Millennium

There are many men and women who defined the end of the last Millennium and who added to its magnificence and shame. There were visionaries, cult figures, revolutionaries, tyrants, trend-setters and opinion-makers. I loved Elvis Presley and my mother bought a lot of his records. Blue Hawaii,was played over and over again in our house until eventually I knew the album by heart. Walt Disney was another hero. The Disney cartoons, especially the longer feature length ones often brought a magical glow to our sitting room on a wet Sunday. When the theme music came on the television, "When you wish upon a star, makes no difference where you are...", you knew you were in for a very special treat. The Dalai Lama has became iconic to me more recently. Alfred Hitchcock was always frightening and Steven Spielberg inspiring. Bill Gates has enhanced and diminished our lives almost in almost equal measure. Adolph Hitler perpetrated some of the most heinous crimes in the history of humanity and Charlie Chaplin never failed to make me smile.
I have included two leaves, taken from my garden at the end of the millennium, here. I pressed them in an old telephone directory for a few years. One is dark and the other is covered in twenty three carat gold leaf. One represents exclusion, ill, and the maniacal tyrants who caused so much pain. The other leaf, marks the kind people who spread happiness in many quiet ways across the globe. I will let you decide yourself which represents which.