Back Then

When I taught memoir writing, my students found that old family photos were at least as important as letters, journals and other written documents. Yesterday I stumbled upon this one of my mother holding me on my first birthday.

I love the car in the background and the long row of houses there in the post-war suburb outside of Detroit. It helps locate us in time and place and literally screams “far away and long ago.”

This photo is one of many in an old black photo album with crumbling pages. The tape holding the photos to the paper has worn off in many cases, leaving the images in free-fall.

It was the late 1940s. Other photos in the album show my father, sisters, friends, relatives and a classic of my Scottish grandparents in front of their camping trailer.

I could try as a writer to describe that era, but it would be difficult to capture much of it with more than a smidgeon of the richness these simple images effortlessly convey.

LINKS:

• Debt ceiling deal faces first hurdle in Republican-led House (WP)

• Crucial days ahead as debt ceiling deal goes for vote (AP)

• Biden Saves Student Loan Forgiveness (For Now), But Confirms End Of Student Loan Pause (Forbes)

• Is Student Debt Forgiveness Happening, or What? (Slate)

• Why the debt deal infuriates climate activists (WP)

• Why Spending Cuts Likely Won’t Shake the Economy (NYT)

• AI Poses ‘Risk of Extinction’ on Par With Pandemics and Nuclear War, Tech Executives Warn — More than 350 people, including OpenAI and Google executives, sign a statement sounding an alarm about the technology (WSJ)

• The biggest problem in AI? Lying chatbots. (WP)

• AI Has Evolved To Reason Like Humans, Scientists Say (Yahoo)

• Elon Musk Has Moved Rapidly To Realize His AI Ambitions by Buying up Oracle’s Spare Server (WCCFTech)

• ChatGPT Scored Higher on a Medical Quiz Than a Real Human Doctor (ScienceAlert)

• AI Canon (AH)

• Digital payments are already reshaping economies (Economist)

• Ukraine war comes to Moscow as drones strike both capitals (Reuters)

• Ukraine Has A Growing Arsenal Of Drones Able To Hit Moscow (Forbes)

• Taiwan Rushes to Prevent China From Cutting Internet, Phones (Bloomberg)

• Iran vs Afghanistan: Why Helmand water-sharing dispute is boiling over, decades after treaty (The Print)

• Trump lawyer said to have been waved off searching office for secret records (Guardian)

• The Trees Don’t Care About Us (Atlantic)

• SpaceX and the science of failure (The Hill)

• Tea, apples and berries could stave off age-related memory loss, study suggests (Guardian)

• The revolt of the Christian home-schoolers (WP)

• CEO Outlines Challenges Company Facing Due To Own Insatiable Greed (The Onion)