This column originally ran on May 28, 2000. Look for a postscript at the end.
Cindy Lange-Kubick's "Letter to the Future" will be included with a collection of items placed in the Lincoln Journal Star time capsule.
A public dedication of the time capsule will be at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday at 10th and Q streets. All are welcome.
Friday, May 26, 2000.
It rained early this morning. A thundering rush of water in the midst of one of the worst droughts in a century.
We woke up smiling.
In 50 years it won't matter.
In 50 years, as you read this letter, who knows what conglomeration of calamity and celebration will occupy your thoughts and dreams.
We can't imagine.
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We can't even predict tomorrow's weather. And in a world in which we can't wait five minutes for a fax, five seconds for an email, it boggles our teensy Homo sapiens minds to travel 50 years into the future where our high-tech will be your antiques store staple.
Still, visionaries talk of visits to Mars, time travel, the three-minute mile, cloning dinosaurs.
In 50 years my children will be grandparents. My parents will be gone. I will be 89. Wandering the streets with a notebook and a decent lead or two still clanking around my brain, if my genes hold up.
A few days ago I wrote a newspaper column. (It's what I did for a living then.) I penned a wish list for Lincoln.
"Quit whining," someone wrote back.
"Lincoln: Love it or leave it," said another.
You should know this about my hometown: We complained. But we stayed.
People came here for good schools and clean air and nice neighbors. Usually they found all three.
People planted here. Not corn or milo or soybeans. But buttercups and oak trees and roots.
The roots were deep and strong.
In the evenings we walked our dogs and pushed our babes in strollers and sat on front porches.
If we were lucky, the air was cool, the wind blew gently from the north and the sunset looked like heaven might on a Sunday morning in June.
In 2000 Lincoln was a little big city. A small town on the cusp of cosmopolitan. Four public high schools would soon be six. The mayor was married in office. Scaffolding reached for the sky around the state Capitol as workers spent years repairing its limestone face. (Let's hope it held.)
Refugees from Iraq and Bosnia, Russia and Guatemala came here to settle in safety. Today I hope their children's children are here to stay. I hope this mostly white-faced community blossoms in browns and blacks and every shade in between. Hola. Zdravo. Masal khair.
We fought over a beltway around the city. We fought to protect Wilderness Park.
We fought over abortion rights and gay rights and two-way traffic on P Street.
We worried about our kids, whether they were safe in school, on the streets, in front of the television set.
We called the world a global village.
Mothers marched for gun control in Washington.
Our senators voted to trade with China.
George W. Bush and Al Gore ran for president. (Unfortunately, one of them had to win.)
We worried about cancer and AIDS and nuclear war.
We sat in front of computer screens and contracted carpal tunnel syndrome.
We shopped The Gap, Old Navy, Dillards, Target.
We ate at Lazlo's, Misty's, Valentino's, McDonald's -- $2 for a quarter-pounder with cheese -- and ate our french fries supersized. (We hoped to live longer by driving our SUVs to health clubs to ride stationary bicycles.)
We loved our cellphones, our lattes, our MTV. (Actually our kids loved their MTV, we preferred "ER" and "Ally McBeal.")The Embassy Suites Hotel was brand-spanking new. So were the skyboxes, where the well-heeled watched Cornhusker football on Saturdays. (Who were the Cornhuskers, you say? Ask your parents.)
Teenagers cruised O Street on Saturday nights.
A gallon of milk cost $2.56. A gallon of gas, $1.54.
The city ended at 84th Street, and a traffic jam was 20 cars at 48th and O street. (All was not perfect in Lincoln. The city was the Midwestern Mecca of Bad Drivers.)
Babies watched Barney the purple dinosaur on PBS. Toddlers played with Teletubbies. Pre-adolescents traded Pokemon cards. Their parents traded white elephants on eBay.
I suppose all of it is gibberish to you. Nostalgic and sentimental.
In half a century we will be the old fogies, the signposts of the past, you the shakers of the century to come.
And when 50 years have passed, I hope the air is still clean, the schools are still good, your neighbors are still friendly.
I hope plentiful rain waters your buttercups and oak trees.
And that your roots grow deep and strong.
From 2000, Cindy
Postscript: The beltway is happening, "Ally McBeal" was canceled, traffic is one-way on P Street, mothers are still marching for gun control, the state Capitol is standing strong, calamities we did not expect have befallen us, we've checked Mars off the list and the time capsule was dug up three decades early when the Journal Star sold its building. Will it reappear in 2050? Stick around and see.
Cindy Lange-Kubick counts down her final summer at the Journal Star with one column from each of her 25 years on the Lincoln Life beat with a …
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Reach the writer at 402-473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.
On Twitter @TheRealCLK