Like many of our readers, I continue to miss Gary Larson's The Far Side cartoons. Now I have 366 of them in a millennium collection brought up to date with color and appropriate historic dates which the publisher, Andrews McMeel of Kansas City, calls "a refreshingly irreverent retrospective of the last thousand years." It is ecologically correct because the calendar and the box it came in are made of recycled and recyclable paper, a new claim to me. The first cartoon shows a burning village in the background, a Viking boat beached far above the shoreline and a group of Vikings. The leader says, "Everyone can just put down their loot and plunder, and Sven here -- yes, Sven, who was in charge of reading the tide chart -- has something to say to us all." The historical note, dated 1003, says, "Vikings begin a three-year visit to the northern continent in the Western Hemisphere. Indigenous people thought it was only going to be for a couple of weeks." It is going to be a great year.
We have been reading a lot of promises about the wonderful future soon to unfold as computers take over. One idea being hailed as a miracle breakthrough in our daily lives will allow us to check our refrigerator by computer so we can know what to buy at the supermarket on our way home. If that is one of the best ideas for our bright future, I think we are in for a lot of problems, one of them being a realistic perception of what should constitute a miracle breakthrough. I have already made my choice: Keep my carefully nurtured ability to make a list and decide what should be in my refrigerator. Like warnings on cigarette packages, there should be one on such appliances. Being told what to do too often (keep within the yellow lines, don't leave things on trains, buy eggs) may cause a diminishing of traditional thinking abilities.
Today's readers are more concerned with what has disappeared rather than what might be available in the future. There are two gentlemen with cashmere coats. The misfortune of one is that it is purple. He would like to have it dyed a more conventional color. The other is distraught because on the first day that he wore his, he snagged the shoulder on a nail resulting in an unsightly tear.