Last night I was gabbing with my chaps, and for a brief moment the problem of human progress reared itself in our minds. A devolution of that thought was the Probaway Person of the Year’s attempt to find a personal action of the previous year that will be remembered in five hundred years. After mentioning a few of my previous winners, and comparing them to Neil Armstrong and Ferdinand Magellan for potential memorability, I was asked what award did my winners receive.

There has been no award so far for the Probaway Person of the Year, other than my obviously subjective selection of their deed to be added to a list of other astonishingly long-term memorable deeds. I’ve been considering the possibility of giving each of them a physical award, a little statue like the film industry’s Oscar. An arm rising from the sea with a bowl, or perhaps better a cockle shell with a small pot for alcohol flame or a candle to symbolize wisdom. That would be appropriate. It would symbolize — Wisdom rising from the depths of the sea, like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, but as a flame in the shell held out of the sea by a forearm and hand.

Wisdom rising !!!