We predict you’ll come up with plenty of clever, silly and deep ways to finish a sentence that we start. On the other hand, prognosticators from the last century were way off about life in 2020.
Dinner With the Arts
Since 1980, the Greater New Braunfels Arts Council has supported artists in New Braunfels and Comal County with events like last month’s Caroling on the Plaza and annual Cinco de Mayo presentations in area schools. Another of the organization’s signature events is Dinner With the Arts, which in recent years has become a fundraiser.
Dinner With the Arts, on January 18 at the McKenna Events Center in New Braunfels, will include a live band, visual arts, interactive exhibits and opportunities for patrons to sustain the organization through silent auctions, raffles and art sales.
Lisa Heymann, president of the council, says as many as 400 people attend the dinner each year in support of programs such as the Fall Into Art Festival and art and poetry contests. Call (830) 358-3480, or visit gnbac.org for more information.
2020 Vision
2020 doesn’t look exactly like some people predicted it would many years ago.
Prediction: In 1967, The Futurist, then a newsletter, said humans would breed apes to be chauffeurs and perform other household chores.
Reality: Apes are struggling just to be apes. Close to 60% of the world’s 504 primate species are threatened with extinction, and 75% of those species are in severe population decline, according to earthday.org.
Prediction: In 2020, humans arrive on Mars. So said Wired magazine in 1997.
Reality: NASA says it hopes to send astronauts to Mars, which is an average of 140 million miles from Earth, in the 2030s.
Prediction: “There will be no C, X, or Q in our everyday alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary.” That’s what engineer John Elfreth Watkins Jr. wrote in Ladies’ Home Journal in 1900.
Reality: An exciting idea but quite incorrect.
Worth Repeating
“Courage, after all, is not being unafraid but doing what needs to be done in spite of fear.”
— James L. Farmer Jr., civil rights leader born January 12, 1920, in Marshall.
Everybody Look What’s Going Down
For what it’s worth, musician Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash turns 75 this month.
He wrote three hit songs decades ago that can still get stuck in your head today: For What It’s Worth, Suite: Judy Blue Eyes and Love the One You’re With.
He was born January 3, 1945, in Dallas.
