Dioramas

The museum is full of gangs, child gangs that roam sneering at the 70’s people. The 70’s people live now in a diorama. For the most part they are cheerful, they cut grass with push mowers, swim in above ground pools. By and large they don’t kill each other or pillage the Malls. Some are vets with grey ponytails - they ride to forget. The 70’s people that lived in New York pretend not to have been there back then and take long meditative soaks in crude high rise jacuzzies. Behind the glass the 70’s people mechanically wave at the hordes of sneering children. A young questioner asks his handler why the 70’s people are not all dead? A reasonable question which the handler deflects with a long tale about dinosaurs. Meanwhile the 70’s people peer out of their mid-century homes and watch the foot traffic as if it were an older black and white TV. The young are getting bored with the 70’ people. they move on to stare incredulously at a representation of humankind back in the 60’s. The handlers also cannot quite believe their eyes, they explain that though there are many artifacts of that previous civilization experts disagree as to origins and the strangeness of their bygone lifestyle. Salem Alabama and Woodstock are small print on a sign no one reads. The kids are hungry and whine loudly, the school-outing is a bust so far. Harassed handlers usher them into a cafeteria where they slaughter the air with a wolfish glee. A few Jeer at an 80’s person who has wandered into the wrong room.