It has been noted that the years surrounding the turn of each century are marked by unprecedented stirrings of chaos, confusion, celebration and change. Just one year ago, the widespread jubilation of the new millennium moved hand in hand with rumblings of fear over the Y2K issue. Watching the election drama this past November, I wondered if our collective indecision and emotional upheaval over who would become the next president likewise revealed something about the American apprehension of embracing the new.

As historians are quick to point out, it is often by reviewing our past that we come to see something new about ourselves in the present. One hundred years ago, Theodore Roosevelt became the 26th President of the United States after William McKinley was assassinated while serving his second term in office. America had just emerged as a world power. Most of the frontier of the great west had been settled; women's and minority rights were in the news. As 1% of the population owned approximately seven-eighths of the nation's wealth, the king of trusts, financier J. P. Morgan, along with his Northern Securities Company, became the first target of Roosevelt's economic reform. The key word of the year was "progress."

The latest technological advances included electricity and X-rays. The Wright brothers were working on a contraption that would allow people to fly through the air. Automobiles were already on the scene, though many people believed this was not much more than a passing fad. Moving pictures were a similar curiosity. Telephones were in use and a few large cities were being wired for electricity. Some cities were also growing taller as the 'skyscraper' was developed.

As with every century, these people believed that their generation would usher in greater thinkers, artists and scientists; that health and wealth would increase and that their century would grow light-years beyond the last.

In one hundred years from now, how will our great-great-great-great grandchildren look upon this turn of the century? With all the accoutrements that separated us from the last turn -- from the basics of washing machines, freezers and electrical appliances to the widespread growth in our culture via televisions, computers and the information superhighway -- how will the future deem us with their new bounty of technologies and advancements? Perhaps they will see us as we might see those who came before us -- with curiosity and bewilderment at all they had to do without. On the other hand, without those who came before us -- those fueling the fervor of new inventions, new ideas, new vistas of thinking -- we would not be who we are today. And so we stand, presently, collectively, an unfinished bridge to the future. It is important to remember that we are, all of us, every day, making history. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke so eloquently noted,