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Hello? Hello? Anybody out there? Anyone?
Well. This is my first column of the year, and the sun either came up today or
it didn’t. Your paper arrived this morning, or not. You are reading this, or
you aren’t.
All of which you know for certain, though I don’t. My deadline is Friday, which
for this piece means December 31, 1999. When I send it in I’ll have little idea
how the world you find yourself in has changed from the one in which I wrote.
As I type these thoughts the media is filled with reports of millennium trials
and troubles: a credit card glitch in Britain, explosives stolen from police
storage in Fresno, a pipe bomb discovered at city hall in Santa Rosa and another
at a park in Reno, out-of-favor ethnic types collared at the Canadian border
with or without cause, and so on. A taste of things to come?
You would know better than I, though no doubt there has been the occasional
computer snafu, with reporters slobbering over every detail. I am even more
confident that a loon or two will have succeeded somewhere in committing
senseless acts to make some pointless point. Still and all, my bet is that the
sun is in its usual position, your newspaper is in your hand, and these thoughts
are before you despite what must be a critical case of Y2K burnout.
Whatever
happened, we will have survived relatively intact – if not, you won’t be reading
this so I can’t lose much from the prediction. But I do believe it will bear
out. We have done this before, or something much like it.
See if this
sounds familiar: As a new age dawns, science warns of a threat to humanity that
will arrive on a specific day. Others try to calm the fears, though no one
knows what will happen with any certainty. Theories range from “nothing” to
“the Apocalypse.”
Some folks
stockpile goods while others consume as much as they can, while they can.
People who never gave it much credence suddenly fear the end of the world,
turning to a shallow prophylactic religiosity. Everything is blamed on the
phenomena; news reports ooze with it, daily conversation is of little else.
Some are scared silly, others are sick to death of the whole thing.
Not January 1,
2000, but May 18, 1910, when the foreboding path of Halley’s Comet was to cross
the earth’s orbit. My grandmother would have been just over 6 years old at the
time, but the impression it made on her was enough to capture the imagination of
at least this grandchild.
If you don’t
remember 1910, consider the observations of Bennett Luther Dean, a mail carrier
and ordinary citizen who made a habit of keeping a journal (Copyright 1996-1999,
Troy D. Schmidt):
May 1, 1910
– The papers say that (people) in the south have quit work and are spending
their time singing and praying and they are eating up their supplies and even
the half grown vegetables. They are so sure the end of the world will come the
18th of this month.
May 2, 1910 – Rain all last night and all
forenoon, the weather is about as bad as I ever saw it. A good many people
think it is Halley’s Comet that is causing it. Well if it is I am glad it does
not come oftener than 75 years.
May 18, 1910
– A great many people believe this is the last day of the world. Today and
tomorrow Halley’s Comet switches the Earth with its tail. I have not seen
anything or felt anything out of the usual so far and it is now 9 P.M.
May 19, 1910
– Well we are all here yet, comet has not got us yet ... The papers say that
comet parties were held everywhere to watch for it but nothing happened and I
suppose the world will wag along in the same old wicked way it did before.
And so it did.
And so, I suspect, it is.
© 1997 – 2002 Brent Morrison
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