Why do you have family pictures on your walls and tables? What do you accomplish by devoting some of your personal income to memorializing fleeting moments? Is it just a matter of vanity? Are you a narcissist?
Silly questions. Obviously, you believe that the moments you enshrined in photos and mementos were personally significant. And now you overwhelm yourself with so many digital images that your smart phone has, depending on memory, hundreds to thousands of such mementos, mostly memorialized moments that have significance for you alone.
Braddock, Pennsylvania was the site of a 1755 battle east of current Pittsburgh during the French and Indian War. Both the French and the British leaders were slain during the conflict that the French and their Indian allies won. General Braddock’s participation was memorialized in the city’s name, but there is no physical remnant of the battle, no scar on the landscape now buried by buildings and roads. There is, however, a plaque that memorializes the battle now more than three centuries into the past. But that’s the way with battles. People fight. Ensuing generations largely forget both the reason for the fighting and the place of the battle—with some exceptions like Gettysburg, now made into a National Battlefield. (Carl Sandburg captured such forgetfulness in his poem “Grass”)
If there is any evidence that people can act as a single personality, it definitely lies in memorializing. Thus, we have “pictures” hanging in remembrance in the form of plaques, tombstones, and statues. Some group at some time tried to preserve a moment they found significant. For the group one moment, such as a battle, was significant, if only more or less generally so—no group can know all the details in the absence enforced on them by time.
Braddock did not die where the city of Braddock now covers the battleground. He died on the road cut through dense forest near Fort Necessity, Pennsylvania. We don’t know exactly where. George Washington made sure of the grave’s secrecy by having horses and men walk repeatedly over it to keep anyone from knowing its location and possibly desecrating the site. Interesting and ironic. The people associated with Braddock and who fought under his command did what they could to hide his body out of respect for him. They “memorialized” him by imposing a “forgetfulness.”
Yes, today there is a memorial near the suspected gravesite. And yes, Braddock seems to be memorialized in the town named for him, but probably few residents of the community know much if anything about their community’s namesake. And that’s probably true of most memorialized people and places.
Today is September 11, a day set aside by some to visit memorials to those who lost their lives in attacks on New York and Washington, D. C. In a field at Shanksville, PA, there is a memorial to those who thwarted another attack at the expense of their lives. One wonders whether or not some three hundred years from now that memorial will still have meaning or fall into forgetfulness. Certainly, time erases the purpose for memorials. You probably can’t, for instance, name two of the three pharaohs the pyramids memorialize.
The significance of place fades without memorials as new denizens find personal significance there, and their significance will also fade unless someone hangs a picture. So, I guess there’s nothing wrong with your hanging pictures where you live; you’re not narcissistic, just human. At the time you hung those pictures, you believed the moment you captured to be significant enough to preserve in some way.
Silly questions. Obviously, you believe that the moments you enshrined in photos and mementos were personally significant. And now you overwhelm yourself with so many digital images that your smart phone has, depending on memory, hundreds to thousands of such mementos, mostly memorialized moments that have significance for you alone.
Braddock, Pennsylvania was the site of a 1755 battle east of current Pittsburgh during the French and Indian War. Both the French and the British leaders were slain during the conflict that the French and their Indian allies won. General Braddock’s participation was memorialized in the city’s name, but there is no physical remnant of the battle, no scar on the landscape now buried by buildings and roads. There is, however, a plaque that memorializes the battle now more than three centuries into the past. But that’s the way with battles. People fight. Ensuing generations largely forget both the reason for the fighting and the place of the battle—with some exceptions like Gettysburg, now made into a National Battlefield. (Carl Sandburg captured such forgetfulness in his poem “Grass”)
If there is any evidence that people can act as a single personality, it definitely lies in memorializing. Thus, we have “pictures” hanging in remembrance in the form of plaques, tombstones, and statues. Some group at some time tried to preserve a moment they found significant. For the group one moment, such as a battle, was significant, if only more or less generally so—no group can know all the details in the absence enforced on them by time.
Braddock did not die where the city of Braddock now covers the battleground. He died on the road cut through dense forest near Fort Necessity, Pennsylvania. We don’t know exactly where. George Washington made sure of the grave’s secrecy by having horses and men walk repeatedly over it to keep anyone from knowing its location and possibly desecrating the site. Interesting and ironic. The people associated with Braddock and who fought under his command did what they could to hide his body out of respect for him. They “memorialized” him by imposing a “forgetfulness.”
Yes, today there is a memorial near the suspected gravesite. And yes, Braddock seems to be memorialized in the town named for him, but probably few residents of the community know much if anything about their community’s namesake. And that’s probably true of most memorialized people and places.
Today is September 11, a day set aside by some to visit memorials to those who lost their lives in attacks on New York and Washington, D. C. In a field at Shanksville, PA, there is a memorial to those who thwarted another attack at the expense of their lives. One wonders whether or not some three hundred years from now that memorial will still have meaning or fall into forgetfulness. Certainly, time erases the purpose for memorials. You probably can’t, for instance, name two of the three pharaohs the pyramids memorialize.
The significance of place fades without memorials as new denizens find personal significance there, and their significance will also fade unless someone hangs a picture. So, I guess there’s nothing wrong with your hanging pictures where you live; you’re not narcissistic, just human. At the time you hung those pictures, you believed the moment you captured to be significant enough to preserve in some way.
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