Memorial Day

Memorial Day is remembering those who serve and have served on our behalf.

Jerry's flag

Thanks Dad!


Visit Jerry's Story for a video from Channel 10 on the recent Honor Flight from RI

St Ray's - Class of 1972

Oh, when the Saints go marching in
Oh, when the Saints go marching in
Lord, how I want to be in that number
When the Saints go marching in

They didn't play our song Saturday night. Maybe there wasn't enough of a number to do so. There were nine members of the Class of 1972 the participate in this forty year reunion. Yes, forty years. Staggering. Shocking. but all so true.

Mark Beauregard (sitting), and from left to right: Joe Grant, me, Terry Tierney, Terry Tracey, John Cotta, Bob Larivee, Glen Ferguson and Ron Harrison.

Now, we are the nine. On a mission. To go forth and find our other classmates for a bigger reunion next time.

reconstructed memories

Coincidence? Not likely.

"Scott Fraser studies how humans remember crimes -- and bear witness to them. In this powerful talk, which focuses on a deadly shooting at sunset, he suggests that even close-up eyewitnesses to a crime can create "memories" they could not have seen. Why? Because the brain abhors a vacuum."

Over thinking? Possible.

"All our memories are reconstructed memories. They are the product of what we originally experienced and everything that's happened afterwards.” (Scott Fraser)

Why this? Now?
The Franklin Food Pantry Board is in the middle of a series of interviews with candidates for our open Director of Development position creating a good process that is fair for the candidates.

What do you take away from this video?

"It is very difficult to think straight about well being"

I have linked to and shared a bunch of TED Talks over time. As we approach the election here in Franklin, memory and experience will be important. What do we think of the candidates? What have they recently done that we like or dislike? While a small number of them took up the offer to answer three questions to help create an informed voter, the perceptions of the voters will matter greatly.

Hence, this talk from Daniel Kahneman may help us understand the relationship between memory and experience.





Note: this was previously shared on Franklin MAtters
http://www.franklinmatters.org/2010/03/it-is-very-difficult-to-think-straight.html

If you are from Franklin and or interested in the election this Tuesday, don't forget to check out the Election 2011 Collection here: http://www.franklinmatters.org/2011/08/election-2011-summary.html

tertiary education: advantages of amnesia??

... Google's enormous reserves of user information, stored in dozens of secretive data centers across the world, and the literally photographic memory of the Internet Archive, which preserves billions of defunct Web pages for posterity, are enough to leave anyone rattled. New forms of memory are permanent and accessible from anywhere. As their reach grows, scholars are asking if now - perhaps for the first time in human history - we need to find ways to forget.

"We used to have a system in which we forgot things easily and had to invest energy in remembering," says Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, an associate professor of public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "Now we're switching to a system in which we remember everything and have to invest energy in order to forget. That's an enormous transformation."

and this:

The personal costs of this reality are clear, but there may be broader social costs as well. "What a lot of people forget - no pun intended - is that forgetting is hard-wired," says Mayer-Schönberger. "Cognitively and sociologically, we've never had to develop the capacity to forget or to put things in temporal perspective, because forgetting was built in biologically."

So trying to memorize the times table is a waste of time?

Are we going to need to spend some time in school and do homework to practice forgetting?

Read the full article in the Boston Globe and decide for yourself.