Mark’s Musings – April 25, 2012
Mark Fortune
As I prepared several items for the time capsule (how’s that for waiting until the last minute!) this past Sunday evening, I caught myself reflecting on what our community might look like 50 years hence. And then I started rambling.
I believe that Coshocton County will still be a good place to raise a family, safe and free from the influences of our larger urban cities. This is our hope, of course. It is really almost surreal to think 50 years ahead, let alone to write anything about it. . . I find myself wondering will the Buckeyes still be playing football, have they won any more championships? How many coaching changes in the past 50 years? And of course the NCCA basketball tournament now includes 1,019 teams.
And there are the silly things, for example, are the Cleveland Indians still in existence, have they yet won a World Series (or the Chicago Cubs for that matter) or have they thrown in the proverbial towel so to speak? How about the Browns, Bengals or Steelers? How have professional sports changed?
Who is leading our county? How has government changed? Does local government still exist or has it went the way of some prehistoric beast as perhaps some in the federal government might wish? Is our country still the home of the free and the land of the brave?
And what about some of the more mundane things? How much does a fast food burger cost? A gallon of milk? Loaf of bread? A pizza? A can of pop? Or have fast food and sugared drinks been outlawed by the PC police? See, I told you that we would bring that up from time to time. (The PC thing)
Who rules the world? Is it Apple, Google, Facebook or some other company that we hadn’t even heard of in 2012? What about the stock market? Has it reached 20,000? 25,000? Or less? Do we even still use paper money or have we all been implanted with a chip that is read by a scanner and carries our value to society both in monetary terms and otherwise? Hmmm? Scary thought, huh?
And while it may cause only a slight tremor in the year 2012, what about our faith? Are we still allowed to profess our faith in the year 2061? In America? Around the world? Keep in mind that in many countries it is already dangerous – even life threatening – to profess that you are a Christian.
Where are we on technology? Vehicles? Do they run on gasoline, alcohol, cane sugar, grease, toothpaste or corn flakes? Or have we all switched to hovercraft? You just never know. What about our farmers and agriculture? How many bushels of corn per acre are our farmers able to harvest to feed the world’s nearly 10 billion people? That is our estimate. A search on the internet found several conflicting theories. Surprise, huh? Some predict that the world population will fall after 2060 and some predict that it will reach a ceiling in 2040 and then decline.
Nevertheless, I do know that all of this future thinking has made me hungry. It’s time for a Klondike© bar. Hope those are still around!
Category: Mark's Musings
