Monday, August 10, 2020

TIMETRAVEL


If you could travel in time, what era would you like to explore? Would you want to go into the future or into the past?  Who would you like to visit with and would you want to change history?  Of course you wouldn't have to stay there, it would be just for a visit.

I often thought of somehow stopping Hitler or the monsters of history. Being able to stop the assassinations of men who were doing good but whose lives were cut short.  Telling Lincoln not to go to the theater that night. Making sure Martin Luther King Jr. stayed off that balcony or diverting John Kennedy that day in Dallas. However, I think changing history could be really dangerous.

I sometimes think I would like to go centuries into the future just to see if there is a future and find out what is in store for us. Will it be Jetsonian or dystopian?  Perhaps we will have robots to do all the heavy work for us. Space travel may be common. Will we have used up this planet and be in search of a new one to colonize?

Would you like to see a personal hero of yours in action?  I would love to watch Edison working for just a day.  Maybe watch Anne Sullivan teaching Helen Keller.  Fly with Amelia Earhart on that fatal trip to find out what happened to them. Or maybe just sit quietly in the brush with Jane Goodall.

Of course seeing the results of the 2020 election and the end of this pandemic might be  nice short hops. Hopefully they are short hops.

Just curious, if you had the power or opportunity, what time period or person
would you like to visit?


57 comments :

  1. That's a good question. I would like to do some searching of the past...like who really DID crimes told to us thru the history books...'cause I think most history is one man's opinion & stories are just that...stories of "one man's opinion". For instance the fish caught was a 40 pounder on record, but actually just 2 pounds. Lies told to us & written in bopks/records are that...lies. Did Epstein really commit suicide? Gen. Custer & his men...History depicts them as heroic ... But I think he lead his men into Montana as a Glory Sealer like those that assassinate...wanting their names to go down in history. I want more truths, and to accomplish that, I'd go back in time.

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    1. Anni,
      How true. You can have 5 people view an accident and have 5 different versions of what happened somewhat based on their beliefs. Pretty sure history has many flaws.

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  2. I'd like to go back to the 50's so I could see all the rockers in their heyday. Play my favourite records on the jukebox, in a diner in the States of course.

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    1. Joey,
      I was there during that era and it would really be a fun trip for you. It was great--mostly.

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  3. Well Patti, if no harm would befall me, I'd like to visit the Mesozoic Era and have a good look at the dinosaurs. Looking forward to reading your other time travel comments.

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    1. Florence,
      That was on my list also but I was a bit afraid of being eaten by a big one. Maybe if we were invisible on our visits?

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  4. Dear Patti and Friends, i'd like to go back some 4,600 years ago to see the pre-flood world. i wonder how people dealt with dragon-flies that had wingspans of two feet. Imagine that thing getting in your hair. Also wonder how people back then held picnics - ants were several inches long. Back then, a mouse on your kitchen counter-top would be a mess - rodents grew to the size of medium-to-large dogs, and weighed about a 100 pounds. So it wasn't just t-rex wrecking corn fields that people had to deal with.

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    1. Sue,
      Well I sure wouldn't want to live then but a visit to see such amazing creatures would be just right.

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  5. Since I believe in past lives and reincarnation, I have this covered.

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    1. Olga,
      Ha ha you are right. Now just how to bring it back to the present is the challenge. Hypnosis?

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  6. Since I won't be around to see it, I'd like to go fifty years ahead and see if Greta Thunberg's hopeful future wins out. I am hopeful that by the time the young people of today are my age, they will have figured it out. :-)

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    1. She does give us hope doesn't she? Somehow I think the young are opening up way more than previous generations.

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  7. After reading “West in the Night” by Beryl Markham, “Out of Africa” by Isak Dinesen and “Flame Trees of Thika” by Elspeth Huxley, I have wished to see for myself early 20th century Africa especially Kenya.

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    1. Sue,
      What a marvelous place and marvelous time. Me too.

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  8. What a great topic—I’d love to jump a hundred years ahead, just to see how people live compared to now. (Look how much technology has changed our lives in just the last 25-30 years!) But I’d also love to go back & see my hometown circa 1950 when my parents were in high school. I’d just have to be careful and not get in the way of their courtship... ;-)

    Patti, I have a book right up your alley—go to your library & check it out. Stephen King’s “11/22/63”. (He doesn’t just write horror books) It’s about this man who discovers a small ‘rip’ in time, that you can step thru and find yourself in a pasture circa 1959. (When you return to the present, no matter how long you’ve been gone, only a minute has passed.) So he decides he’s going to step thru, LIVE in the past for the next 4 years, and figure out a way to prevent Kennedy from being assassinated. But he soon learns that time is like a river’s current, always trying to right itself—and the bigger the historical event you try to change, the more it fights back. It’s a GREAT book!

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    1. Doug,
      Ha,ha you really wouldn't want to do anything to keep your parents apart.
      I did read that book Doug and LOVED it. It is one of the reasons I mentioned not wanting to alter history even though tempted.

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    2. Patti I should've known! So nice to know someone else who read that book!

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    3. Sounds like a great book, I'll have to find a copy and read it.

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    4. I just ordered a copy -- sounds good. High school friend told me about the day she looked out at her car parked across the street from where she was to see men swarming all over her car years ago. Seems she was parked in from of Oswald's brother's residence and authorities were there following that Dallas event.

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  9. A time when my mom was alive would be the time frame. But sitting with Jane and the gorillas would be heaven to me. I had Koko on my bucket list and didn't get to sign with her. :-(

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    1. Peg,
      I think there will be several of us with Jane. Wasn't Koko amazing? I would have liked to have seen her also. Sorry you didn't make it.

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  10. I would love to visit Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, and Bach in Europe. I love classical music.

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    1. gigi,
      You could see and hear it as it was being created. Cool.

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  11. Such a great question, Patti. There are so many eras I would like to see and moments in history I would like to alter. A walk with a dinosaur would be grand, a day with Jane Goodall, a meditation with Buddha, a journey with Neanderthals in the early days. So many things to think about and times and places to explore. I love this!

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    1. robin,
      Oh, if only. Somehow I think there are three of us in the bushes with Jane. What an amazing woman and subjects.

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  12. If we only could pick one I'd want to go into the future 100 years, to see if mankind actually overcomes our hate and racism and learn to live in harmony, to know if our struggles now actually make a difference in the long run.

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    1. Jean,
      Somehow I think in 100 years most of the hate will be gone. The younger generation is impressing me these days with their open hearts.

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  13. You flat gave me some things to think about this morning. I had an urge one time to write a short story about George Washington coming back to the 1960s. How surprised he'd be and all that. I personally like the age I am in. I like that I grew up in a simpler life style where people were patriotic, could be trusted, that you could believe what you read in the newspaper or heard on the radio. Those days are gone sadly.

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    1. Latane,
      Think George would be unhappy if he came to this time.
      When we were young, they might not have been better in some sense but they were simpler times weren't they?

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  14. I'd like to go back and see my grandparents when they were young and find out things I never asked them while they were still here.

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    1. Celia,
      Me too. Even my parents. Many times I have questions that there is no one left to answer.

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  15. I would like to visit with some of my ancestors, find out about coming to America from Norway or Sweden. I would like to see my mother as a very young woman, and my grandparents too.

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    1. Linda,
      Seeing our ancestors would be really interesting. I too would love to have seen my mother as a young woman. She had a very interesting life.

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  16. Stephen King wrote a wonderful book about some people who tried to stop the Kennedy assassination. I'm not sure we are to change history. We are to learn from it, but judging from what I've been seeing on the news, there are a lot of young people who don't realize they are repeating history. If I could go back for a time, I'd love to be sitting in my parents' kitchen eating some of my mother's good cooking and hear all my family around the table talking and laughing. Not sure I'd want to be flying with Amelia Earhart since her flight came to a bad end.

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    1. Snickelfritz,
      I have read that book also and really liked it. It would be cool to be around our family when they were young, happy and healthy.

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  17. The ideas here are great. Mine is far more simple. I'd like to go back to a time when my parents were both alive and healthy to sit down and have a meal with them, a visit, and to end it all, a hug. And if I could take along little Eli, I would so they could meet their great grandson.

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    1. Eileen,
      It appears to be a common wish to go back to when our families were young and healthy. I would give anything for that hug one more time.

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  18. I used to think going back in time to see how things were discovered might be nice, but just by being there, would I upset the course of history? Changing history would be a very bad thing to do, so many brilliant minds may otherwise never get born. I've come to think that interfering with the future is just as wrong. We may think we are just there for a quick visit, but coming back we could mention this or that and someone might think this or that could be made better if we changed that particular path NOW, which brings us back to endangering the lives of future unborns who may be just the right person needed for a particular time frame, somewhere in 5050 perhaps.
    I think we are better off, trying to do the best we can here and now to save the earth for the future.

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    1. River,
      It was King's book on time travel that made me realize the dangers of messing with the space time continuum. You can't alter history without unwanted results. I would like to visit but not be a part of the population. Just a spectator.
      You are right. We do need to work on saving the earth right now.

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  19. Hi: I guess I'm selfish but I would love to go back to when I met my husband and we married in 1958. We were in NY City, he had just left LIFE magazine & was having great success as a
    photographer. That all ended suddenly when he was hit with type 1 diabetes (insulin just barely
    beginning to be used then, etc.) and his career went out the window. I would love to go back &
    see where he could have gone if that had not
    happened. He was an excellent photographer and
    backed by others like Margaret Bourke White.

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    1. Ginnie,
      How frustrating to have lost such a dear person to something that could be so better treated today. His story could have reached new heights.

      Delete
  20. I’m afraid I am particularly greedy, I want to sort of float over the whole, not participating, just watching, from the beginning to the end. I think I would probably see very little change in making, apart from technological progress, so I might as well stay where I am and do my little best to make the present liveable.

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    1. Friko,
      Know what you mean. I'd rather be an observer than a participant. I am curious about the future though.

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  21. Im an ancient history geek. I'd like to see the Hanging gardens of Babylon and all those wonders, but only if I could do it from afar without being down in the proverbial much. Like observing from a window or something, lol

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    1. Barb,
      How about just floating above? I don't want to participate either, just see how things were really done.

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  22. I would like to watch Shakespeare write.

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    1. Inger,
      It would be interesting to see if he wrote things like, "what light through yonder window breaks" with no rewrites.

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  23. Oh, there are so many experiences I would want to observe rather than participate I hardly know how to list them all. Could be interesting to visit people or situations about which there are lingering questions in order to see what the truth really was.

    I really enjoyed the movie my young son insisted I should see with him -- Back To The Future. I, too, would like to go ahead into the future just to see what life would be like then.

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    1. Joared,
      Me too. I am really curious if we have a future and if it will be a kinder version with no disease. That would be cool.

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  24. I would like to go back to the past and meet and talk to the heroes I tried to emulate in my life. Through and will why they did what they did and what they thought. My middle name is Theodore the same as my father and my son named after Theodore Roosevelt. My first mail sons middle name was Lance. Named after King Arthur's greatest night Lancelot of the lake so is my oldest grandson. Next would come the greatest Roman of them all Julius Caesar. Warrior, lover writer etc. my middle son named after and to me who Shakespeare described as saying I come not to praise Caesar but to bury him well there are others but you get the idea.

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    1. TB,
      Ah you would be a busy man but I am sure enjoying the rewards. I would hope none of them would disappoint.

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  25. I've thought of this too. My answer, I would go back in time and sit with the crowd while Jesus gave His sermon on the mount.

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    1. ming,
      Thank you for stopping by and playing the game of "what if". I think what you wish would be where a lot of people would want to go.

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  26. The future. Just a quick peek.

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  27. I think I'll just stay where I am and hope for the best.

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  28. That's an interesting question. I should have good examples like yours...but I'm a family historian and genealogist, so I would probably pick out several folks that I have questions for an pop in on them. Hey, so and so- who is your mama? I've looked everywhere and can't find her! :)

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  29. I'd like to go back about 50 years and unsay something that was really thoughtless.

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