Before you know it, a decade is gone (Dec. 21)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
When 2010 rolls around in just a few more days, we’ll be in a new decade. It seems like the start of the old one was just yesterday — well, maybe the day before yesterday.
Here are some of the things that happened as the year 2,000 opened:
+ The advent of 2000 coincided with the biggest story being about what didn’t happen. The Y2K horror — when planes were to fall out of the sky, elevators stop and the stock market crash — didn’t happen. We’ll probably always wonder whether all those billions that were spent on Y2K mitigation had anything to do with anything other than keeping a bunch of computer wizards gainfully employed.
Funny how it seems like that big story was a lot like another one — the ongoing debate over whether we can control the weather by sending money to poor countries who have no intention of reducing their carbon footprints.
+ Terrorism by Islamic fundamentalists was rampant, just as it had been in the previous decade. In retrospect, it was clear we were going to be attacked again. They told us we would be. And in less than two years, we were attacked.
+ Israel and its neighbors were still trying to come to peace terms. President Clinton was brokering talks, with Syria.
+ Republican Congressman George Radanovich in 2000 pledged that the GOP-controlled Congress would propose a budget that would eliminate the public debt. The opposite happened, even after George W. Bush was elected to the presidency, and Republicans controlled the entire government.
+ “Peanuts” cartoonist Char-les Schultz announced his retirement, and a few weeks after that announcement, he died. His creations live on, though, as popular as ever.
+ Mars was being explored by a robot, just as it is now.
+ Water was the most-argued-about political and environmental issue in California. Some things don’t change.
