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Disasters and “the forgetting” — 6 Comments

  1. Neo:

    Regarding the tsunami …

    You have Frank Martins’ “VariFrank” site among your links. I first ran across it when one of the major new sites referenced ‘Today, I was “Unprofessional”…’

    It is still there, at the bottom of his January 2005 archive

    If the link doesn’t make it in this comment, it is well worth searching on his site.

  2. Well, apparently it didn’t. I still suggest actually looking for it on his site. You wont be disappointed.

  3. Dostoevsky wrote that Lisbon tragedy was instrumental in ascent of nihilism and atheism in Russia. He had a point, and I believe that the same, probably, is true for the West.

  4. There were loads of European tourists with digital cameras in Thailand when the tsunami struck and even more who had vacationed there previously, so there was a personal connection. It probably also didn’t hurt that the Euros got to show their genenerosity in comparison to the “stingy” Americans. I can still remember Germans making snide remarks about Bush sending a carrier. NGOs loved the coverage, as did the grief counsellors who were anxious to travel to the tropics to counsel people whose language they couldn’t speak.

  5. I’m currently reading the Iliad, and it is interesting to me how many stories are interspersed through-out the story. In the heat of battle, the combatants will even stop to tell a miniature story, giving some kind of import to the situation.

    Stories are our collective memory; in researching genealogy, my father has mentioned relatives who died in the influenza epidemic. Without that mention, I would’ve completely forgotten the very brief treatment given it by my grade-school history class.

    The stories you tell on your blog add to my knowledge of ‘our’ memory. The burden rests on those that are older and wiser to choose and tell their stories wisely, that the younger ones such as myself may be able to contextualize our times and season our judgment by the experiences of our elders.

    In other words, keep up the good work. 🙂

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