memories

the archivist September 8, 2023

Links of the Week, vol. 9 The following are links to interesting content we’ve read recently. If you would like to recommend a piece to share with our readers (no paywalled content, please), please use the contact form on our About page. ────────────── ● ────────────── Martin Amis on the Genius of Jane Austen (and What […]

the archivist December 6, 2022

Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down […]

the archivist April 8, 2015

The J.L. Hudson Company, known more commonly as Hudson’s, was a chain of department stores based in Detroit. Founded in 1881 by Joseph Lowthian Hudson (yes, that Hudson), the company grew in the city’s boom years, and by 1961, the flagship store on Woodward Avenue occupied an entire city block.  By the 1980s, the downtown […]

the archivist October 24, 2013

Lines Lost Among Trees Billy Collins These are not the lines that came to me while walking in the woods with no pen and nothing to write on anyway. They are gone forever, a handful of coins dropped through the grate of memory, along with the ingenious mnemonic I devised to hold them in place- […]

the archivist August 22, 2013

Ground Swell Mark Jarman   Is nothing real but when I was fifteen, Going on sixteen, like a corny song? I see myself so clearly then, and painfully– Knees bleeding through my usher’s uniform Behind the candy counter in the theater After a morning’s surfing; paddling frantically To top the brisk outsiders coming to wreck me, […]

the archivist July 17, 2013

I wasn’t always a fan of Bruce Springsteen. Of course, I knew his music (or so I thought). Who didn’t? Every song on Born in the USA had been a single, and had been played to death, right? And then he did those mediocre movie soundtrack songs in the 90s, which, I was convinced, were actually the […]

the archivist August 3, 2008

SO IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE? So, here’s how it works: 1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc) 2. Put it on shuffle 3. Press play 4. For every question, type the song that’s playing 5. When you go to a new question, press the next […]