Fifty feet below Flushing Meadows, time stands still. Buried there is a message that will not be received for nearly 5,000 years. This seems absurd to our modern sensibility in which the instant gratification of faxes and e–mails are commonplace. But these are truly special deliveries.

They are messages to posterity, to be opened long, after the senders and the senders’ great grandchildren have passed on. Using everyday objects, newspaper clippings and pictures, the time capsules from the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs are a record of who we were. Assuming someone remembers to open this gift in 6939, they may either prove to be invaluable tools for historical research or completely useless junk.

In celebration of the Queens Tribune’s 28th Anniversary, and the borough’s 100th birthday, we have created our own time capsule. While it is intended to be read first by the Queens of the present, we hope that you, the residents and Tribune staff of tomorrow, will remember to open this gift.

In this issue we describe the Queens of 1998, its people, its places, and its things.

It is a place seemingly full of contraries: city/suburb, industrial/residential, but, as the poet William Blake put it, "without contraries is no progression."