Millennium Page Home Page 24 August 1998.
About a year ago I got interested in genealogy. As I began learning about my ancestors, where they lived, what they did for a living, something about the history of the time they lived in, etc., I became increasingly aware of how the culture they lived in has come to shape the culture I live in. This includes my own life as well. When I saw how much of what goes on around me evolved from what had gone before I began to be more interested in those people and those times. Unfortunately, information about them is hard to come by. Before a certain time, most of them were probably illiterate. Later, even those who were literate did not think it was useful to write down their observations about the times they lived in. Perhaps it was modesty that prevented their writing. Possibly life was so hard there was little energy left at the end of the day for what they might well have seen as a frivolous exercise. Maybe the cost of the materials for lighting and writing were beyond their means. Whatever the case, today I feel the loss of their thoughts about their lives and times.
I have decided that there might well be some people in the future who will want to know something about the thoughts of a person who lived in this time. Perhaps it will be a descendant of mine who wants better to understand his own culture in the way I seek to learn about mine. Perhaps it will be a student of history who is looking for representative thoughts and observations. Whatever the case, this collection will just be a set of unconnected notes about things that are going on in our culture at this time. It is not intended to be especially profound or enlightening.
Part of the motivation for writing these notes is the thought that these are very interesting times. It is hard to believe other than that we are living at a period when almost all of the culture and the environment are undergoing revolutionary changes. While I don't pretend that I am able to see them all, I do think that it will be useful to record the observations of someone who lived through the times.
It is now the 24th of August, 1998, roughly 500 days before the start of the third millennium A.D. Considered from the perspective of the universe as a whole, this is a purely arbitrary date. In the scope of our culture it is a significant milepost nonetheless. If for no other reason than the oddity of this date, the events of this period deserve to be recorded from a single point of view. So that is what this is - some reflections from a single individual's point of view at the end of the second millennium, hopefully continuing into the beginning of the third.
A brief biographical note is probably in order: I am Albert Gilmore Carrick, Jr. I usually go by the nickname "Gil". I am married to the only wife I have ever had, Judith Amy Moore Carrick. (Still being in my first marriage after more than 30 years is itself an achievement in our culture today where divorce is very common.) We have two sons. The older one is Albert Gilmore Carrick III. He goes by the nickname of "Buzz". He is a producer for a cable sports television network. Our younger son is Matthew Moore Carrick. He goes by Matt. He is a 4th year student in medical school, planning on being a Surgeon. I am employed in the computer business, specifically in the area of networking computers together. Our dominant cultural heritage is what we in the U.S. call "Scots-Irish". Our families were Scottish for the most part, but many of them lived for a generation or two in the area now called Northern Ireland. (I understand that these people are called "Ulster Scots" in the United Kingdom and in Ireland.) Based on some genetic characteristics we believe that there might be some American Indian blood in the mix, and we are fairly sure of some Dutch and a few Irish Catholics as well, but most of our ancestors are Protestants from Scotland.