section7mfu | It's what year?

I don't know about the rest of you, but 2019 sounds like something out of Star Trek... Captain's Log 2019. When I was first oggling the men from UNCLE, it would never have registered that I would still be at it, let alone writing fiction to accompany the original stories.
2019. TWENTY NINETEEN... The year two thousand and nineteen.
It looks space age no matter how I write it.
Fifty years ago I was in 8th grade, looking forward to the grand adventure called High School. I would soon be lamenting the demise of The Man from UNCLE, the last episode almost ready to help the series bow out for good. But the impact of the show on my teenage brain (well, adolescent really), would last well past that episode. For all of us it seems to have continued to fascinate and draw us back in. For those who didn't watch it the first time around, who have discovered it in re-runs or on dvd, you are proof that the original 'cousins' were on to something special.
Solo and Kuryakin rock the screen, and continue to touch our hearts and minds with their relationship, and the mission they so fervently defend.
I don't know how long this will last, and when I think of being, say... 80 years old and still envisioning the 30 something men from 1964, it does make me pause and wonder if it's at all probable. But, isn't that voyage of the mind part of what helps keep us young at heart? In the midst of Real Life issues that involve houses and cars, jobs and retirement (or the lack of it), sitting down and reading a story that celebrates one of the truly great partnerships in episodic television history (not to mention two of the best looking men in that genre), is a simple pleasure that can transport us back to youth and a memory of the thrill of watching as Illya and Napoleon took another shot at saving the world. The moments leading up to that opening sequence held so much anticipation, so much sheer joy at being part of it for that too swift hour of viewing pleasure.
I hope the year before us is one of personal peace, because that is where we start. I hope real prosperity, that ability to pay our way and have enough left over to help someone else, will find each of us.
And I hope that we'll continue to take pleasure in the adventures, old and new, of our friends Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin. Oh, and Mr. Waverly and April Dancer, Mark Slate as well. All of the UNCLE gang, then and now, I hope we meet them often and with some measure of that anticipation that drew us to them in the first place.
Happy New Year Cousins.