Memories In A Pipe Dream

This is a short autobiographical summary of the author's (myself's) life. It is, as you'll find out, stories from the first 25 years of my life. It contains many experiences that I have been through. As well as few surprises here and there. There is also some fictional writing in there, however none of that is written in a poetical sense and you'll be able to spot it fairly easily. I have attempted to convey some meaning from life into some of the stories that I have lived through. I just hope that you the reader will find some enjoyment from them!

The public authorities have not successfully resolved the management of the traumatic memory of the wars, dictatorships and massacres to which the European project was always intended to be a counterpoint. The conflict of memories and the public discourses about the past are latent on ideological, political and cultural levels. However, if in the past the conflict concerning memories tended to develop inside the borders of countries, it has now leapt into the European arena. This has also led to the confrontation and questioning of the great narratives established in the common memory, especially with countries of the East joining the European Union. Each community, group or nation maintains common memories that do not always fit in or converge with a general overall account. The origins of the UB Solidarity Foundation’s European Observatory on Memories lie in these debates, and through this book — which includes the contributions of specialists in multiple disciplines and the speeches that were given at the first international symposium, “Memory and Power: A Transnational Perspective” — it hopes to present some of the key challenges that this conflict of memories has in store for us in the present and in the future.

Growing up on a farm in Wyoming taught Susan Miller perseverance. Her parents, hard-working and inspiring, taught her that life is full of obstacles-and one has to choose how she will overcome them. History of a Pipe Dream is the story of her struggle to overcome the prejudice that existed (and to a certain degree, continues to exist) regarding women in the field of industrial construction. She started out as a common laborer and worked her way up to journeyman, and along the way, she got to know people from all walks of life. Some amused her, some inspired her, but most just stood in her way. And then there was Jack, one of the most helpful men she ever met-who was also, at the same time, the most destructive force she'd ever know in her life. Through it all, she fought hard to stay focused on her goal: to be accepted as an equal. She chose to pursue a career that challenged her as fiercely as it challenged the perceptions and prejudices of others. The art of survival she learned so well as a child and young woman would soon be the key to her success. Hers is a journey into a world that few women have known, but all women can relate to.

First Published in 2007. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Seventeen-year-old Hannah thought she hated her kid sister Leslie until she lost her in a tragic accident—but was it an accident? Leslie drowned even though she knew how to swim, and something seems wrong about the whole thing. Hannah lives in a world where it’s possible to relive memories on a screen at Memory Lane. The price is that, once seen, you lose that memory forever, and it becomes the property of Memory Lane. Desperate for answers, Hannah sneaks into the facility, but her experience raises even more questions and concerns. Now on the run with her cousin Thomas, Hannah discovers an organized group of rebels known as the Memorizers. The group is against Memory Lane stealing memories and is willing to fight for their beliefs. The Memorizers could be necessary assets in Hannah discovering the truth about Leslie. Will Hannah and Thomas join them or fight Memory Lane on their own? Most importantly, can Hannah trust her own memories?

Memory and Erasure is part of a growing body of academic literature to properly document and narrate the Gukurahundi genocide which, hopefully, may contribute to survivors and victims families quest for justice and closure. Deployed in January 1983, the Fifth Brigades legacy has continued to cast a dark shadow not just over Matabeleland and Midlands, but over the entire country. As the title of the book and also the chapters forcefully underline, a culture of violence led by the state and those who control its levers pervades the whole of Zimbabwe and continues to do so partly because of the failure to address the Gukurahundi genocide and its aftermaths, which marked the height of Zimbabwean authorities tendency to use violence to crush dissent and opposition. Collectively, these essays explore different aspects of the Gukurahundi in order (1) to challenge the silencing of the genocide as a mainstream public issue in Zimbabwe, (2) to demonstrate how, deliberately and systematically, Zimbabwes rulers have refused to allow this issue to be resolved and have, in the process, completely disregarded the views, demands, feelings and sensitivities of affected individuals and communities, (3) to explore and critique the institutional, legal/ constitutional and political frameworks that have sustained the failure to find a solution, (4) to demonstrate how Zimbabwe, as a state, bears collective responsibility for Gukurahundi crimes and should therefore hold itself accountable and institute a clear and honest programme to provide a lasting solution that does not lead to further division, and (5) this collection emphasises, in various ways, that the solution to the political culture that has engulfed Zimbabwe and prevented it from attaining its independence goals lies in resolving the aftermath of Gukurahundi and addressing the culture of violence, repression and impunity in Zimbabwean politics.

Poetry. Women's Studies. UTOPIA PIPE DREAM MEMORY builds upon impossible imagined intimacies, relishing the pleasure of slow, attentive learning. In an unfolding of rhythms, repetitions, and distended narratives it envisions a space of play and ecstatic influence, drawing characters such as Gertrude Stein, Bernadette Mayer and Maya Deren into dialogues and visions that articulate the tension between embodiment and voice, identification and materiality. These narratives push towards a unified dispersal, a complex act of exultant feminine chaos, letting slip the boundaries between what is animal, what is describable, and what can be made to appear. "UTOPIA PIPE DREAM MEMORY is a plethora of wonder and exuberance. Anna Gurton-Wachter, 'in her woman treasure form,' has conjured a lush and evocative new wave of feminist thinking where subject and object are erotic enablers and the spell cast by narration is our ecological surround redoubled, brimming with potent and unbounded fascination. She rethinks from inside the juggernaut what a sociology of the imagination can look like. I adore the perverse transparency of mesmerizing similitudes and divergences that tug at each other, at perception and at the reader's third eye, fixated on desire's embodied visions. Anna's capacity for a theatrics of iconoclastic reverie is in a league of its own."--Brenda Iijima