Vol. 3, No. 1 (January 1, 2000) Note to the U.S. media and marketing machines: It is not the millennium! Learn to count! Get over it!

There. I said it. I hope you, dear reader, are not offended, but it really isn’t the change of the century or millennium. True, at midnight this morning, we finished 2000 years since we started counting, but we still have to pass another year to reach 2001, where the new century/millennium count starts -- another 365, oops! got to leap this year, 366 days.

Does this mean we have to go through this entire hype again? Will the media and Madison Avenue announce somewhere around August, “Oops! We didn’t figure right, folks. So, we’ll restart the countdown to the millennium beginning now. Run out to your favorite store and get you ‘Official New New Millennium Everything’ today.”

Okay, it was something to type “2000” when I dated the draft of this article last week. But I’m still writing “1998” on my checks, so you can see the problems that lay ahead for me for the whole next century. Hopefully by January of 2100, I will be prefacing the year with 20-. I’ll deal with the year 3000 when I get to it.

Thomas Mann observed in The Magic Mountain (1924) that “[t]ime has no divisions to mark its passage…. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.” I’ll add to that, and who also produce official millennium candy bars.

I’m not opposed to the hype; it does not surprise me. Going from 1999 to 2000 does sound like a major transition of some sort, but the danger is -- because it is only “we mortals” who mark this distinction in time -- we may be disappointed when we wake up today and nothing has changed.

Time, however Einstein described it, is an indifferent creature. It passes without a single glance to the right or left; it is regardless and feckless when it comes to what you and I need or want. Its heart is inevitability. It is “we mortals” who divide it into “before” and “after” and “now” and “then.”

It is “we mortals” who determine whether it is well spent or squandered. A new year, a new century or a new millennium will not be new at all. It’ll be more of the same unless you and I step up to the plate and make a difference, even in the life of one person. This century, this millennium, or the next, it is you and I, with the gracious and great help of God, and not time, that change the world.

Whatever you call it, however you celebrate it -- the staff of Saturday Ramblins wishes you  health, happiness and an abundance of God’s blessings during this New Year of 2000, and beyond.

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