Antique Time Travels

Museums for old wares are imperative. Caring people fund and nurture these establishments with their stone walls, iron locks and scholarly ways. Yet, without you, that slightly daring and imaginative type who finds a loving spot in their everyday residence for an heirloom or two, the memory of our ancestors' belongings would fall somewhat into err. Antiques are like pets --true understanding leans strongly on the ownership.

2010_odysseytwo_sm Asked to define antiques, a wise person might say something like, "Old paintings, furniture, tools, vessels and such. Objects crafted or manufactured that made an aesthetic, scientific or cultural difference in a bygone era." Spot on. While fossils can be millions of years old and rock formations billions of years in the making -- commonly significant and stunning -- such things are not the art of man. No, they were made by enigmatic, wonderful forces and elements that created order to the universe and what appears to be a rare type of disorder known as life. While antiques often speak as to the nature of man, nature and all her mysteries speaks entirely as to the art and glory of creation itself.

While our creator's best work never goes out of style, our forefather's does, on rare occasion. Sadly, today, young people seem to be shying away from supporting museums and collecting almost everything. "Doesn't interest me," they say, as if they are describing a boorish math course or their aunt's 20 year old cat. "Antiques are just too … old!"

Understood, it's perplexing being young today. TV bombardment about: Nostrodamus, Merlin, Indian Oracles, Webots, Bible Code, Mayan Prophesy, 666, 911, 2012, Revelation, End of Days, Volcanic Eruption, Cosmic Bombardment, Nuclear Winter, Global Warming and everything else pointing toward doom and apocalypse. Forget about collecting it, who even talks history anymore? That's for dinosaurs and out-of-office Republicans. Antiques are the weathered wares of an archaic race on a dying planet. It's just boring old stuff, right?

Wrong. Happily, compared to common stuff all about us, including the ground we walk on and the stars we gaze at, antiques are not old at all. In fact, it's their newness that makes them all the more exciting and promising.

Born of the big bang, all matter in the universe is one age: approximately 13.5 billion years. That covered, let us speak of earth: Following billions of years of microbial domination, and two hundred million or so years when dinosaurs ruled, Homo sapiens began walking about on the planet a mere two-hundred thousand years ago. That's one-thousandth the reigns of noble sea turtles and nasty crocodiles. Dedicating himself almost entirely to two subjects: avoiding Saber Tooth tigers, and hunting and gathering food; for most of his epoch, mankind has been more akin to a race of fur-cheated chimpanzees than those men and women who designed, built and continue to monitor the Hubble Space Telescope – arguably man's greatest achievement. Then, roughly 15,000 years ago, something changed. As 2010 Space Odyssey writer Arthur C. Clarke might have put it, "something wonderful happened." Imagination flowered. Civilized man began leaving trails of breadcrumbs in her incredible flight: proof of art, literature, reverence, philosophy, song, sport, craftsmanship, architecture, medicine, science and love for one another. All these wonderments and more would emerge from 185,000 years of void and stagnation, ascending in geometric progression for 15 or so millennium until we arrive at this time we live in today.

Whether the ascent of modern man in these past few thousand years is a good or bad thing is irrelevant. It happened. And it is important. We are a brand new fascinating race. Be us children of God or just an amazing adaptation of stardust, we are here. And we have left amazing clues as to our treading – breadcrumbs if you will: the first African spears, Native American basketry, Persian carpets, Shakespeare's books, Kentucky rifles, quilts, foot warmers, whale oil lamps, Federal Period Furniture, Van Gogh's art, Edison Gramophones, Beatle records, and those artifacts dedicated to a telescope that can peer out billions of space years away, beholding our Creator's most breathtaking sights. Observations that might help us to adapt to an ever-changing universe, perhaps help us to live another day. The more we look out into the cold loneliness of quiet deep space the more certain we are of this. Our story is a fascinating one and probably a rare one. Perhaps some distant race with their own Hubble Telescope is gazing now at a small blue planet in a Galaxy looking like a Milky Way. Gazing with wonderment.

Yes young mankind, almost as important as the trails you've blazed, the breadcrumbs of your brand new past are important. Save them. Behold them. Honor them.

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