box o' notes

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Last week I found my undergraduate notes. All of them. Underscoring my advancing years, they smell like someone's grandfather's newspaper clippings from the Depression.

Although they are in my handwriting, although the margins are littered with Steelers logos, I do not recognize their author. This guy knew stuff. He was incredibly well-read, well-rounded. He was conversant in music and physics and programming and linguistics and literature. He was everything I aspire to be.

Lost, all lost, to the ravages of time.

I'm reminded of Watergate's mantra. What exactly did John know, and when did he forget it?

• • •

Most interesting to me are my astronomy notes. F still = MxA and Shakespeare is still dead, but astronomy? It's changed. Dark energy, the force that's making the universe accelerate apart, was not even an inkling then. The Hubble was still a punchline, a failure, so the age of the universe was not known. Black holes had not been proven. Planets orbiting other stars had not been observed, but my professor predicted precisely how they would be. Europa's ocean-smoothed ice was just a "smooth surface." Water had not yet been proven on Mars.

This is like reading an outdated textbook, except that it's in my handwriting. I'm thrilled. And horrified to have lived that long.