I said this before, and now, I’ll say it again, I want to be in the room when *whomever * wrote **Twas the night before Christmas ** read it aloud to his family for the first time. How incredible it must have been.
Seeing the Marx brother’s live on stage. (Not historical, but fascinating, nonetheless.)
Watch a young Beatles in Hamburg ( good one!) and Young Rolling Stones.
Wagon trains going west on the Oregon Trail.
Watch daVinci paint the Mona Lisa to see what she really looked like and what exactly she is smirking at.
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I’m just a little bit depressed that my kids will one day ask me about 9/11
I don’t do a lot of travelling, but we were sitting in an airplane at the gate when plane #1 hit the first tower.
Our house has a pretty good view of the airtrffic to one regional and an international airport. It was WIERD sitting out in the hot tub at night and seeing NO air traffic.
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I would like to travel back to circa 1970s when the previous owner of my house finished the basement (without seeking professional help, I think). I would rip him a new one over the incredibly BAD electrical job he did that required me to rip out everything to get it up to code. Wondered how my house had not burned down. Problems not limited to the following:
Wire terminals not in junction boxes (for live wires). Wire terminals not secured with wirenuts, just tape.
Daisy-chained fluorescent lights nailed to drop ceiling (receptacles not used as junction for wire).
Office staples to secure electrical wire to drop ceiling.
I wish I could have heard Johann Sebastian Bach improvise the famous fugue on the “king’s theme” in front of Frederick the Great. I would also like to have been able to witness Beethoven improvise on the piano; from what I hear, it was quite a scene.
I’d have to go with my zoological tendencies. Watch some…group…of creatures, be it Burgess Shale or any epoch where there are dinosaurs, or after the Big Disaster(s) and see the mammals struggling to survive. Any of those would be very moving for me, just to see how the creatures behaved. I have a deep love of Anomalocaris critters, or Pikaia gracilens, or even Opabinia regalis. And in the same token, seeing dimetrodons and other pre-reptile/mammals, or sit near some watering hole where dinosaurs would gather, that would be amazing. More moving than to see anything else already occurred, I’m sure.
Boy, that Bach improvisation thing sounds really appealing. But I’m more of a Mozart fan at heart, so I’ll watch him improvise at the piano, you watch Bach, and we’ll compare notes and recordings, OK?
Myself, I would want to be present for the death of Archimedes. Not, mind you, that I want to actually see his death. I want to see what problem he was working on in his sandbox, which he absolutely could not leave for a few more minutes, even at the point of a sword.
That would be on my list too. The Altamont concert might be interesting, if only to see the flip side of Woodstock.
Other musical events:
–The Grateful Dead’s first appearance in Ann Arbor, Michigan…a 1967 afternoon concert at West Park. Also, both of their 1971 Ann Arbor shows (ticket prices $3, 4, and 5!!! I have a copy of the newspaper ad to prove it!)
–An early-era Bob Dylan show. Either from his “folk-protest” days, or from when he first started playing an “electrified full-band” set.
–The “Free John Sinclair” concert at the University of Michigan’s Crisler Arena, featuring John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Phil Ochs, and Allen Ginsberg.
–The 1955 (I think?) poetry reading at the Six Gallery (?) where Ginsberg, Kerouac, and several other Beat poets made their debut.
Sports:
–The New Year’s Day 1902 Rose Bowl. Michigan defeated Stanford 49-0 to complete an undefeated and unscored upon (550 points to 0!) season. Also, the 1969 Michigan upset win over Ohio State in the first meeting of Bo Schembechler and Woody Hayes.
–Game 7 1968 World Series, Detroit Tigers beat St. Louis.
–1967 NFL Championship Game. The Ice Bowl…Green Bay defeats Dallas as Bart Starr scores the game winning TD. Also any of the other Lombardi-era championship games.
Same exact thing for me, ever since I heard of that, I’ve always wanted to go back and see it. Preferably from the rock of Gibraltar. Imagine a mile high waterfall with the full force of the Atlantic beind it filling up the Mediterranean.
I’d really like to be on a Southhampton street corner in September 1933 and see the look on Leo Szilard’s face when he conceived of the idea of a neutron chain reaction in uranium.
if I could interact a little, I’d like to kick Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini in the nuts a few seconds before each of their deaths and whisper sweet nothings about how everything any of them worked for will collapse within 50 years.
