I am the editor of my college paper. This paper is going into a time capsule that is to be dug up in 50 years. I am writing the editorial. My readers, what matters to you right now?
It gets me teary not for sadness but just emotions that I will most likely either be dead or starting to suffer from dementia and my hair will be very silver. Will my marriage have been great? My baby will be 53, almost the age I will be when she graduates from high school. All of my daughters will have reached menopause and I will probably have great grand children and a few great great grands.
We've had rallies in response to an Anchorage Christian group that wants to Pray away the Gay. it was only a coupel of years ago that homosexual couples were allowed to adopt nationally and in some places they still cannot have civil unions. If 50 years with this all seem as strange and barbaric that they were even issues? When I first learned about slavery, it was from the movie Roots. It was unfathomable to me that anyone was ever held as a slave-- I was seven years old. Will the next generation read of us being concerned with Gay Rights and be amused that it was something that people got worked up over?
We are having a banking crises. Will this affect their generation? We had four lawmakers last year go to prison on corruption. They will be footnotes if they even make it into our history books, their graves probably grown over and if they are lucky, tended by grand children and they will make bigger imprints on the hearts of their children and grand children when they leave prison and find new lives and new ways to define themselves. Sarah Palin, Alaska's governor, is running for VP-- will she win and if she does or doesn't, will she be remembered fondly or will she, too be a footnote in a text? Perhaps a younger governor will take her place.
How will the family have changed? Will my family of 9 children be considered as bizarre as it is now?
That I get to write an editorial almost spooks me, thinking of it being read by people not yet born. People will be running the college who are just now in diapers. How many wars will be fought between now and then? Is Iran's president right in that the US is losing it's status as a world power? Will people still come to the US to learn at our universities? How many college classes will be taught away from school? I've taken at least one on-line course since I returned two years ago.
My kids will be old-- this won't be in there, but what will they remember of me? Will they gather at holidays and laugh at memories? Will they always remember how I came up with a zany, silly pose for yearly pictures?
I want to put a Hostess Twinkie in the capsule if they let me. I think it will last that long.
If anyone has ideas for me to write about, about what matters to us now, please post something for me!
5 comments:
What matters me? That's Spanish. I can't learn this language and I think that I should give it up (again).
In 50 years I will be 68. To be honest I am not really interested in the future but I like reading about it.
Spanish-- YES! The US has a lot of Spanish speakers-- it's another country when you go to Arizona or Florida or California. In 50 years it may be required that school children learn Spanish as well as English just like they learn French in Canada.
I am sorry that you don't like you don;t like it, but I am glad that you have mastered English as well as you have so I can enjoy your blog and musings, dear Ropi!
This made me cry! I love what you wrote. I hope to leave a little mark of happiness on everyone I meet, even if it's just someone I pass by in the grocery store aisle. And I think I'll have two giant glow-in-the-dark googley yes put on my gravestone, and it will read, "I'll be back!" :-)
Thanks for being you and for inspiring me.
((((hugs))))
You got a couple of mine already. Is there still time to add our ever diversifying culture and the environment?
This goes out on 16 October-- not at all too late! Thank you!
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