Looking back at that era across the space of 20 years, I am powerfully aware that it feels irrecoverably like another country.
Such is his talent though, that when we look back at this era as the one dominated by Messi and Ronaldo, we may be able to make a little bit of room for a shy, timid Mesut Özil.
Anything but a consoling look back at that era, it bears out, instead, the first line of the program notes, written by Mr. Serlin: "Americans love nostalgia but they hate history".
"Computer Chess" looks back at the modern era of movies in which the filmmaker has came of age.
"Behind the Camera" is a network executive's misty look back at the Brezhnev era of American television, a time when a sitcom as insipid as "Three's Company" was a ratings powerhouse.
When historians look back at the current era in the borough, they'll still see intractable crime and poverty, but they'll also see, out of the nonprofit group Sustainable South Bronx, an early program to train unskilled workers in green careers, which may prove to be a model nationwide for stimulus-funded green job-training programs.
It is likely that years from now, we will grieve over the irreparable damage done to our constitutional rights and ask ourselves, "How did this happen?" But what is more frightening is the prospect that as a fundamentally changed nation, we will look back at the Bush era and see nothing wrong.
It's possible that people in the future will look back at the Trump era as a momentary aberration: "'Well, that was crazy but at least it didn't last long,'" said Stern.
In other words, will these people still want to look back at this era — fondly or otherwise — as the New York of 2009 increasingly comes to resemble its '70s-era ancestor in all the wrong ways?
