Millennium

I am not sure what day it will be; I refuse to mark it, preferring to let the Wednesday, Saturday pass same as other days. History moves, repeats in double sets of thousands, destroying linear progression, making cycles of walks along newly budding yellow flower lined mountain stream wandering valleys. From Colorado mountains it is 2000 days to Philadelphia and Walnut Street this afternoon seemed an entire span of time I preferred to let pass the clouds of yesterday's rain, hovering, let it pass, same as other days.

Tis the season for empty cliches (such as "tis the season"), pious platitudes and overcommercialized sentimentality. This year, even more so. Add to the mix the millennium. Everything is the "last of the millennium" - the last Thanksgiving, the last Army-Navy game, the last November white sales, the last. . .you get the idea. But it's only a few weeks more, you might note. True enough, but brace yourself for an endless series of "firsts" of the new millennium - the first Super Bowl, the first snowflake, the first January white sale.

Orchestras play the Mahler symphonies. String quartets play the Beethoven string quartets. And piano trios have their literature covered. But who plays all those works that fall through the cracks - pieces like the chamber version of Milhaud's La Creation du Monde? That would be Millennium, an upstart group of young players making its area debut this weekend with two concerts. Millennium calls itself a "chamber music society. " Small groups drawn from a talent pool of 25 musicians - string players, wind players, pianists and singers - are called upon for about 25 concerts a year.

Social structure and culture do not arrange themselves in artificial if convenient packages which fit the decades. Or the centuries. Or the millennia. We think this is 1995 only because the monk who produced the current calendar made a five-year mistake. Actually this is the year 2000. Only journalists and those who look to them for historical perspective think that decades or centuries or millennia are appropriate categories for understanding changes among humankind and human society.

Worried about the coming millennium? One can't escape it: nitpickers debating whether it will begin on Jan. 1, 2000, or 2001; lifestyle editors plotting how to overplay the story; everyone with something to sell brainstorming ad campaigns. I have a better idea. Let's declare the change of millennia over. There is historical precedent. When Renaissance astronomers complained that the Julian calendar was growing inaccurate, Pope Gregory XIII decreed that Oct. 5, 1582, would become Oct. 15, 1582.

Mints in many countries are considering striking coins to promote world peace; they would appear around the year 2000. The idea of a global celebration of peace at the millennium came from a committee within the American Numismatic Association, and representatives of the ANA urged the project at the recent meeting in Helsinki, Finland, of the World Mint Directors Conference. The ANA has suggested that countries dedicate a highly circulated coin to the peace project. Design possibilities include simply stamping "Peace" or "Peace 2000" in the local language across a coin, or designing a new circulating coin.

Documenting the most important events of our waning millennium is, frankly, pretty easy. Printing press, law of gravity, Model T, blah, blah, blah. Harder to quantify, but closer to the experience of most people, are these: the 10 least significant events of the last thousand years. Oct. 12, 1963 - On the outside chance that he may win a third Nobel Prize, Linus Pauling copyrights the word "threepeat. " Nov. 1, 1854 - Stung by disappointing sales of "The Communist Manifesto," Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish a more uplifting version, titled "Chicken Soup for the Worker's Soul.

The century is ending. The millennium is ending. Dizzying thoughts. The 1990s likely will find us a bit lightheaded. Indeed, the first flurry of photo-filled wrap-ups and portentous theorizing began to fall even before the turn of the decade. The intellectual slush undoubtedly will soon grow deeper. It has been a while since there was an excuse to float such grand, if untethered, ideas. First, the century - and it would be a shame if all the hubbub over the millennium obscured the demise of what, on balance, has been a fairly interesting century.

The Catholic Church has big plans to bring the faithful home for the millennium, but it all starts with a concept that could have been borrowed from a trendy line of sports apparel: No fear. Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua said yesterday he was disturbed by how many people viewed the year 2000 with "foreboding" when he sees the next millennium as a time for hope. "Many young people have a terrible fear of what's going to happen in the new millennium," he said at a press conference at Archdiocese of Philadelphia headquarters, 222 N. 17th St. But forget the doomsday scenarios.

For as long as I can remember, I have been awaiting the millennium. Now, at last, it approaches. Last week, I watched the new noir thriller "Strange Days," set in Los Angeles, where a sadistic killer is on the loose on New Year's Eve 1999. In the final scene, thousands of people gather in the downtown canyons to party through the end of the century, amid signs of the apocalypse: A man dances with a death mask and scythe. The faithful announce the Rapture. But as the "Big 2000" is ushered in with fireworks and confetti, the killer meets his end spectacularly and punctually.

LOS ANGELES - Calling it unreasonably lenient, a federal appeals court Monday overturned a 22-year prison sentence for "millennium bomber" Ahmed Ressam, who was stopped with a carload of explosive materials before he could kill people at Los Angeles International Airport in 1999. In a 7-4 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of the government's appeal and sent the case back to a federal judge in Seattle for resentencing for a third time. The court, which has some of the nation's most liberal judges, said that Ressam's plot to blow up the airport on New Year's Eve 1999 was "horrific" and intended to intimidate the nation and the world.

The Honey Rollers were lacing up. So was Mr. Wiggles. Sweet Ashley was taking warm-up laps while an old head named Major Mitchell showed off a dizzyingly fast spin. The speakers began to thump DJ Ed's R&B selections. The Wildman, famous for his trick skating, was in the house. The usual crowd of about 400 was filing through the rails. It was adult skating night at Millennium Skate World, Camden's only roller rink. Every Wednesday evening, hundreds of dedicated amateur-style skaters from New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Delaware pack this large indoor rink, in a clearing of tall weeds off Route 30. They come for a skating party, for the scene, and for the friendship, they said.

Shareesa Bollers often seeks out her teachers after class, eager to soak up just a little bit more knowledge. She runs track, gives tours of her school, helps select its new teachers, and is a playwright and actress. "She is one of the most voracious and tenacious learners that we have. She is dogged in her pursuit of understanding," said Diana Laufenberg, a social studies teacher at Science Leadership Academy (SLA) and Bollers' student adviser. "She's just a cool kid," said Christopher Lehmann, the Center City magnet school's principal.

At first glance, it could be just another painting: A landscape, seen through a maze of trees, features a gazebo by a pond. Sarah Hopkins said it depicts the North Carolina property her family once owned - the place her father would go each evening with a drink and a smoke and watch the day close. But this painting is special: It gets its texture from the cremated remains of Hopkins' father, who died in 2000. "I felt this memorialized him better than anything I've seen before," said Hopkins, 38, of Glenside.

The Riverwalk at Millennium complex along the Schuylkill belongs to a real estate empire J. Brian O'Neill built over two decades, often turning old industrial properties into trendy offices and apartments. O'Neill had sold the Riverwalk itself two years ago. But he still owned and was developing the adjacent property where the fire started, called the Stables at Millennium. The complex under construction was scheduled to open in winter 2009 and was to include high-end corporate residences called The Luxion.

More than ever, museums are cohabiting with commercial interests. You know this must be true when the venerable Boston Museum of Science hops into bed with Lucasfilm Ltd., the force that made Star Wars a sustained business model for several decades. And maybe in a galaxy far, far away there's a science museum able to create a show that's a natural fit for Star Wars - some way of really connecting the futurism of the movies with real science. You can't escape the feeling, however, after seeing "Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination," that the search continues.

Millennium Partners L.P., a $5 billion hedge-fund company accused of improper mutual-fund trading, will repay $121.4 million in "ill-gotten revenues" under an agreement with New York and federal authorities, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said yesterday. In addition, Millennium's founder, Israel Englander, 57, will pay $30 million, and two management companies will pay a total of $26.6 million. The combined $178 million will go to mutual-fund shareholders. "It dwarfs the size of any disgorgement I've ever seen in the hedge-fund arena," said Scott Berman, an attorney at Friedman Kaplan Seiler & Adelman L.L.P.

Terri Schiavo is dying now as many aged and sick people have for eons. Though some people see letting her die of dehydration as inhumane, doctors say it is a surprisingly gentle process. "Nature has given us a wonderfully peaceful way to exit this life," said Ira Byock, director of palliative medicine at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire. "The dominant way that mammals die is that, at some point, they lose interest or the ability to eat or drink. The physiology and experience of people who are unable or refuse to eat or drink after progressive or advanced illness is one that is very gentle and very comfortable.

Just look at the numbers, provided by the Women's Consumer Network, Forrester Research, J.D. Power & Associates, and the National Association of Realtors: Women influence how 85 percent of the money is spent in the United States today and make 75 percent of the decisions on how that money is spent. Thirty percent of American women earn more than their husbands. Forty-nine percent of all automobiles have women as their principal drivers. Forty percent of small businesses are women-owned; they generate $3.6 trillion annually and employ 27.5 million.

Though it already saturates the Garden State's airwaves, Millennium Radio Group L.L.C. has expanded its control in New Jersey by acquiring five more stations this week. The stations are WJLK-FM and WADB-AM, both in Asbury Park; WBBO-FM in Manahawkin; and WOBM-AM and WOBM-FM, both in Toms River. They were sold for about $100 million by Nassau Broadcasting Partners in Princeton, said Andy Santoro, group vice president and New Jersey manager for Millennium, which is based in Amherst, N.Y. Millennium's 12 stations in Atlantic City and Trenton and in Monmouth and Ocean Counties could grow by one more if plans to buy WCHR-FM in Ocean County proceed.