Survival of the Coolest

Is it a simple process of winnowing that makes the past so alluring? A museum of radio gear dating back to WWI lines the shelves above my desk--tubes, coils, boxes and cylinders with a kind of Captain Nemo/Dr. Frankenstein cool. Maybe all the trashy stuff just got trashed. And the pictures are cool--well-dressed young men and women looking earnest and scientific in headphones. "Remember--the Enemy is Listening," the wartime studio poster warns. The good guys and the bad guys both seemed bigger then. But it's probably a trick of the light. The memorable are remembered; the forgettable forgotten. We look at the present through the wrong end of the binoculars. Pretty puny.