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 This
weekend, we went to Richmond to help my brother celebrate the
birthday of his twins, James and Sharon, and it was a jolly good
time. They've just turned six, so their world is full of new
discoveries, and this weekend they got their first taste of the
incredibly yummy cheese fondue at the Melting Pot. As you can
see, Sharon took to the experience with all the gusto you'd expect
from the daughter of Jeff "the Mouth" Looney. (In fact,
this photo reminds me of more than one famous (in our family,
anyway) image of Sharon's dad when he was her age, enthusiastically
eating something yummy.)
It being their sixth birthday, Jeff also wanted to mark the
occasion with a reading by the author of The
Cake that Baked Itself, which I wrote for the occasion
of my niece Sarah's sixth birthday. (She's in college now.) Other
birthday festivities included a few hours at Chuck E Cheese's,
a trip to the Über Flea Market, and of course, the traditional
light saber battle with Darth
James.
While at Chuck E Cheese's, I had the decidedly surreal experience
of picking up a piece of trash and discovering it to be a photograph
of myself. They have these little car rides that include an automatically-taken
picture, like the one of James shown here, and apparently I'd
been standing in the frame when some other kid was riding it,
and that person had discarded their souvenir photo, for me to
discover later. (Speaking of odd coincidences, on Tuesday I received
a request for permission to use the cartoon of electrically-powered
books on this
page from someone wishing to use it on a webpage they were
working on for their school's library, in Tennessee. Within an
hour, I received an almost identically-worded email from someone
else, in Massachusetts. I used one email to say yes to them both...)
 As you
can see, James wasn't particularly excited by this ride, since
it didn't feature weapons of any sort, but we insisted he go
on it after Sharon did, since we wanted to include the little
photos it spits out in the Time Capsules we've been creating.
Which brings me to the subject of the Time Capsules.
When Sharon and James were born and Jeff asked me to be Sharon's
Godfather, we decided to honor the occasion by building a Time
Capsule for her. Since her personality hadn't ripened much at
that point, we mostly focused on our own place in the universe
at that time, as we scrounged objects from around the house to
include in a big cardboard cylinder we had. When it was full,
we sealed it up by covering it with aluminum foil, then covering
that with a thick layer of transparent packing tape. On the side
we included a label, reading "To be opened on September
21, 2017."
So then five years go by, and one day James and Sharon see
the Time Capsule and of course, since they are twins and used
to things coming in equal pairs, James wonders where his is.
Of course, the point of doing one just for Sharon was to help
differentiate the twins and provide an object lesson in the inequities
of life, but such high-minded logic doesn't always work with
5-year olds. Then suddenly, in a charming display of selfless
love and unwavering faith in the power and generosity of her
Godfather, Sharon pronounced that she would get me to make one
for James. And being the generous Godfather that I want her to
believe I am, I naturally promised I would when she asked.
All that was last spring, and I've been working on this job,
on and off, ever since. Now of course, the task is much more
difficult... what was once a weekend's lark has turned into a
complex project. Now that they have personalities and interests
of their own, the Time Capsule Commission must consider how best
to capture the world of today and the place they occupy in it.
And as the collection of artifacts to include in the capsule
for James grew, we found ourselves wanting to set aside new stuff
for Sharon as well. Our first thought was to make a packet of
cards and letters for Sharon, seal it up, and include it in the
James capsule with a note that said "Please give this to
your sister." But then we came up with an even better plan.
The search for a suitable capsule met with success at the
Container Store, where we found these excellent black plastic
trash cans that are perfect cylinders, with lids. The size was
just exactly what we wanted: wide enough to hold a representative
toy Judy had pulled out of James's collection, and about the
same size as the Sharon capsule.
 What
turned out to be even more perfect was the height: the new capsule
was just the right size to fully contain the original Sharon
capsule! So of course, we decided to just build an expanded capsule
for Sharon, along with the one we were making for James, with
her original capsule fitting inside and taking up a large percentage
of the cargo space.
What else are we putting in the capsules? I asked Jeff
and Judy to each write a letter for inclusion in the two capsules,
and at Xmas dinner I passed around cards addressed to each twin,
and got everyone in the family to sign them. I have stacks of
photos and other little bits of ephemera, and I'm including in
each capsule a copy of our Dad's annual calendar (which always
features a dozen Looney family photos). Last fall on Sharon's
day, I spent an hour walking around their house, making a
video snapshot of the world they lived in as 5 year olds, and
I made a scrapbook of printouts from this website during which
I described their antics (notably here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
and here).
And of course, there will be various samples of newspapers and
magazines of the day, not to mention a couple of current Looney
Labs products.
There was a time when I was hoping to deliver the finished
capsules for Xmas; then I revised my hopes to include an unveiling
at this past weekend's shindig. But instead of finding the time
to get them sealed up, I kept finding more stuff I want to include
in them! Usually, when I'm faced with a choice like this, I choose
to do the job well instead of meeting an artificially imposed
deadline, and perfectionism is winning out again. Perhaps I'll
get them done before Easter...
Anyway, do you have a message to send to the year 2017? If
you have a thought or two to share with the all-grown-up James
and/or Sharon Looney, then send it to me
with the subject line reading "Memo to the Future."
I'll make a print-out of the messages we get, and I'll put a
copy in each time capsule... whenever we get them completed.
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