Eve Of The Third Millennium

Eve of the Third Millennium

We sat quietly, watching the large screen television, marveling at the parade of the world's cities and people's that were passing by for our casual review, on this 31st day of December, the year of our lord 1999.

As the sun's rays, heralding the dawning of the third millennium, first began to strike the earth this morning, we were treated to a visual United Nation's display of events and celebrations that both amused and fascinated us with their diversity and color. At first light in America, through the magic of television,we watched the new millennium dawn on a small atoll in the former Gilbert Islands in the far Pacific Ocean. A U.S. Navy sub had positioned herself astride the international dateline where it met the equator, although I failed to determine the exact significance of the event.

Next Fiji hove into view, with swaying island dancers on a tropical beach. Then, Manilla arrived with a graceful assemblage in front of the Peninsula Hotel.Tokyo celebrated the arrival of the new year with a score of monks propelling a ceremonial battering ram into a giant gong at an ancient temple. Beijing held a colorful parade in Tienamin square.

The ceremonies flashed by our eyes in a colorful panoply of diverse cultures, each celebrating the arrival of the new age. In the back of everyone's consciousness, a watchful world waited for some calamity to show itself from the much touted Y2K bug in the many computer based systems throughout the world. Either everyone did a great job in fixing the problem or it just wasn't the potential calamity that it was billed to be.

We went on about our life for several hours that morning, taking a three mile walk and stopping for coffee and bagels at a Tim Horton's. Then, I attended the small Inaugural ceremony, for our new Erie County Executive Joel Giambra, in the Buffalo City Court chambers of New York State Supreme Court Justice Robert Whalen. Joel was drawn from his ordeal with cancer and spoke with difficulty. All of those assembled saw and appreciated the courage and the stamina that it took to do what he did. There weren't many dry eyes in the room while Joel spoke with humor and sincerity.

Between the real life takes, we continued to watch amazed as the world spun by our view through the magic portal of our television. Bombay rung in with her teeming throngs. Jerusalem appeared both ancient and stately.I think it is the Pyramids at Giza that gave me a sense of the greatest contrast in time, as the fireworks exploded over and illuminated the 5,000 year old monuments to what was once mighty Egypt.

The Parthenon, on the Acropolis in Athens, was eerily beautiful, backlit as it was in neon blue. It has stood there these two milennia, a silent testament to the glory of Greece. I felt the same sense of antiquity viewing Rome, as "Il Papa gave his annual blessing from the magnificent edifice of St.Peter's. The night was alive with a chimera of merging centuries and I could sense the temporal shimmering as the ages folded into one another.

Prague,unspoiled from the last wars in this century, looked a study in contrasts with its medieval churches and castles. In Moscow, the onion domes of St.Basils, in Red Square, served as a picturesque backdrop for Premier Boris Yeltsin's resignation from power. Berlin celebrated with powerful search lights under the historic Brandenburg gate. Paris, avante garde as ever, featured the Eiffel tower exploding in a shower of spectacular pyrotechnics.

In South Africa, a somber Nelson Mandela symbolically handed the torch to his successor, on Robyn Island, the site of his 18 year political imprisonment. By way of contrast, not too far to the North, a reporter stood in Somalia and we observed the absolute silence of a refugee village long gone to sleep on what was for them just another December evening.

Finally, in London, Queen Elizabeth set off an enormous display of fireworks that exploded up and down the Thames, as Big Ben rang in the background. The sun had set on the British Raj in this century, but the regal memories of Britannia live on. Neighboring Dublin was more subdued and quietly mystical, as the Irish are wont to be.The whole array of lights and color flashed before us in an ethnic and pyrotechnic display perhaps unrivaled in modern history.

Only the wide Atlantic Ocean seemed to slow the inexorable progress of the rising millenial curtain. During this lull, my wife Mary served up shrimp, clams casino and lobster bisque with a glass of merlot for an accompaniment. It seemed fitting to dine slowly and elegantly while watching the world float by us in all its diversity.

Next,we watched the New Year arrive in Brazil's Rio De Janeiro. Millions of celebrants were happily gathered along Ipanima Beach.The fire works were inspiring. I had no idea Rio was three time zones to the East of us. By now, we were becoming somewhat dazed and culture shocked by the lights and sounds of the approaching New Year as it marched around the globe.

Small vignettes of celebrations in Haiti, Mexico and the American Southwest flashed in and out of our consciousness next, as we settled down to grilled salmon over spinach and mushrooms, with twice baked potatoes and curried yams. The meal was almost as memorable as the cultural display we were watching. At least to us it was anyway.

As the night grew longer, we began to fade. Even with all of the excitement, at our age, midnight is something we usually read about in the news papers the next day. I thought to set down a few of my impressions, while they were still fresh in my mind. I thought that someone, a long time from now, might be interested to know what we were doing and thinking as the new millennium emerged.We all know that history books are creative fiction and that some noble tripe will be concocted about what we were supposedly thinking as the new century and millennium emerged.

The new wave curtain swept across the Atlantic Ocean like an approaching storm. It first hit Halifax in Canada and then exploded, in a frenzy of noise and excitement, over the East Coast of the United States of America. The Waterford crystal ball began its descent, in New York's Times Square, and set off an emotional earth tremor amidst the two million noisy celebrants crowded together between 42nd and Sixtieth streets in Manhattan.

In Washington, along the reflecting pool and in
front of the Lincoln monument, throngs of people had gathered for a night of celebration featuring the American cultural experience.We watched it all in a flurry of channel surfing that would make any adult male "Attention Deficit Disorder patient proud.We thought we had done well to watch the arrival of the new millennium, but Morpheus was now insistent and summoned us to his sleepy embrace. The later hours, like the newer century, were for the younger set.We had seen enough.

The next morning, we watched the millennial curtain sweep across the United States in a series of filmed replays. Miami, with her ethnic vigor, Chicago's Loop and New Orleans French Quarter all exploded in lights and sounds as the New Year rang in the next century.

Denver and the Midwest joined us soon after. Finally, that glittering monument to pyrotechnics, Las Vegas, Nevada, exploded in an experience of neon and fireworks unlike any other on the planet. Even Los Angeles, with all of her Hollywood special effects technical ability, could not match Las Vegas for sheer ostentatious pagentry.

Finally, the millennial curtain swept out into the broad Pacific Ocean and spent her temporal fire over Hawaii, Midway and Samoa. Then it became only a memory, like all of the others that the planet has known in her eons of wandering around the sun.

As for Mary and I, we went about our life as we always have and thought the same thoughts, both complicated and simple. Life across the planet rolled on inexorably, unconcerned with the arbitrary assignments of temporal celebrations. Those events will now be of interest only to historians, hundreds of years from now.

As I write this, I acknowledge that the New Year is a renewal of sorts to most of us.The old year is shed like a tired husk and the hope is that we will be braver and better and smarter in the days and weeks to come. All too soon, the new year will look like the old one. Men and women are only human. What makes us different from the beasts is our infinite capacity to reach for the stars and to show compassion for one another. May we achieve and surpass both goals in the century to come and be remembered for the good and decent people that we are. We did our best, with what we had and hope that those who come after us will do even better.

Joseph Xavier Martin