I’ve known for a long time that there is an ever diminishing knowledge of the past (in all things: historical events, art, history, etc.)

I know a lot about rock and roll. Less about crooners of the ‘40’s. Some, but not a lot about the jazz era of the 1920’s. If you asked me about Ragtime I’d say “Scott Joplin” and then stutter. Want me to opine on the traveling minstrel music of the era after the Civil War? Blank stare.

We learn about a few salient battles of the Romans or the Greeks, but they had a full, rich history which, were you alive at the time, you would have been steeped in. Now? It’s The Trojan Horse and Thermopylae and maybe a bit about Sparta and Athens.

So it will be with our era too. They’ll remember 9/11 for a while, and maybe the JFK assassination (“Camelot”). Perhaps Woodstock will last in the collective memory for some time, but I bet the Grassroots won’t last another decade. (I make a joke. They didn’t even last their own decade.) With each passing era we shed the next outer layer of knowledge until we are at last left with the core: Mozart, Rembrant, Shakespeare.

We have a collection of “art mugs” from MacIntosh, a Canadian company that wraps famous art around a ceramic cup, and we use them for coffee each morning. I’d rather go to a museum, but I live in Tennessee, where if you say “art” they think you’re addressing a guy named Arthur, not a creative endeavor that lifts the world.

Truth is, we’re all going to be erased. Maybe the Beatles will survive for a hundred years. Maybe not. It’s a distracted, self-absorbed society anymore. No telling what shiny object will capture the public these days.