Toward the Tricentennial

As part of last week's ceremonies, President Ford opened an antique safe that had been filled with mementos of the 1870s. The contents -- autographs, photographs, inkstands, a book on temperance -- limned a more circumscribed and monochrome period. For the 2076 Tricentennial, many Americans are cramming time capsules with different ingredients, including credit cards, pick et signs and whole automobiles.

There are other objects that could convey to future Americans the majesty and the trivia, the glory and the pity of the current era. Some proposals: a la ser rod and a citizen's band radio; the Pill and Gatorade; a shoe from Natalia Makarova and a Frisbee; a Beatles' record and a segment from the Watergate tapes; a Big Mac hamburger and a chunk of moon rock. It says something about the vitality, not to say incoherence of the times, that the list could be endless -- and fascinating in its contrasts.

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