Time Capsules are Abundant
In the early 1990’s we buried an ice chest with images and notes generated by first graders. It was a time capsule of their thoughts of the environment and how we might better treat it when they were someday to graduate from high school. Our team was very diligent in sealing the ice chest with caulking compound, etc. We marked the time capsule’s resting place on our campus and went on about our Earth Day.
Twelve years later, we gathered up a number of the contributors and dug it up. Though there was some water damage (condensation?) it was still a great trip down memory lane for everyone involved…and that was only a twelve year time capsule.
A time capsule was painstakingly preserved at the 1970 World’s Fair. It’s to be opened in 6970, 5000 years after it was sealed. Within that capsule they will find “extensive collection of films, seeds and microorganisms as well as a ceremonial kimono, a Slinky and even the blackened fingernail of a survivor of the 1945 Hiroshima atomic bombing.”
Great read on many other famous time capsules found here.
It raises the question of what to put in a time capsule. What will be comprehensible in 5000 years? What technology will exist then, if we bury microfilm or CD’s or love notes or WonderBra’s or…What archeological wizards will take up the task of making heads/tails over a well-preserved Twinkie?
What would you put in a time capsule?
I bring this up, for I’ve unwittingly (well, for the most part) been the historian of my own life for my entire life. Every time I’ve crafted a diary or journal entry—and more recently a blog post—I’ve been pinning down a bit of history, even if it’s an internal thought that I, or my great grandkids, might someday review.
I recently rediscovered some journals from the 1980’s and found them to be sometimes humorous, sometimes painful. My heart goes out to that Mark Jarvis of back then. More recently I’ve found scratchings of my early years as a father, and I treasure them so very much now!
All of these are time capsules, serving the same purposes of bringing history back to the forefront of mind. I encourage anyone reading this to start yesterday! Gather your rosebuds while you may. Get stuff written down.
I am also a packrat, and I have artifacts of my parents and grandparents, but also of my childhood and some relics even of my kids’ earliest writing, toys, inventions, etc. It’s all priceless to me. Though it isn’t museum-worthy stuff, it is the stuff of memory, a preservation of my personal past, and thus, pretty neat.
