Time in a Bottle

Well, we'd planned to finish things up last December, but Rita knocked us into the 'weird zone'. In fact, my time-sense is so messed up I'm still not sure we've entered 2006. So maybe it's fitting that we'll finish up our 125th anniversary celebration on Presbyterian Heritage Sunday next month instead of on New Year's Eve 2005.

We had a grand time last year when we discovered a time capsule behind our cornerstone on the weekend of our anniversary kickoff. There were all sorts of interesting and wonderful things in it from 1910 when the sanctuary was built. It was fun to see the local newspapers, the Sunday school materials, the lists of people in leadership positions, the Bible from the Civil War era, the church cookbook, the coins and that little business card declaring its owner's new phone number: 363!

Now it's our turn to put together items for a time capsule. What do you think people 25, 50, 100 years in the future would find interesting? It would be cool to put together a dvd of the events throughout the past year, but then how could we be sure that there would be a functioning dvd player in the future? Just look at how quickly technology has changed in the past 10 years! It's beginning to get difficult to find a computer that'll even accept a 3.5" floppy, much less one of the old 5.25" floppies! And we really do want our future cornerstone openers to be able to see what we've put in the box! So..........it's back to good old reliable low-tech for us - newspapers, photos, mementos from our big celebration in 2005, a Then and Now cookbook, a copy of our history to date (as if we could predict the future!), Rita stories, and ..... well, we haven't quite figured out what all the and should be.

Whatever we put in our time capsule, I'm hoping it'll tell our story in ways that intrigue. I'm still wondering why our predecessors put 2 American coins, 2 Mexican coins, and 2 German coins in their time capsule. We're planning on explaining anything like that for our future openers.

Anyone have any suggestions for a symbol representative of Beaumont? We've not gotten that figured out yet. Our predecessors put in a new kind of inkpen, sort of a modified fountain pen, which was only being made in Beaumont at the time. What do you think would work?! It can't be too big because the hole in the wall where the time capsule will go is a tight fit. I'm looking forward to hearing any suggestions!