An oldie but a goodie  
Great images have both a history and a prehistory; they are always a blend of memory and legend,  
with the result that we never experience an image directly.  
Gaston Bachelard  
Poetics of Space  
LETTER  
Have we run out of stories?  
I whispered this to my sisters in a dark theater a month ago.  
We were about to watch Greta Gerwig’s  
adaptation of Little Women (which is really an adaptation of an adaptation) and were sitting  
through the previews. Every single preview was for a remake: Call of the Wild, Dr.  
Dolittle, Emma,  
Mulan. (And, hot take, they all looked terrible.)  
I was miffed. Are we done? I wondered. Have we reached the end of storytelling?  
Is there nothing  
more to tell than the stories we’ve already told?  
The endless glut of indistinguishable superhero movies creates the same reaction in me.  
It’s the  
same thing, over and over again, and we can’t get enough.  
You could watch these movies without  
sound and understand the entire narrative; they are rote.  
Spoiler alert: Even when it seems like  
the odds are stacked against him, the good guy wins in the end!  
But maybe I haven’t been fair to Gerwig and the superheroes.  
Maybe it’s not all bad, this  
predilection to love hearing the same stories over and over.  
Maybe there’s something sweet and very  
human about it.  
At our core, we are storytelling animals, and like all animals, we love the comforts and safety of  
home.  
Part of feeling like home is recounting the stories that speak to who we are and what we  
love.  
This is why when big, obnoxious families (like mine) get together, we tell the same stories  
again and again: that time Sam had an  Arby’s moment  on the beach, that time Dad sewed a bikini  
out of an old curtain, that time cousin Emily gave our grandmother a black eye during street  
hockey.  
Familiar stories breed affection between the teller and their listeners.  
We strengthen our ties  
when we tell one another the same stories. We commit them, and each other, to memory. I love this.  
But I still reserve the right to be annoyed by trashy remakes.  
Abby  
STORIES  
heading  
link  
Lovers in Auschwitz, reunited  
Speaking of movies, why has this not been made into one yet?  
An  
incredible real life tale.  
New York Times  
heading  
link  
I walked 600 miles for pizza toast  
A journey through Japan in search of a very particular type of  
food.  
Eater  
heading  
link  
First encounter  
Stories of the spooky brilliance of the octopus.  
Seattle Met  
heading  
link  
The re run surprise  
Ode to home movies.  
Poetry Foundation  
FROM JOURNEY GROUP  
heading  
Like the way that you maintain your home, the way that you maintain your content says a lot about  
heading  
how you respect your guests.  
ABBY FARSON PRATT  
link  
7 Steps to Content Strategy That Serves Human Beings  
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Story Matters is the publication of Journey Group, devoted to celebrating the craft of storytelling  
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