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Today I'm also announcing two new tools that I hope will help you develop your own millennium plans. The first is the handbook, which I hope -- we've tried very hard to make it so -- is a practical guide for civic leaders, groups, and individuals. Another tool is the new web site which Bell South, partnering with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, is creating. The web site for Millennium Communities will allow designated communities to share ideas and projects. And we hope that you will want to be so designated, that you will want to be part of this great national effort as we stand on the brink of this new century.
You know, I've been reading a lot about what people were doing at the turn of the last century and even the last millennium. And certainly if you try to think back 1,000 years, there were many differences, of course; but there were some similarities that we might also overlook. People even at that time were imagining the future. They were creating new art forms, they were building cities, they were forming reading groups -- those who could read. They were designing new systems of cultivation, they were spreading religion from every corner of the globe. They were remapping the world was they were discovering it.
And they were -- importantly -- saying "No!" to the doomsayers. You know, there's always a split when there is an important point in time. And we will see it again here in our country and around the world. There are people who face the future with fear, even with apocalyptic vision. That was true 1,000 years ago, as some monks would travel around Europe telling people the end was near and that they should come together and cower in fear.
But the other human impulse is the one that really held sway, and that is the feeling of hopefulness and opportunity and challenge in confronting the future.
Well, we know that there are those among us in our country who are stockpiling water and canned goods an
