No abstract

In On Hashish, Walter Benjamin writes that he would “like to write something that comes from things the way wine comes from grapes.” Here I try a similar project by squeezing things from my past that have been fermented over time with memory to show the intoxication of an atomic childhood. I take as the starting point objects and spaces from my experiences in and around the atomic city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which may or may not be shared by others who encountered atomic Appalachia. Stretching beyond my own experience, I seek to add to the growing body of thinking about the connections between materiality and memory by adding the atomic as a dynamic example of matter’s vibrancy.

No abstract

While at first glance, snow globes might seem trite or trivial objects, on closer reflection, they are revealed to be symbolic realms that provide clues to the desires, dreams, nightmares, and memories of the cultures that produce them. When we consider snow globes as products and reflections of the social world and the individual’s place within it, it is not surprising that some artists and designers use these objects to depict some of the darker sides of contemporary life. Considered in this essay are snow globes of catastrophe, representing loss and malevolence, which trouble the notion of snow globes as comforting keepsakes. Here, I argue for a reading of snow globes as oneiric and mnemonic gadgets that magnify our human dramas and disasters, induce memory, melancholy, and nostalgia, and allow us to see our fears and our nightmares more clearly, exposing the relationships between matter and memory, objects and persons.

This concluding chapter addresses the longing of residents of Oak Ridge for the days when the city was a muddy frontier at the beginning of the Atomic Age. Such a longing was shaped by positive memories of working for a secret atomic bomb project, but it was also colored with nostalgia for an imagined golden age of mid-twentieth-century America. In addition, this sentiment not only describes an opinion about the past; it also betrays a vision of contemporary America as a nation divided and in decline; a nation that has lost, or is in the act of losing, its purpose and character.