A Decade Remembered

The 21st Century isn’t a new thing any more. As of today, we’re into its second decade. The first decade swooped in and took off again before we came to any real consensus on what to call it. The Aughties? The Naughties? The Zeroes?

Maybe it’s appropriate that we haven’t come up with a name. It’s been a pretty uncertain decade.


Remember how we argued about when to officially celebrate the turning of the millennium? Would it be when every digit of the year rolled over, when 1999 became 2000? Or would it be just after the stroke of midnight on the first day of 2001?

In retrospect, I’d say that for Americans, at least, the 21st century began a few minutes before 9 a.m. on September 11, 2001. By the end of that week, we all understood that we were living in a different world.

A lot of scary, destructive things marked this past decade — some related to the big events of 9/11, and some not. Two wars that we don’t know how to stop. Gulf Coast cities nearly wiped out by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Weeks later, evacuees had to be evacuated again as her sister Rita slammed the coast. In 2008, we had Hurricane Ike; and in 2010, many of Katrina’s still-recovering communities were hit by the man-made disaster of the BP oil spill.

To me, the world feels quite different than it did a decade ago. Public discourse is uglier; nearly everyone seems to agree on that. I’ve heard tales of old friends who don’t talk any more; and my own family, after a few unpleasant shouting matches, has found it necessary to ban discussion of political issues at holiday gatherings. International travel is riskier, or maybe it really isn’t, but it sure feels that way. And air travel is just no fun these days.

But there are other aspects to the “Aughties.” In this decade, our country elected its first African-American president. Whatever your views on how he’s working out, that was a major milestone for a nation that is still trying, in fits and starts, to live up to the ideals proclaimed in its founding documents.

And while some of us are putting up walls and drawing lines in the sand, others have found dozens of new ways to stay connected. This decade saw the introduction of the IPhone, the IPad, and new ways of using the Internet that include photo sharing, social networking, and cyber-communities of shared interests.

I think of the sci-fi books and shows that shaped my adolescent mind. The crew of the Enterprise with their pocket communicators. Starfaring aliens with doohickeys in their ears that allowed them to talk to the ship’s computer from anywhere on board. Science fiction? Hah! I see people using devices like that in the grocery store, at the post office, on the sidewalk in front of my house.

I'm not sure I'll ever feel like a native of this century, but I survived the first decade. Happy New Year to all my online friends.