Flashing through Time
Flashbulb memories, significant events stored in our brain, are a phenomenon. Oftentimes, it is triggered when a person experiences extreme passion, anger, fear, or sadness. Like a scrapbook or old photo album, the brain captures these images forever, and mine is filled with family vacations that have sculpted me into the person I am today. Growing up on an island is like living in a bubble: it’s sheltered and tranquil. Once I began to travel away from home, that bubble burst from my eye opening vacation experiences.
FLASH! It’s 2006 and I’m hiking on a trail to see a massive glacier on a frosty mountain in Alaska. The crisp morning air tickles my nose when a black bear warily steps onto the path we are walking on. Shocked, I hold my breath as the furry beast stops and stares back at me and my family. Time seems to stand still and I can feel the adrenaline coursing through my body. Then the unimaginable occurs. Two tiny cubs pop out of the bushes 9 feet in front of me. All three quickly scamper across the pathway and disappear into the foliage. In that hypnotizing moment, I am in awe of Alaska’s raw beauty and wilderness. In Hawaii, the only wild animals I’ve ever seen are cats and chickens. I long to fill my life with more breathtaking moments and adventures that the untamed world can offer.
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It’s 2012 and I’m wandering through the crowded and brightly lit Times Square. I’m surrounded by millions of people of different genders, races, and ages, yet somehow the sea of bodies seems to blend together as one. As I explore New York I feel as if I’m traveling the world because the city embraces various cultures. From the soul-filled Harlem, to the ethnic Little Italy, and to the festive Chinatown, the diversity of this historic city reminds me of the melting pot I grew up in. This realization instantaneously shows me that the combination of multiple communities can often times create something as beautiful as New York
Elijah Anderson wrote an interesting book, The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life, which describes social settings and people interactions in different parts of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. This book was published on March 28, 2011 by W. W. Norton & Company. Anderson has observed these places in Philadelphia for over thirty years. He uses the observations he made and the stories that people shared with him during his endeavor to answer the following questions: “How do ordinary people in this diverse city interact across and along racial lines? When and how do racial identities figure out into these encounters? When and how do city dwellers set aside their own and other’s particular racial and ethnic identities to communicate
I live in Brooklyn, New York City. I was born and bred there. I am one of eight million New Yorkers. New York City is sometimes described as a "melting pot," meaning we are like different Kool-Aid powders that dissolve into a uniform color and flavor. My view differs, though. I think we are eight million different insoluble liquids layered one on top of the other, appearing like oil floating on water. When stirred these liquids are rustled from their respective positions, almost coming together, only to revert to their original separated composition a second later. I'm sorry, Dr. King, we haven't all "sat at the same table" yet. This polarization and social indifference, I believe, stems from the ruthless, heart-hardening, cutthroat environment of our city. But underneath this coarseness, I wonder if there isn't a sliver of pillow-soft care and empathy for those wishing to escape the city's coldness.
New York City, known for its crowded streets and subways, is filled with people of different ethnicities; those who look, talk and behave differently from others around them. After all, it is called the “melting pot” of the United States for a reason, a place where people from various backgrounds come to assimilate into the American Society. These different humans are identified and categorized into groups based on their skin color and physical features, giving rise to the concept of race.
The special mechanism approach to flashlight memories was also introduced by R. Brown & Kulik, it stipulates that flashbulb memories are virtually literal representations of the what, how, and where of the original event (Schwartz, 2013). This mechanism works by encoding what happened in great detail. As a result, the flashbulb memory will be very strong and will remain in the memory (Schwartz, 2013). Strong emotions are the core of special mechanisms. To further explain, distinctiveness may be correlated with the critical triggering condition, experiences that produce strong emotional reactions may tend to be more distinctive than experiences that do not (Winograd & Nei...
It lives on as a fleeting memory in the expansive history that is the city of Chicago, and crosses the minds of few regularly. Stretching roughly a mile in distance, Maxwell Street was once the epicenter of commerce, the birth of culture, and change. From its birth out of the Great Chicago Fire, to the first Jewish immigrants, to it’s final day as a bazaar, it is this rise and decline of Maxwell Street that has aided in cultural differentiation that ultimately gives insight into the urban spacing and transitions in the city of Chicago.
People from different race and regions made this city a unique place. Howard wrote, “over the centuries, generations of New Yorkers descendants of people from every part of the world-have built an amazingly diverse state, a place of picturesque towns and villages as well as bustling cities, of farmland, industry, commerce and astounding engineering achievements” (6). New York City is an increasingly diverse and dynamic city with all immigrants making up the majority of the residence in some neighborhoods. The more than doubling of the city’s immigrant population since 1970 has given rise to this dense ethnic neighborhood. Variety of languages from all across the world is spoken throughout the five boroughs. There are numerous cultural organizations in the five boroughs each with integral to the diversity that defines New York City. Queens is in fact the most ethnically and racially diverse borough in New York. I live in queens and I have neighbors whom are originally from Spain, China, Russia, and India. From them I learned a lot of information about their country, many recipes and little bit of their language too. Hanging out with my neighbors is not only fun but also a learning process for me. Every community has their own national and religious festivals. In our festivals we invite each other and thus our festivals become more enjoyable. Throughout the five boroughs the city is
Maybe it’s the fact that I tend to stay in my room all weekend, which leads to people thinking I’m studying when in reality I am probably binge watching a TV show or maybe it’s my glasses, but most people who don’t know me too well assume that I am smart. Now that is a great thing for me because I don’t have to try as hard to impress them, but I end up finding myself in a bit of a problem. The problem is that everyone thinks I enjoy admiring school textbooks. But the truth is I’m usually admiring my Justin Bieber poster on my bedroom wall. Ever since I was in sixth grade I’ve been a huge fan of Bieber. His music always brought a feeling of calmness and back in the day his “never say never” motto, was what I lived by. I might still be living by that motto because I’ve decided to write this essay
Have you ever experienced an event that was so significant to you that you felt as if your memory was taking a photograph, keeping the memory implanted in your brain for the rest of your life? This is a prime example of flashbulb memory. Flashbulb memory is a term that pertains to a person’s memory of hearing about extremely shocking events (Goldstein, 2011, p. 209). Flashbulb memory is not the memory for the event itself, but it’s the memory of how the person heard about the specific event (Goldstein, 2011, p. 209). This means that a flashbulb memory includes where you were and what you were doing when you found out about a tragic event (Goldstein, 2011, p. 209). Some key attributes of flashbulb memories are that they are both remembered for long periods of time and are exceedingly vivid (Goldstein, 2011, p. 209). A great way to describe flashbulb memories is to compare them to a photo that never fades, proving how relevant these memories are to those who have them (Goldstein, 2011, p. 209).
The fancy American Dream has drawn people from all over the world to the United States to push for their upward social mobility. They have a dream and they want to make it come true. At this time Immigrants, into the major cities of the U.S, making them a melting pot. That melting pot has a different ethnic, social and cultural background, some of which contradict each other, while others are very harmonious. Race is often an obstacle to cultural communication and understanding. For this problem, Sherman Alexie his short story “Gentrification”, and Alex Tizon, with his story “Land of the Giants”, have a lot to say about how race is Obstacle to intercultural communication and understanding and that affect people misunderstand.
New York City’s population is a little over 8.3 million people. 8.3 million people are spread out among five boroughs and each have their own set routine. Each one of those 8.3 million see New York in a different way becuase “You start building your private New York the first time you lay eyes on it” (“City Limits” 4). Some people are like Colson Whitehead who “was born here and thus ruined for anywhere else” (“City Limits” 3). Others may have “moved here a couple years ago for a job. Maybe [they] came here for school” (“City Limits” 3). Different reasons have brought these people together. They are grouped as New Yorkers, but many times, living in New York is their only bond. With on going changes and never ending commotion, it is hard to define New York and its inhabitants in simple terms.
Ryan Torresin grew up in the cold, and to my surprise diverse, city of Toronto. He told me how the town he lived in was populated with a wide range of races (blacks, whites, Asians), languages (French, English) and religions (Christian, Catholic, Je...
However, a time in my life had come where I moved from coast to coast entering the unknown world of a small suburban town. Day by day, the weeks would go on and my passion towards cultural diversity that existed began to crumble. The town I had been living in did not meet my conceived thoughts. At one point, I realized the lack of expression. Not
“Our cultural diversity has most certainly shaped our national character,” affirmed Julie Bishop. From my perception, New York City is one of the most densely inhabited metropolitan collection of cultural diversity in the world in which structures our temperament. New York City applies an imperative influence upon trade, economics, mass communication, skill, style, and education. Frequently it is known that New York City is a crucial core for global politics and has been depicted as the ethnic headquarters of the globe. New York City has been known as a melting pot of culture and as this prolong throughout towards the current day, the city has become ornate with distinct cultures. Just walking around the streets of the city can be like walking around the halls of a cultural museum. From borough to borough, you can straightforwardly experience several features of different cultures by going to the different ethnic neighborhoods that exist throughout the city. For instance, if you wanted to take a trip to China that you've always dreamed of but couldn’t afford it, when living in New York City you can hop on a subway to Canal Street and be in Chinatown for just a few dollars. Certainly, it's not the same as literally being in China, however, you can experience a quantity of the culture and perchance grab some bona fide Chinese food for dinner. Several places holds their culture to denote each individual in New York City, to make an abundant of people to visit and feel each culture one setting at a time.
When you associate anything with New York City it is usually the extraordinary buildings that pierce the sky or the congested sidewalks with people desperate to shop in the famous stores in which celebrities dwell. Even with my short visit there I found myself lost within the Big Apple. The voices of the never-ending attractions call out and envelop you in their awe. The streets are filled with an atmosphere that is like a young child on a shopping spree in a candy store. Although your feet swelter from the continuous walking, you find yourself pressing on with the yearning to discover the 'New York Experience'.
Without a doubt, Times Square in New York City is a unique experience, but the image created by TV and movies does not show the gloominess that accompanies the euphoria of being in the Big Apple. The atmosphere is so exhilarating and exciting, you don’t even know what to do for a few minutes, but it is tinged with the bitter reality that sadness and melancholy also trail closely behind the positive. With most, if not all, of your senses being stimulated – sometimes all at once – Times Square creates a memory that will surely be cherished, and haunt you for the rest of your life.