Read Our Letter to Posterity

Image via the Bostonian Society

When the Bostonian Society asked Boston to write a letter to posterity to be slipped inside of a custom-made time capsule, which will be placed in the Old State House lion statue, and read by the people living in the city in 2114, we were honored, to say the least.

But once the fuzzy feelings finally subsided, the stress set in.

“What should we write?,” we thought.

And we thought, and we thought.

The possibilities were endless, really. So much has happened in the city in the last century alone—just see the letter included in the time capsule from 1901, written by George A. Litchfield—that there was so much we could write about: our new mayor, our longest-serving mayor’s passing, the changing skyline … Keytar Bear!

After much consideration, some crowdsourcing from our readers, and discussions that kept the author of the letter (me) awake at night, I took pen to paper—no, seriously, at first I wrote the thing by hand—and got to work.

But ever since I folded up that bit of paper, licked the glue on the envelope, and rushed to the Old State House to hand it off to the Bostonian Society, people wanted to know: “What did you end up writing about?”

Admittedly, there’s some appeal to keeping it secret for the future generations of Boston. But, with the celebration of the new time capsule on Sunday, November 23, and the refurbished lion and unicorn statues going back up on one of the city’s oldest buildings, it seems only fair to share it with our readers today.

After all, you’ll all be dead in 100 years.

Enjoy:

Steve Annear Time Capsule Letter