Sunday, May 24, 2020
It’s getting hot in the city. 80+ F degrees in town. A lot of people are going to the beaches and also returning to restaurants. Life is gradually returning to normal and some people are looking into the future and trying to archive the present and save the past. Many years ago there were floods and pandemics and plagues of a grand scale and what was preserved was put in a library and museum as a time capsule of the past. Even in history books and biblical references and many cultures they reference these grand scale events including eclipses, great floods, famines and massive storms. Future generations will study history and witness what we have in the making similar to what we had many years ago.
In our local region from which I’m writing from for today they had a couple of massive floods in the 1930’s(?) and also there was the Coney Island and downtown floods. I remember going to a museum a few months ago and the haunting images stayed with me. There was a dog stranded on a roof and also people canoeing through boats. The was an image of martial law signs that were posted. And various floating debris that they had salvaged, old lights and also other things including the eerie phone calls saved and some of the letters written and even weather broadcasts and other things. Even a wedding dress. I remember seeing a map of how far the floods had gone.
History will be there whether we decide to preserve it or not. But we will remember better what we save and archive. I hope that future generations will be able to see this and learn from the lessons as we did before. In Ohio for instance we used previous data and history of pandemics of the past such as the infamous Spanish flu and used it to predict and model what would happen and what the trajectory of the spread would be.
Looking through social media the other day I’ve seen how far we’ve come. There were references to evolution and also to Darwin’s survival of the fittest and also of the debate on mask wearing. The news will probably be great for soundbites of the current generation and we will definitely want to preserve as many memes and thoughts of what we have in the present day as possible including timelines, newspaper and social media. I even encountered a post about the future progress of Earth and what will happen years from now. I’ve always been fascinated with these alternate timeline /alternate realities as well as time travel. Probably one of the best movies ever made was Back to the Future. It was family friendly and had a cohesive trilogy. Obviously we should probably never remake such a franchise and ruin/destroy it (unless the director once again actually has such a legendary vision that it is bonkers-great beyond belief). But other time travel literature like H.G. Wells and his Time Machine and Mark Twain’s The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court are interesting references and some of the tales that captured some of my imagination. The “timeline of the far future” and “future of earth” Wikipedia reference is a very extensive science/physics based theory about how the earth might possibly evolve or change in the future to include what may happen with magnetic polarities of our planet, planetary alignment and positions and our relation to the expanding sun. Eventually the gradual heat death of the universe and possible collapse or new Big Bang creating a new universe was written as a possibility. It also talks about continental drifting and a Pangea/Pangaea of sorts. It is interesting and also sobering to think that millions and billions from now we won’t be here in body to witness the literal apocalypse and transformation of our yellow sun into a flaming behemoth giant red sun to engulf the earth.
You may have heard of Pangea from early continental shifting of tectonic plates but might not have heard of the superocean Panthalassa that surrounded the supecontintent. Interesting enough after scouring Wikipedia I learned that there were at least four supercontintent formations over time.
I’ve been fascinated with Native American history when they had a brief introduction of fossils and artifacts in school. They introduced us to trilobites and arrowheads and also burial mound patterns and also giganticism of certain animals like the giant sloths and wooly mammoths. We also learned about melting glaciers and the ice age.
I hope that future generations will be able to see more vividly some of the present day thoughts and concerns we had to live through and struggle through and it is my hope that we can shed some light on that through archival footage, virtual reality, museums, books, and some preserved (sanitized) modern day artifacts. We can study the microbiological structures if we’re going into nursing or becoming a doctor.
We hope you had a chance to enjoy the warm weather and the weekend off. We usually travel and go check out the festivities, but this year has been a bit more difficult. Life is what you make of it.
