Time Flies

Okay, so this is a day late, but I am just now catching up on my internets from the Holiday. I saw a few different places on Twitter and blogs that yesterday was the date that Marty McFly traveled to in Back to the Future. Crazy! Where's my hover board?! I especially like the picture above that I found via a friend's blog (her title of "The Future is Now" is perfect. Well played.).

I LOVE BACK TO THE FUTURE. I watch it at least three times a summer at the cabin. So it is strange that we have arrived at a day that felt so far away when I first watched those movies.

All of this is more interesting to me in light of a book I read over the weekend and a few conversations I had as a result of it. The book was The Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen. It is about the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. The chapters move back and forth between the story of the architecture of the Fair and a serial killer that was on the loose in Chicago at that time. It is absolutely fascinating (if you are a big geek like me), but I will also say it is a bit gorey. What is so amazing is to think about how they actually built buildings at that time - with steam (no electricity other than cutting edge incandescent bulbs) and horses (no cars/machinery). The serial killer was a doctor, so the book also talks about the coming of age in medical practices. Very intriguing.

In 1893, visitors to the World's Fair couldn't believe they had built buildings that were 21 stories high, let alone the fact they were frightened to death of this contraption called the Ferris Wheel. Twenty-five years ago, someone imagined hover boards for Back to the Future, and while we don't really have that, or clothes that dry themselves on our bodies, we essentially have libraries that we can carry in our pockets, and computers we use as phones. Pretty amazing. Or, as Doc Brown would say, "Great Scott!"