The two men by the fireside
in Geneva did not bring on
the millennium, but neither
did they make things worse.
That is more than can be said
for many of the year's other
major events. In the Middle
East, terrorists kept finding
new variations on their
favorite themes, murder
and mayhem. At the eastern
rim of the Pacific, the great
tectonic plates that make up
the earth's crust gave
infinitesimal shrugs that
produced a catastrophic
earthquake and a volcanic
eruption. As with nature,
so with man, whose prowess
as tinkerer, tiller and healer
fell calamitously short: 1985
was the worst...
