation on humbling moments because of my insistence on discussing failure  in community collaborations more openly last spring at the 2014 National Council on Public History annual meeting .  The panel also included the trailblazing feminist oral historian Sherna Berger Gluck and Janis Thiessen , a thoughtful and critical historian of Canadian labor, business and religion.  We had really good attendance and a remarkably rich and flowing conversation, given the fact that there were about forty people in the room.