TIME CAPSULES

I've always been fascinated with space. My dad gave me a telescope for Christmas one year, and I spent many a cold hour outside exploring the craters on the moon and staring at the rings of Saturn. Back in elementary school, I was blessed with the BEST teacher! She knew I loved space, so she ran with that and we built, did the math behind and launched model rockets and made and painted paper mache planets to scale. Yes, I'm talking about you, Peggy Rochelle, and I bet you are reading this. 

One of our projects was to make a time capsule, which is still buried outside Mountain City Elementary school. I can't remember what we put in there. But I'm really excited to have an image of a painting I did in 2018 called Mine is the Morning included in a time capsule that is going to the moon! The project is called the Lunar Codex. These time capsules will be installed on the moon this year and next and will include writings and works of art from 157 countries that are captured on nickel-based NanoFiche. You can read more about it in this New York Times article. 

Is it inevitable that we will destroy ourselves? How many thousands of years will it take before someone finds this collection? Surely if they make it to the moon, they will be wise enough to decode the written language we use and magnify our images. What will they think of us, these ancient humans on the path to self-destruction? I sure hope that is not how we are remembered. 

The Lunar Codex Website