| LURCHING INTO NEW MILLENNIUM
By Bob Weaver/New Years Eve 1999
The new millennium is a few ticks away.
Most of us will pass across this historical moment, and will use it to
illuminate the human condition and progress - it's cultural and religious ties, as the past two thousand years go by.
It will be a time of inventory taking, with
elements of fear and uncertainly wrapped in a grand celebration.
We'll think of the passages, thresholds, horizons, achievements and changes.
It's mind boggling!
Progress has it's paradoxes, and despite the wealth of human achievement, we paradoxically have deep rooted problems in
society, worrisome and unresolved.
We still have starving nations and we continue to kill each other, sometimes in masses.
I have often said that Calhoun County, unlike most parts of America, is barely out of the wilderness, mostly forested.
If the power and communication grid breaks down, most will have the survival skills to adjust.
Calhoun and West Virginia is a place we don't worry much about hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and devastating wild fires, rather safe from natural disasters, although floods play havoc with parts of the state.
Our population has continued to decline since the agricultural days of 1940.
It has only been a
short time ago that we got some paved roads, that bridges replaced ferries on the Little Kanawha, the crank phone was
eliminated, and electric came to our rural villages.
It was a long journey when we traveled out of the county to Parkersburg or Charleston, and roads have
improved in the past 50-75 years. They follow the same pick and shovel and dynamite built routes dug out in the early part of the
20th century.
In many ways we are still an isolated bunch, and some feel that is a virtue, living in the backwoods.
Most of our ancestors over 125 years ago rarely crossed the county line, let alone
the Ohio River or out of state.
Calhoun remains a safe, unspoiled and beautiful place, mostly undeveloped.
We seem so far behind, particularly when it comes to providing basic job opportunities and services, which
the rest of America seems to gloat about.
Broadband has been an endless political promise for years to help rural areas to develop businesses, healthcare and become better educated, a battle to which I have been dedicated.
Calhoun's farming economy and cultural life was uplifted in the early part of this last century with the oil and gas boom, but even that has
faded and our children had to leave to find even basic jobs by the 1950's.
Now, the rush is on for the 21st Century.
The high tech, information, automaton age and artificial intelligence, is pushing aside the industrial age (mostly not felt by Calhoun and West Virginia's rural counties anyway).
In America we are predicted to suffer from more self-centerness - the "Me Generation," and a lack of civility. .
Folks are not much interested in history and civics, with volunteerism almost fading.
In this new millennium we will likely continue to use strong survival skills while we entertain ourselves to death with media and politics, conspicuously consumed to take our mind away from troubles.
As the population of Calhoun declines, I cling to the stories of early families and their struggles.
hopes, and dreams.
It could be we are blessed and don't know it - "far from the maddening crowd."
It is likely that most of us will stay up to the midnight tick and look up
and out across our hills with wonderment and contemplation about what is next.
There will be plenty of trinkets, booklets, novels, TV shows, movies, tunes, extravaganzas, fireworks, choirs and political
speeches.
The end of the world will be prophesied by Jerry Falwell and others, and some folks on the fuzzy fringe will act strange,
maybe even dangerous. Y2K will come and go, likely fleecing some folks.
The Christian world will rightfully reflect on the impact of Christ during the past 2000 years, considered by many to be the
most significant life force of the ages.
Other spiritual beliefs give countenance to different gods and higher powers.
Steven Hawking, the eminent physicist and possibly the most brilliant mind since Albert Einstein, acknowledges the mystical
connection between physics and the unknown.
The question has been and still remains - Where did it start? What started it?
Who started it? What was there before? And where is it going?
Fortunately we have theologians who give such answers, those who understand and are willing to explain it to us. Surely, we can all mind-buzz with these questions later in
the the new millennium.
Hawking said that when we have the answers, then we will understand God.
So, when the big 2000 rollover happens, we will think about all these things, like it or not, after which life will return to
its abnormal.
If we are fortunate, that Great Power will still be in charge.
Welcome to the new millennium.
Postscript: My 87-year-old dad wanted to live into the new millennium. He read this little column and said "That's about the way it is."
On New Year's Eve he joined our family and lots of friends for a giant bonfire on Hur Hill and lots of fireworks.
He was not feeling well, but expressed great joy about being there at that time and place. Tears fell down his cheeks. "Well, I made it. Seen a lot, you know," he said.
Nine months later he died.
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