Is that the best the moon can do?(a past perspective of the year 2000)(Brief Article)

I stood outside last week beneath the brightest full moon in 133 years, one week before the new millennium, and I tried my best to care.

It is not easy, being human and trying to know what to make of these momentous mileposts as they go sputtering by.

It made me feel small, standing there beneath the moon and the rest of the universe, so pretty soon I shrank and was a kid again.

A kid again -- born in the '50s, growing up in the '60s, a product of American culture if ever there was one. The year 2000 seemed so far away, so impenetrable and mysterious, so hard to contemplate. The year 2000 was like the dark side of the moon.

When I was 12 or 13, I could do subtraction in my head, …