Word: millennium
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...everyone knows, the 21st century--and with it, the third millennium--will not really start until January 1, 2001. This past year, the Year 2000, was simply irrelevant. Yet few are celebrating this milestone; we've already had one millennium celebration in the last 12 months, and no amount of persuasion will convince the populace that the calendar started in the Year 1, not the Year 0. Besides, television executives have already filled their quota of network specials on the Vikings or King Ethelred the Unready...
...thus that I have been entrusted with the dubious honor of writing the last Crimson column of the true millennium, a column whose subject is at the same time pre-determined and obsolete, a column of exactly one thousand words that will drop instantly from our printing press to our archives to blessed obscurity, as no one reads The Crimson on the last day before Winter Break. (Including...
Fortunately, I am not the first to face this dilemma; this is the third millennium, after all, and there are some precedents for how to proceed. An obscure manuscript recently discovered in the Vatican Library has been revealed to be a message from a clerk to his fellow students at the cathedral school of Fleury (this was before universities) containing his comments on the passage of the millennium. I have reproduced it here with my comments, so it may serve as a basis for comparison with our time...
...everyone knows, the XIst century--and with it, the second millennium--will not really start until January I, MI. This past year, the Year M, was simply irrelevant. Yet few are celebrating this milestone; we've already had one millennium celebration in the last XII months, and no amount of persuasion will convince the populace that the calendar started in the Year I, not the Year...well, not the year before that. [This was before zeros, at least in Europe anyway. The Hindus, Arabs and Mayans had zeros, but it didn't seem to do them much good...
...output of new fiction from big-name veteran authors, all producing energetic work at age 60 or older: Margaret Atwood, Saul Bellow, Doris Lessing, Joyce Carol Oates, Edna O'Brien, Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, John Updike. The year also brought posthumous books by Joseph Heller and Mario Puzo. The millennium has so far been generous to readers. In with the new! In with...