此内容暂无简体中文译文，以下为英文原文。
Historical October 2008 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
So the neighborhood is celebrating the BIG 100. Or make it the FIRST 100.
After all, barring a nuclear holocaust or collapse of a giant sewer, there’s no reason that our homes won’t be celebrating their one thousandth anniversary in 2908. That’s a big deal and it isn’t.
I mean, you can go to lots of places around the world and they can show you where people lived a mere 1,000 years ago.
But I guess it is pretty significant in our throwaway society. Who drives a car more than 20 years old? Who remembers who was president after Gerald Ford or who was the first baseman before Pujols? OK, enough digressing! Our houses will be here in 1,000 years, and that’s cool. None of us will be around then, just like none of the workmen who laid the bricks and sawed the wood in 1908 are alive today. That’s OK; we come and we go. (And even if it wasn’t OK, we’d still come and go. How’s that for an epitaph on a tombstone: Here he is forever.
He came and went. Enough of the cemetery; it’s too grave of a subject. Back to us. What will the “hood” look like in 3008?
A thousand years, after all, is, like a long time. Try 360,000 days.
To look ahead, maybe it makes sense to begin by looking back. What was life like a thousand years ago, in 1008? Well, it’s hard to tell for sure because most of the photos from that time have faded and the 8-track tapes are no longer playable.
The Americas were inhabited, we know that. Chris Columbus hadn’t ventured here yet but there were millions of native Americans living here. They’d come thousands of years ago across the land bridge which existed between what is now Russia and Alaska. It’s a good thing Sarah Palin wasn’t governor then, or we’d be pretty sparsely populated today. None of those dudes had a green card, and Sarah wouldn’t have let them in, I’m sure.
Some would have no doubt come through surreptitiously, they might have sneaked in while she was attending the NCA meeting (the National Club Association meeting, the forerunner to the National Rifle Association meeting), but not many.
But she wasn’t there so here we are.
A thousand years was long enough ago that a Google search for leaders doesn’t yield anyone who rings a bell with me.
I mean, I’m no history buff, but I don’t recall much about any of the head dudes ten centuries ago: Zhenzong, the Emperor of Song China; Ethelred the Unready, King of England; or Fatimid caliph. Google again, here’s what is written about 1008: “The Afghan sultan Mahmud of Ghazna defeats Hindu forces at Peshawar as he works to extend his Afghan kingdom from the Tigris to the Ganges. Pope John XVIII retires to a monastery outside Rome’s walls in June after a 6-year reign in which he has been less dependent on the Crescentii family than his predecessor; he is succeeded July 31 by the Lunaborn cleric Pietro Buccaporriti, bishop of Albano, who will reign until 1012 as Sergius IV.” Honest!
I did not make this up. Do you know any of these people? Big as they were, they came and went. Likewise, a Google search fails to give me the Academy Award winners for 1008 or the top ten books. For that matter, there’s no record of the Super Bowl Champs of 1008. Go figure!
To be fair, and I’m big on fair, if not adequate, maybe they didn’t play games in 1008. Hard as that is to imagine, maybe there were no hockey rinks, balls, or swimming pools.
But you’d think that some knight would have won a tournament and been proclaimed. So the year 1008 is largely vague.
We infer but there’s not a lot that stands the test of time. Is that what they’ll say in 3008? And what will our homes’ future occupants think of us, living here in 2008? Will they be astounded that we turned our backs on the Mississippi River? Will they be amazed that we allowed the quality of a child’s education to be dependent upon where her parents reside? Will they wonder why we didn’t outlaw Twinkies and cigarettes? Will they wonder how we could be so narrow-minded and bigoted? How will the discovery of life on other planets – a certainty by then – change us? Will we stop noticing skin hues when we are all discriminated against by the advanced species from planet Avarice in the Pugnash Galaxy? Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel (a fascinating book) once talked about how foolish we were to send out radio signals and rockets to the reaches of outer space to announce our presence and location. “Here we are!” we shouted to the unknown stars.
After all, Diamond, notes, whenever different species interact, the more advance species always takes advantage of the lesser one.
We eat and enslave every mammal that is less sophisticated than us and think nothing of it; why would it be any different for us when that advanced species encounters us? So in 3008, the brick homes on McPherson and Washington might be distant memories of a species now relegated to working under or being the food for those thoughtwave beings. Your great X50 grandson or granddaughter won’t muse much on woodwork or downspouts when s/ he is bred for toast for the great gremlin from the Bellicose Starship. Alas, I am off-task, dear reader!
My intent was to simply join you in celebrating 100 years of our neighborhood. Founded on the outskirts of the City shortly after the World’s Fair, here we are 100 years later.
We were and are again one of the premiere ’hoods of the City, a place with opportunity and access, interesting homes and even more interesting residents . And given our trajectory, the best is yet to come.
But enjoy it while you can: Somewhere , even as you read, an empty cargo starship in a distant galaxy is starting, beginning its quest to the distant orb circling that medium-sized star, looking for snacks.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, October 2008.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Source shifts thousandth anniversary between 2908 and 3008 and prints 360000 days; humorous source arithmetic retained, not corrected.
Original source: SD_Times2008_10.pdf, printed page(s) 4; PDF page(s) 4.
