This will be an all-Titanic letter.
Yes, I suppose there would be a big fuss about the Titanic, since it's the 100th anniversary. I wonder if smart people were buying up all sorts of Titanic related curios about three years ago, and will be selling them pretty soon, once the demand is at full peak and the stuff is worth about twice as much, temporarily. I know that Titanic memorabilia greatly increased in value when the movie came out years ago, only to begin a long, slow decline a couple of years later. The whole Titanic story contains everything to make it epic and fascinating -- the ship itself, the circumstances, the people involved, and pretty much everything else. Plus, for people who are detail oriented, there are endless opportunities to study and argue about technical things such as the angle of the ship when it broke in half. The only thing missing, as far as I can tell, is a conspiracy theory for people who enjoy descending into paranoia. There probably is a conspiracy element to it, I just don't know about it.
When you watch all these Titanic shows, are you emotionally troubled by it later, or not? If I watched a bunch of shows like that, which are all doing their damnest to outdo each other in giving the viewers a gripping, sensational experience, I think I'd spend a couple of days afterwards kind of disturbed by reverberations of all the sensations of horror, tragedy and sadness the movie makers fire hosed into my brain. The older I get, I find the more sensitive I am to stuff like that.
That's interesting that you are bothered that the ship has become accessible and that people are puttering around in their tourist submarines and screwing it all up... you'd prefer that the ship had never been found. I know some people talk about how it's a "sacred" place, and like a graveyard, or whatever. I don't really get it... is it sort of religious shrine? I kind of like the way they dealt with this stuff back in the days of the old west, when there was some kind of big gunfight, and later people would come and tear off pieces of clothing and bloodstained pieces of wood, and stuff, as souvenirs. Or like the way people used to chip off pieces of Plymouth Rock, until there was almost nothing left. The only reason this didn't happen to the Titanic was that it went down so deep...it took awhile for technology to catch up. It seems to me that people should be able to go down there whenever they want and yank off all kinds of stuff so they can take it home and put in on their mantle. That would be a nice way to dispose of a lot of that underwater rubbish, and would make a lot of people happy and proud to have those Titanic knick knacks on display. But I'm just being contrary. If you said you thought it was a good thing that people can go down there an look at it and remember it and take pictures of it, I'd probably say they should just cover it up in mud so no one can ever see it again.
It is an interesting question, I guess, to consider how each person might have acted if they were on the Titanic, though of course none of us knows that... whatever we think is probably totally wrong. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been one of these gallant heroes, offering my seat on the lifeboat to some little Irish kid. I don't mean to brag, but I tend to arrogantly separate myself from crowds and their herd mentalities, though maybe it would be different in a panicked, life or death situation. I'm the person who when I'm leaving some packed auditorium, notices there is usually a second, closed door, next to the open one that hundreds of people are jamming up against, trying to get exit through. I'm the one who goes through that other door, and suddenly there is a whole new stampede of people pouring through that one as well. I wouldn't be surprised if my contrariness-in-crowds tendency would have clicked in, and I would not have joined the general rush where everyone else was going. It probably wouldn't have done me any good, though. I'd be thinking something like "Hey, everyone is on deck, I could go down to Mr. Astor's cabin and steal his cashbox!" And thus my skeleton would now be disintegrating somewhere down in the first class hallways.
At any rate, the whole Titanic event was a wonderful illustration of the line, "If you want to hear god laugh, tell him your plans." The whole thing was a total, shocking reversal of everyone's expectations and plans.
--Edward
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