10 Replies to “Psychology 1106 (Spring 07) – Memory”
Oddly enough, I actually did watch the Challenger disaster–I was in graduate school, and was flipping around for something unobtrusive to put on while I worked on a paper, and came across the countdown and, being a science fiction fan (I actually did my undergraduate senior thesis on political themes in science fiction), thought great, something that will go on for a while and I only will want to really watch for a minute or two.
Yeah like I said today, I did not know about it until I arrived home.
9/11 was odd, as I called home and said what for me, was the oddest thing ‘Is the President OK?’ I am no fan of W, and it surprised me. Plus, of course, I am not American. I actually asked that before asking ‘Is the Prime Minister safe?’?
Later that night some planes landed at our airport in Newfoundland. My wife volunteered to go help anyone that needed a French translater, obut only 4 planes were at our airport, most went to Gander.
An unforgettable day.
The hockey story is, of course, much more fun. That day was something. Someone from outside the US or USSR would not understand that series. It was an incredible time. in a country of 20 million at the time, 15 million watched the game that was boradcast live from Moscow at 1 pm our time.
Paul Henderson, the guy that scored the winner, he played for Toronto. Now, I am a Montreal fan, and I HATE Toronto. That night he was my hero. Of course, until the regular NHL season started….
I got immediate reinforcement of the Challenger memory–after watching it I went over to the department to find people to talk to about it, and I was the only one who knew about it, so I spent a few hours telling people. Not gonna forget that.
9/11–I remember mostly chunks here and there. It was an election day (funny, I do NOT remember for what races or if it was a primary or what), but I left the house early to vote, and then took the train down to work, feeling very virtuous; right near the end of the ride (around 8:45 or 8:50, it was just before I got out) I suddenly started feeling really sick to my stomach, bad enough that for the first time ever I stopped at the company cafeteria before going to my office to get myself a ginger ale. Standing in line to pay, I heard some people saying that a plane flew into the World Trade Center, it must have been some student pilot accident. By the time I got to my office, the bones of the actual story was all over the place. My first impulse was to get the hell out of the building and the area–we overlooked Times Square and I figured we had a big target painted on us. The next thing was to try to get ahold of my sister, who worked right across the street from the Towers. The first I managed, although I had to walk (no subways running, and the buses were overflowing); it took hours before we could reach my sister (she walked back over the Brooklyn Bridge to Brooklyn and eventually made it home), though, because the phone lines were overloaded as well. My strongest memory of the day, though, was that it was a really beautiful autumn day; I had walked over to a friend’s house near Central Park, and we didn’t want to keep watching the same thing over and over again on tv, so we went into the park and watched fighter planes flying over the park. Totally surreal.
I have absolutely no memory of the hockey story, of course, totally off my radar. I don’t think I’ve ever watched a hockey game, even (*quickly ducks*). But it’s a great story!
Someone at the office (a publishing house) asked who could have done such a thing, and I immediately thought of Al Quaeda, because of the huge fuss the Republicans made when Clinton attacked one of their bases (He’s trying to distract us! They’re no threat to us! Clinton cheating on his wife is a threat to us!). When I ventured to mention them I got a big fat “Who?”
We may have been at war since 9/11, but with whom? Our militaries are geared toward fighting armies with uniforms and infrastructures and countries, but Islamist terrorists have neither a discrete country nor a uniformed army, so we flail around at any convenient target, looking for an army to hit, and it’s so not working.
That said, in Canada we decided not to go to Iraq. We are in Afghanistan though (more Canadians have died in the last year in Afghanistan than any other allied country, we have been doing much of the fighting there).
Yeah, it’s shameful; it seems to me that Bush & Co. wanted to distract the American public from the fact that they totally did not deal with Al Quaeda in Afghanistan and so they basically decamped in the hope of getting better results in Iraq, basically leaving the mess for our allies to try to pick up. That makes two countries the US broke, and we aren’t dealing properly with either. Not that they were working all that well before we went in, but now they are totally busted, and what makes it worse is that we had a better chance of “fixing” Afghanistan than we do of making any order out of Iraq, had we only stuck it out and fed Afghanistan the resources we’re pouring into the chaos of Iraq. Heartbreaking.
Oddly enough, I actually did watch the Challenger disaster–I was in graduate school, and was flipping around for something unobtrusive to put on while I worked on a paper, and came across the countdown and, being a science fiction fan (I actually did my undergraduate senior thesis on political themes in science fiction), thought great, something that will go on for a while and I only will want to really watch for a minute or two.
I didn’t get much of the paper done that day.
Yeah like I said today, I did not know about it until I arrived home.
9/11 was odd, as I called home and said what for me, was the oddest thing ‘Is the President OK?’ I am no fan of W, and it surprised me. Plus, of course, I am not American. I actually asked that before asking ‘Is the Prime Minister safe?’?
Later that night some planes landed at our airport in Newfoundland. My wife volunteered to go help anyone that needed a French translater, obut only 4 planes were at our airport, most went to Gander.
An unforgettable day.
The hockey story is, of course, much more fun. That day was something. Someone from outside the US or USSR would not understand that series. It was an incredible time. in a country of 20 million at the time, 15 million watched the game that was boradcast live from Moscow at 1 pm our time.
Paul Henderson, the guy that scored the winner, he played for Toronto. Now, I am a Montreal fan, and I HATE Toronto. That night he was my hero. Of course, until the regular NHL season started….
err outside Canada or the USSR….
I remember talking ot a guy from Russia, they all watched it too.
I got immediate reinforcement of the Challenger memory–after watching it I went over to the department to find people to talk to about it, and I was the only one who knew about it, so I spent a few hours telling people. Not gonna forget that.
9/11–I remember mostly chunks here and there. It was an election day (funny, I do NOT remember for what races or if it was a primary or what), but I left the house early to vote, and then took the train down to work, feeling very virtuous; right near the end of the ride (around 8:45 or 8:50, it was just before I got out) I suddenly started feeling really sick to my stomach, bad enough that for the first time ever I stopped at the company cafeteria before going to my office to get myself a ginger ale. Standing in line to pay, I heard some people saying that a plane flew into the World Trade Center, it must have been some student pilot accident. By the time I got to my office, the bones of the actual story was all over the place. My first impulse was to get the hell out of the building and the area–we overlooked Times Square and I figured we had a big target painted on us. The next thing was to try to get ahold of my sister, who worked right across the street from the Towers. The first I managed, although I had to walk (no subways running, and the buses were overflowing); it took hours before we could reach my sister (she walked back over the Brooklyn Bridge to Brooklyn and eventually made it home), though, because the phone lines were overloaded as well. My strongest memory of the day, though, was that it was a really beautiful autumn day; I had walked over to a friend’s house near Central Park, and we didn’t want to keep watching the same thing over and over again on tv, so we went into the park and watched fighter planes flying over the park. Totally surreal.
I have absolutely no memory of the hockey story, of course, totally off my radar. I don’t think I’ve ever watched a hockey game, even (*quickly ducks*). But it’s a great story!
I remember one of my students saying to me ‘what does this mean Dave’ (on 9/11).
‘We’re part of NATO, a NATO ally was attacked, we are at war’. Kid asked what NATO was. I knoew we were in for some strange times.
Someone at the office (a publishing house) asked who could have done such a thing, and I immediately thought of Al Quaeda, because of the huge fuss the Republicans made when Clinton attacked one of their bases (He’s trying to distract us! They’re no threat to us! Clinton cheating on his wife is a threat to us!). When I ventured to mention them I got a big fat “Who?”
We may have been at war since 9/11, but with whom? Our militaries are geared toward fighting armies with uniforms and infrastructures and countries, but Islamist terrorists have neither a discrete country nor a uniformed army, so we flail around at any convenient target, looking for an army to hit, and it’s so not working.
No argument here.
That said, in Canada we decided not to go to Iraq. We are in Afghanistan though (more Canadians have died in the last year in Afghanistan than any other allied country, we have been doing much of the fighting there).
Yeah, it’s shameful; it seems to me that Bush & Co. wanted to distract the American public from the fact that they totally did not deal with Al Quaeda in Afghanistan and so they basically decamped in the hope of getting better results in Iraq, basically leaving the mess for our allies to try to pick up. That makes two countries the US broke, and we aren’t dealing properly with either. Not that they were working all that well before we went in, but now they are totally busted, and what makes it worse is that we had a better chance of “fixing” Afghanistan than we do of making any order out of Iraq, had we only stuck it out and fed Afghanistan the resources we’re pouring into the chaos of Iraq. Heartbreaking.
(Not to get all political or anything like that.)
yeah same here….