In the Year 2000

My nomination for early weekend must-read is this collection of predictions about life in the year 2000, published in Ladies' Home Journal in 1900. It's a fascinating mix of the mundanely accurate (train cars will be air-conditioned), grossly underestimated (people will live to 50 instead of 35), poignantly unattained (free health care for poor children in public schools), whimsical (blue roses the size of cabbages), misjudged (elevated trains will eliminate all city noise), flat-out goofy (C, X, and Q will be eliminated from the English alphabet), and correct in spirit but wrong in particulars (gigantic guns will fire shells around the world capable of destroying entire cities).

It makes you think about what we all take for granted, and what seems like it could be fixed but may not ever be, and just how much changes over three generations. And of course so much is left out: men walking on the moon, vast commercial empires devoted to mass-broadcasted sports, plastics, widely available birth control, recorded music . . .

In any case, I'd like to hear one of those orchestra concerts performed by musicians in a different city, electrically connected to local instruments. It'd save me some Metro North fares, at least.