Last week's posting on the cultural and historical knowledge
of today's college students struck a bit of a nerve with me.  Maintaining
the distinction between history and nostalgia is a bit of a passion of mine.
Over the weekend I composed the following parody, which I hope will be
accepted in the humor with which it is offered:

                =================================================

                Interesting facts:

                (Developmental psychologists tell us that most children to
not acquire an understanding of the larger world until around their tenth
birthday.)

                In the year 2000, several million Americans will turn 65 and
retire from the work force.  With a new wealth of spare time, they will
descend upon our museums and other cultural institutions.  Are we ready for
them?

                Born in 1935, they will have little memory or understanding
of events taking place before 1945.  Pearl Harbor will be as distant to them
as the Lusitania or the Maine.  They have no meaningful memory of Hitler,
Mussolini, or Tojo.  Normandy, Iwo Jima and Auschwitz are just names on a
map.  They do not know who Lord Chamberlain is.

                They will never have voted for a President who was not
subject to term limits.  They will have never known a President Roosevelt.

                Mustard gas was outlawed after the Great War.  They have
never lived in fear of chemical warfare.  On the other hand, they do not
remember a world without nuclear weapons.

                They were not yet born in 1929, and not yet in school in
1939.  The Great Depression is as significant to them as the Panic of '93.

                Their lifetime has always included radio, automobiles and
electricity.  They have never seen a corset, a hoop skirt, a stovepipe hat
or a powdered wig.  They do not know what a hoop skirt is.

                Tuberculosis was conquered when they were prepubescent.

                They are too young to have heard Gershwin's "Rhapsody in
Blue," Porter's "Night and Day," or Berlin's "White Christmas."  Cubism,
Dada and Surrealism are as irrelevant as the Baroque or the Renaissance.

                They have never seen "Gone With The Wind," "The Wizard of
Oz," or "Snow White."  Astaire and Rogers predate them; the expression "You
dance like Fred and Ginger" means nothing to them.

                Babe Ruth hit his last home run the year they were born; Joe
DiMaggio's ran his streak when they were six.  They have never seen nor
remember a World Series featuring the Washington Senators, the Philadelphia
Athletics, the St. Louis Browns... or the Chicago Cubs.

                ============================================

                OK, by now anyone who knew my Mother (b. 1934) is laughing
hysterically, especially at the bit about the Depression having no effect on
her generation.  (Wanna bet?)

                The point is, our museum audiences include many groups that
can be defined demographically -- age, sex, race, income, etc.  But
demographics do not directly translate into experience, understanding, or
knowledge.  Cultural and historical references, used judiciously, can be a
powerful means for getting a point across.  Museum exhibits and programs can
neither assume that everyone in a group will get a particular reference, nor
that no one will.  There are some remarkably astute, well-read teenagers out
there, as well as some pretty dense old folks.

                "People are people," as Depeche Mode said.  Or was that
Voltaire?



                Gene Dillenburg
                (born in Chicago in 1960, and making no apologies for
either)