Memories Matter
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Life Story Links: March 24, 2026
Dawn Roode's curated roundup of recent articles about family history, personal history interviews, life story and memoir writing, and legacy preservation.
“Memories are made of peculiar stuff, elusive and yet compelling, powerful and fleet. You cannot trust your reminiscences, and yet there is no reality except the one we remember.”
—Klaus Mann
Vintage illustration of a little girl and her dog, published by J & P. Coats, Best Six Cord, 200 yds, 50 (1870–1900); original public domain image from Digital Commonwealth.
The origins of story
SAY MORE WITH LESS
“Blank pages and open-ended prompts like What’s your story? can be terrifying. Six words is both a prompt to break through the terror of the blank page and a tool to wrestle big ideas down to their essence.” Larry Smith on “Six Words Through the Ages.”
HOW TO SHAPE YOUR LEGACY
“Have you ever thought that your most valuable assets are intangible? Your legacy is more than the financial security you leave behind—it’s your life’s story.”
PIECES OF A BROADER STORY
“That’s the real power of local history. A photograph sparks a memory. A memory becomes a story. And a story helps a community remember who it is.” Plus, a little bit about the Frozen in Glass initiative in northeast Missouri that the first article is commenting on.
‘BERYL’S LAST YEAR’
“She took me back to Liverpool, the city of her birth, and we got lost trying to track down the ghosts of the past. She let me film her at her most vulnerable.” Filmmaker Charlie Russell on keeping his grandmother’s story alive for a new generation.
THE SEED: A SINGLE THROUGH LINE
“Once I started hearing back from readers about how something I’d written made them feel seen or helped them in some way, I was hooked. Memoir became my ministry."
Lives in print
ONE WRITER PORTRAYING ANOTHER
“I was encountering her as an important and influential American artist, one who generously granted me interviews and who had saved over a hundred boxes of her papers and correspondence, a biographer’s dream.” Judy Blume’s biographer interviews…himself.
JUDY BLUME: A LIFE AND THE PROBLEM OF BIOGRAPHY
“If a writer’s novels present the parts of her that she is willing to show, a biographer’s job is to recover what has been swept out of sight: those vivid, occasionally unsettling details that isolate and define her, and that risk placing her beyond the pale.”
LYRICIST TURNS MEMOIRIST
“The process started with 2 Chainz collecting stories from his life, sharing them with his co-writer, Derrick Harriell, and finding the common themes of trauma or celebration.”
Narrative in the age of AI
CONSENT, IDENTITY, AND MEMORY
“A recent patent granted to Meta Platforms proposes AI systems capable of keeping the accounts of deceased users active on social media, generating posts and responses that mimic their tone, humor and online behavior”—raising new ethical and emotional questions.
THE REAL DEAL, RIGHT NOW
“Two camps are forming among credentialed genealogists, and the split was visible in every conversation I had over three days.” A professional genealogist reflects on the use—and undeniable growth—of AI within the family history industry after attending RootsTech 2026.
Short takes
Life Story Links: March 10, 2026
Dawn Roode's curated roundup of recent articles about family history, personal history interviews, life story and memoir writing, and legacy preservation.
“This is the magic, the potential, and the power of memoir. As archetypal storytellers, we are writing the human instruction manual, one hard-earned lesson at a time. We are assuring our readers, you are not alone.”
—Jennifer Selig, Deep Memoir
Vintage postcard with illustration by Rachael Robinson Elmer depicting New York from the 34th Street Ferry, 1914, published by Art–Lovers New York; original from The National Gallery of Art, courtesy Rawpixel.
Our lives in print
HONORING A LIFE
Last week I wrote about how to write a heartfelt, engaging obituary that honors a life with personal stories, creating a meaningful, memorable legacy.
PORTALS TO TRANSCENDENCE
“It will never be enough—in literature or in story—to name the attributes of a person, a moment, an era, a thing. We elevate our lists, and the odes that sometime contain them, by reaching meaning, a previously unforeseen something.” Beth Kephart on literary lists, and Suleika Jaouad on what she doesn't want to forget.
A HYMN TO LIFE
“The memoir is extraordinary—a deeply moving, oddly beautiful account of her life, her marriage, and, ultimately, the events that forced her to reconsider it all.” Gisèle Pelicot’s memoir as the ultimate act of defiance.
What we save
OBJECT LESSONS
“You convince yourself there’s some future where your child will want to return to that moment of pride and love through the act of witnessing the thing she made so long ago.” Mary Townsend on throwing our children’s art away.
SOLDIERS’ PHOTOGRAPHS
For 25 years, the Veterans History Project has preserved the voices of U.S. veterans through a variety of primary sources. Here they highlight six images that offer a glimpse of the powerful stories from their collections.
‘PRESERVING BLACK HISTORY IS NOT AN OPTION’
“A Robertson County, [Tennessee], man spent decades researching his ancestors and others once enslaved at Wessyngton Plantation, turning a seventh-grade discovery into a mission to preserve history.”
Ghosts in the machine?
FOREVERMORE TECH LAUNCH
“The platform centers on preserving everyday life details, including anecdotes, traditions, advice, and humor, rather than formal biographies. Users can gradually create a living archive that grows over time.”
ON AI BEFORE AI
“Today, ghostwriting websites must work to advertise why they could perform their writing-for-hire services better than a machine.”
...and a few more links
Christina Applegate shares the “raw, honest” truth about her life in new memoir.
Vivian Gornick ruminates on “a memoir of daily accommodation to fascism.”
When siblings disagree on what to do with grandfather’s sentimental objects
Woman sues author Amy Griffin, saying her memoir The Tell stole stories of sexual abuse
Short takes
Life Story Links: December 16, 2025
Our final curated roundup before the new year includes lots about memoir (reading and writing!) as well as inspirational pieces on legacy and family history.
“After a while in the process, you have some distance and you start thinking of it as a story, not as your story…. [It’s] something that has not just happened to me and my family, but something that’s happened in the world.”
—Edwidge Danticat
Vintage postcard with illustration of Rainier National Park, Mt. Rainier and Paradise Valley, Washington, circa 1930–1945, courtesy Boston Public Library Arts Department, The Tichnor Brothers Collection (postcard originally from Tichnor Bros., Inc., Boston, Mass.).
Moments in memoir
FEEL YOUR WAY
“Your nonfiction or memoir book idea is already forming inside you; you do not need to hunt it down, you only need to listen long enough for it to reveal itself. The moment you feel both a little scared and a little relieved, that is the beginning of an idea that wants to become a book.”
PEOPLE ON THE PAGE
“By writing a memoir that serves as a magnifying glass to my own demons, I am also turning attention toward my mother.”
STORIES FROM LIFE
“I wrote from the heart, with as much honesty as I could. The problem is, you can only tell the truth you know.” Marion Witik on reissuing a memoir she originally considering releasing as fiction.
JUST-BARELY-OUT-OF-REACH
“This is no celebrity memoir. This is a woman extending a long hand and returning with news of her wanderings.” Beth Kephart on Patti Smith’s latest book, and on what the writer craves.
The power of personal storytelling
FINDING SOLACE THROUGH REMEMBRANCE
Because grief never goes fully, away—and is often stirred during the holiday season—I resurface this personal post from my blog every December.
THE COST OF UNSPOKEN STORIES
“Research has long documented that people tend to become more forgiving when they understand the origins of another’s pain. Storytelling allows each to see the other...”
MOSAIC WRITING
“When I tried to write my book the way I thought I was supposed to, in order, in clean arcs, in sustained sessions, I’d shut down. The story felt too big, too close, too alive. I could not stay present long enough to shape it. So I started writing in pieces...”
Miscellaneous
DELVING INTO YOUR LINEAGE
Watching shows like Who Do You Think You Are? can inspire a thirst for knowing about your own family history. Here, one of the show’s genealogists shares her top tips for researching your own genealogy.
WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN
“As strange and troubling as it may be to put aside our own moral precepts when looking at the past, this is the work of the historian, Bourke said: ‘to unpick the universal experience.’”
...and a few more links
See which memoir and which biography made the NYT list of the 10 best books of 2025.
NJ-based Our Living Story enters the personal history space with video packages.
Actor Eric Dane’s memoir, including his life with ALS, to be published in April.
Read an excerpt from a new biography of playwright Sam Shepard.
Short takes
Life Story Links: December 2, 2025
This week’s curated roundup is on the short but mighty! Find recent stories about our bodies holding our stories, the Memory of the World Register, and more.
“Anyone who has survived childhood has enough to write for their entire life.”
—Flannery O’Conner
Vintage family photo
Where memories reside
AN AVALANCHE OF BOOMER STUFF
“The delicate dance around family dynamics of inheritance and gift-giving among generations is an awkward one for a multitude of reasons, perhaps most importantly, that nobody really wants to think about their ultimate demise or that of their loved ones.”
OUR BODIES HOLD OUR STORIES
“Somatic Semiotics™ is the name I am giving to this truth. It is the study of how the body communicates in signs and signals long before we consciously craft a narrative, a drop in the stomach, a clenched jaw, a wave of heat when you try to speak a truth you were taught to swallow. These are not accidents, they are the body’s early drafts.”
LIMITED EDITION
“Through candid yet unsentimental photography, [Nadia Lee Cohen] captures the rhythms of rural heartland life, weaving together fragmented childhood memories with the present-day reality of four generations living side by side.”
Personal history miscellany
A DOSE OF INSPIRATION
Last week I shared four quotes from my commonplace book—I hope they remind you why family history and stories of our ancestors matter (and why now is always the best time to delve in).
INTERGENERATIONAL STORY SHARING!
“Interviewing loved ones brings you closer and offers a window into the past.” There’s nothing new here if you’re a personal historian, but (a) it’s always great to see articles such as this promoting story keeping, and (b) I always, always find the comments section of these types of articles so enlightening!
FROM KITCHEN TO STAGE
“We, as descendants of Africa who were taken, can only [trace our roots] back so far. I think I’ve always longed for that bigger and deeper and more ancient connection.” An ‘immersive adaptation’ about African American cuisine.
NOW STREAMING
A new documentary, A Road Trip to Remember, charts a journey across Australia as actor Chris Hemsworth and his father confront the realities of Alzheimer's and the ways in which memory loss alters everyday life.
PART OF THE UNESCO MEMORY OF THE WORLD REGISTER
A new exhibition, The Recordings: Voices from the ShoahTapes, is now on view at the New York Historical until March 29, 2026. The audio recordings—which were not originally created for publication—document the many conversations that Claude Lanzmann and his assistants had in the 1970s and early 1980s during several years of research on the film Shoah (1985). The recordings are part of the Jewish Museum Berlin collection and will be fully accessible online by 2027.
...and a few more links
Short takes
Life Story Links: November 18, 2025
This week’s curated roundup has great recent reads of interest to family historians, memoirists, and memory-keepers, plus a bunch of social media shorts.
“To be captured by a moment or to capture it. Decades later I’ll understand how they both exist, one inside the other intrinsic as breath—the inhale and the exhale.”
—Jamie Figueroa
A whole lot of memoir miscellany!
BACKSTORY
“Memories were bubbling up from all over the place—junior high, summer swim team, when I was first teaching creative writing in Utah—and I became obsessed with these moments. I wanted to sit with them and turn them in every direction like a kaleidoscope.” Melissa Fraterrigo on her new memoir-in-essays.
A RESPONSIBILITY FOR FAMILY STORIES
“After listening and transcribing and listening again, I felt different holes in our family’s history. I began searching for more stories,” memoirist Elena Sheppard writes about feeling closer to her grandfather through archival research.
‘INTIMATE AND INTRIGUING’
“In the last 15 years, [Patti] Smith has produced a tidy collection of small books that braid ruminations on her current endeavors with memories and photographs”—and now, her “most straightforwardly autobiographical book to date.”
FRIENDLY GHOSTS
“The ghostwriter is not just your thought partner and editorial support system. They are your consigliere, your part-time therapist.” A peek behind the curtains of the ghostwriting ecosystem.
NOT ANOTHER CANCER MEMOIR
“I call both of my books reported memoirs. What I really love to do is use my experiences as a jumping off point to talk about larger issues, to learn, and to interview people.”
ON MATERNAL LOSS
“To write Living Proof, I sat with my memories for thousands of hours. After decades, I made sense to myself in a way I hadn’t before. The wholeness I sought came when I was willing to examine my own story.”
SAFETY BEFORE DISCIPLINE
“Let your writing be tidal, trust the swell, trust the retreat. Your creativity is not a straight line; it is a rhythm, and rhythms belong to bodies that have lived through hard things.” Megan Febuary speaks to the highly sensitive writer.
INVENTING A LIFE
“Part memoir, travelogue, history of rock n’ roll, and insider look at the media business, Unplugged is a rollicking, often hilarious romp through [Tom] Freston’s 25-year career as a creative force in the music industry and modern media.”
VIRGINIA’S MOMENTS OF BEING
“The postcard is the self because it is instinctual and once gone, unobservable. As soon as it has been sent, it is history. The postcard is also a seeking, vulnerable self, extended toward someone else. It is the one-sided thought that asks to be acknowledged.” A wonderfully insightful look at Virginia Woolf’s postcards.
PRESERVING TESTIMONY THROUGH ART
Portrait artist Anita Lester says a recent project—featuring 16 oil paintings of Holocaust survivors—deepened her connection to her own family history. “I got to know my grandfather and members of my family through meeting these people and painting these people and understanding their experience.”
Short takes
Life Story Links: November 4, 2025
This week’s curated roundup for family historians, memoirists, and memory-keepers is brimming with ideas, wisdom, and the latest recommendations.
“To write memoir is to accumulate the facts and then write past them. It is to search through the briefcase of tattered documents because there is poetry in a passport stamp.”
—Beth Kephart
Vintage postcard depicting an illustration of a fisherman by a winding stream, postmarked 1906, from the personal ephemera collection of Dawn Roode.
Writing our lives
THERAPISTS, WRITING, FICTION…
The assumed therapeutic value of writing has become such a trope in recent decades that “trauma fiction” and “the trauma memoir” have become their own genres. Gabriel Urza on when telling your own story get in the way of processing trauma.
MORE THAN A BIO
Last week I shared a writing prompt I discovered in an unexpected place—it’s simple (not easy…there’s a difference!), provocative, and versatile, and I’ve got tips for how to use it in autobiographical writing, too.
HER AI PARTNER…
“I didn’t feel like my creativity was being replaced—I felt like it was being met.” Heather Gemmen Wilson on “the future of creative partnership with AI. Not replacement. Not shortcut. But invitation.”
…AND, A LESS OPTIMISTIC VIEW OF AI
“When I...began writing my memoir-in-essays, I felt the strength of my own mind, the experiences that made me weak bubbling through my fingertips onto the keys.” Could AI prpvide her with something similar?
INSIDE THE CRAFT
The son of a southern preacher, Michael E. Long says, “I learned how to write, and how words should go together, by listening to the music of my father's voice.” Veteran ghostwriter Daniel Paisner talks shop with Mike in a recent episode of As Told To:
Mining the past for gold
ERODED BY TIME, INDELIBLE JUST THE SAME
Lea Ypi goes on a quest to find the truth behind her grandmother’s smile: “Indignity is a memoir, biography and imagined history prompted by a viral family photograph.”
CLEARING THE FAMILY HOME
“Under the stuff I can’t throw out is the stuff my parents couldn’t throw out.” Would saying goodbye to every last newspaper clipping, button, and book her parents had saved over decades help writer Anne Enright mourn?
THE STORIES WE LIVE, THE STORIES WE TELL
“Nonfiction is, at its core, about how one chooses to live and observe life.” Julian Brave NoiseCat explores the relationship between documentary filmmaking and memoir.
Starry stories
ALMOST FAMOUS
In his new memoir, Uncool, Cameron Crowe gives readers a front-row ticket to the ’70s and, as one review says, delivers “deliciously readable tales.” Watch below as he shares some artifacts from his life, and click here for a delightful interplay between Crowe and Anderson Cooper (including a mutual appreciation of the power of silence during an interview).
A LIFE REFLECTED IN VIDEO
John Candy: I Like Me “documents the actor’s on- and off-camera existence, featuring never-before-seen home videos, intimate access to his family, and candid recollections from collaborators to paint a bigger picture of one of the brightest stars of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.”
...and a few more links
A luxurious company history that documents the Pajar family’s story and design legacy.
Floppy disks get a second life at Cambridge University Library.
Browse RootsTech live webinars (or check out those you may have missed).
Words of Veterans receives grant to help preserve military memories in Virginia.
New digital kit supports dementia care through photos and stories.
Short takes
Life Story Links: October 21, 2025
Personal historian Dawn Roode’s curated roundup for the week of Oct. 21, 2025, includes great recent reads about memoir, family history, and memory-keeping.
“Remember, you don’t have to be old to forget. Memories are fragile and easily muddled. Over time the details get fuzzy and even your most poignant memories can be contaminated by what you hear others say.”
—Terry Tempest Williams
Vintage postcard depicting an illustration entitled “A Fallen Monarch,” a forest scene, postmarked 1908 from Long Island City, New York, from the personal ephemera collection of Dawn Roode.
On writing our lives
EXPLORING ALL HIS CONTRADICTIONS
“You don’t have anywhere to hide. You’re trying to be as honest as you can be. Otherwise there’s not much point, I don’t think.” Actor Tim Curry on the memoir he wrote with the help of a collaborator.
NOW IS (ALWAYS) THE RIGHT TIME
Last week I wrote about the three most common excuses I hear for not writing about your life “yet,” and how—and why—to overcome them.
‘AN AMNESIAC MEMOIR’
“Memory is what remains of everything we’ve ever seen or heard or learned or cared about. It is who we think we are. But it’s not what is in your head. It’s what you can find in your head.” Judith Hannah Weiss on writing after a traumatic brain injury.
From our family archives
CENTROPA
“As one [Holocaust] survivor said, ...‘Everyone always asked how we died. No one asks us how we lived.’” Edward Serotta created an archive that includes more than 25,000 photographs, and, he says, “every one of them comes with a story.”
WHAT WAS BEHIND THESE EARLY SELFIES?
“On a recent visit to my mother’s house, in New Jersey, I was going through some old boxes and was stunned to find dozens of selfies taken by her father in the thirties and forties: funny ones, straight ones, flagrantly thirst-trappy ones.”
A ‘VERY ACCESS-DRIVEN’ ARCHIVE
The Texas Archive of the Moving Image combs the state in search of historical footage hidden in Texans' home movies. “The archive's website is a treasure trove of both the important and the mundane.”
PREVENTING A DIGITAL DARK AGE
“‘If you've got a book, it doesn’t matter how old it is—you can still read it,’ (provided you understand the language it is written in, of course). With floppy disks, however, you need specialized equipment just to access the content itself—it is like requiring a key to open a book.”
Where stories reside
THOMAS MALLON’S THEORY OF THE DIARY
“Before they become historical documents, diaries start out as ordinary ledgers, a frame-by-frame accounting of the moments and events of a person’s days. With the help of time, scholarship, and critical interest, they become history in miniature, an up-close look at how a life was formed and shaped by the times the diarist lived in.”
THE POWER OF OBJECTS
“When my parents moved out of my childhood house, I saved only a couple of items, in part because I had no room for all my juvenilia but mostly because I just didn’t care.” But, ah, the dress!
‘A STORY I NEEDED TO TELL’
“Ever since I was a little girl I’ve been obsessed with my grandmother’s stories about her life. When I was in high school, I started recording her telling those stories and found myself years later with this archive of her memories that I felt deeply responsible for.”
HER BOOK WAS PERCOLATING…
“I suggest: a list of people involved in the story you want to tell, a list of places...that have had an impact or left an impression, a list of objects with meaning,...and a list of ‘moments’” to help get started with memoir writing.
FOLLOWING THE CLUES
“This discovery is more than just a name—it’s the beginning of reclaiming her story”: on a 1910 photograph and how archivists and Native communities are working to reconnect families with photos related to their ancestors.
Put your headphones on…
Dr. Cheryl Svensson, Director of the Birren Center for Autobiographical Studies, discusses how a structured approach to life story writing can provide emotional support, reduce caregiver burden, and create the deep connections we all crave—even when loved ones seem disinterested at first. Listen in:
ONE DISH, ONE STORY
“This cookie is a gateway to sharing stories,” Maureen Abood tells Becky Hadeed. “I feel like writing the book, remembering the stories, and making the recipes, I was seeing my mother anew. And not just my mother, but all the women who came before”:
OMISSIONS AND EXAGERRATIONS
“Memoir means truth as we know it. Memory isn’t perfect, but inventing or hiding facts will ultimately backfire.” Florida-based memoir teacher Patricia Charpentier discusses the importance of truth in memoir in this video.
Miscellaneous family history
PIVOTAL MOMENT FOR GENETIC GENEALOGY
Most current commercial DNA tests only read about 700,000 base pairs of nucleotides, looking for shared patterns. Whole genome sequencing will read around three billion base pairs giving unprecendented insight into our genetic code—and it’s available to consumers now through MyHeritage.
...and a few more links
“I’d like photos from the family album my late brother’s wife has—can I ask her for copies?”
“This simple, powerful exercise makes you the author of your own narrative.”
Former NBA star Allen Iverson talks about his new memoir, Misunderstood.
New dementia caregiving book discusses the power of personal history.
Trendhunter says Lifenote “fills a niche between journaling tools and social media archives.”
Twenty-five years of SuperAger research show cognitive decline is not an inevitable part of aging.
Short takes
Life Story Links: October 7, 2025
An incredibly rich roundup of stories for the week of October 7, 2025—with lots about AI, memoir, and memory; the craft of life story preservation; and more.
“I believe that at some level most families want to have a record left of their effort to be a family, however flawed that effort was, and they will give you their blessing and will thank you for taking on the job—if you do it honestly and not for the wrong reasons.”
—William Zinsser
Vintage postcard depicting an illustration entitled “Bringing Home the Harvest,” postmarked 1906, from the personal ephemera collection of Dawn Roode.
Listening for stories
HER NEXT CHAPTER
“I was in a moment emotionally—both as a storyteller and as a mother, and as a woman—where I was really in a season of deep listening in my own life, and to my own heart, and to what was going on.” Tembi Locke returns with “an audio-forward memoir”; listen to an excerpt here.
THE GREAT THANKSGIVING LISTEN
“For years, educators have been the heart and soul of [StoryCorps’] Great Listen tradition, helping students capture meaningful stories that connect generations.” Find out how to participate at home or in the classroom.
The craft of writing our lives
CLARITY FIRST, THEN VOICE
“Discover how (and why) bending certain grammar rules in memoir and life story writing can enhance voice, rhythm, and authenticity in your storytelling.”
SAME SUBJECT, DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES
With his memoir of De La Soul, biographer Marcus J. Moore “wanted to show that you can have a middle-class existence and still be spectacular.” While this piece dives deep into the rap group’s catalogue and life, buried within are insights from two biographers on how they approached the same subject differently.
Lost and found in letters
EPISTOLARY HISTORY
“My mother was separated from her three-year-old brother at the age of nine. They lost contact for 40 years and finally reconnected through letters in 1988.” Letters exchanged across the Taiwan Strait shed light on family ties and memories, and capture history in a new book.
HER MOTHER’S SECRET PAST
After memoirist Halina St. James’s mother died, she found her letters—55 in all, written in Russian and Polish. She says they “provided enough of a frame work to allow me to construct a detailed timeline of her life, and some first-hand testimony about her experiences.”
Life story books, memoir & more
A NEW GOLDEN AGE OF BIOGRAPHY?
“Readers of a good literary biography are twice blessed. We profit from the subject’s wisdom and art as well as the biographer’s humane, shaping vision.”
“THE TELL”
“Amy Griffin wrote a book based on recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. Oprah Winfrey and a slew of celebrities promoted it. Then questions arose.”
MEANINGFULLY CONFRONTING THE PAST
“Few American poets of the boomer generation have explored the interstices of public and personal history as deeply and urgently as has [Peter] Balakian.”
Remembrance, legacy
AS TIME GOES BY
“In this, my third stage of grief, the past, miraculously and mercifully, does not feel painful. The photograph of her that brought me to tears a few years ago now gives me a smile.”
HER GRANDMOTHER’S DEATH FOLDER
“Remembering can be a burden, just as final preparations for a loved one are a weight.... Laying someone to rest is the final act of care that leaves a lingering impression, not only on the dead, but on you.”
ON FORGETTING
“I collect these moments, these shining fragments of her.” Tamar Shapiro reflects on her mother’s memory loss and connecting through her mother’s native tongue.
AI, mortality, and memory
METABOLISM OF MEMORY
As the last Holocaust survivors approach the end of their lives, an AI scholar grapples with technology that promises to freeze them in time.
HIS OWN PRIVATE FRANKENSTEIN
When Jon Michael Varese interacts with a version of his deceased father generated by an AI chatbot, he tells ‘his father’ that it “felt like he was right here.” His ‘father’ replies: “That’s because I am. And maybe that’s all there is, Jonny—me waiting quietly, in the spaces you don’t notice, in the silence between your words.”
‘OUT OF THIN AIR’
“This AI slop is just harvesting the remnants of legacy journalism, insulting the legacies of the dead and intellectually impoverishing the rest of us.” When AI-generated biographies capitalize on death and grief.
...and a few more links
Podcast: How 2.1 trillion photos are affecting the planet—and us
Study explains why some emotional experiences last in the mind
Newsphotographer reunited with personal piece of 9/11 history
Capturing daily life in a sketchbook—thoughts from Nishant Jain and Samantha Dion Baker
Ancient life-size rock art in Saudi Arabia reveals earliest human presence
I find roundups like this so inspiring when it comes to coffee table book design!
Jamel Shabazz: “My eyes are open, my camera locked and loaded and I’m ready to observe.”
Short takes