One of the better things about the millennium is that a lot of the history of rural and urban Ireland is being recorded as the clock runs down towards the end of the year.
Rural Ireland had a run at the same thing a few years ago when the GAA celebrated its centenary and most of the clubs in the country came up with a local history.
Two years ago, the bi-centenary of 1798 sparked another round of local history books but the millennium is, in my opinion, generating very good material from all around the State.
There is virtually an obsession with history in the Midlands and not a week goes by without at least one or two books being published.
One of these is A Century of Rosenallis Parish, 1900-1999, launched on Tuesday night by the US ambassador, Mr Michael J. Sullivan, who is of Midland stock.
The book was put together by a son of the parish, Larry O'Loughlin, the chief agricultural officer in Co Wicklow.
A graduate of UCD, Larry worked in Kilkenny and Laois and for a time was special adviser to the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, Mr Liam Hyland.
During the week he told me that Rosenallis was "every parish in Ireland", in its way.
However, he also described it as a unique place.
For instance, the village, which stands on the road between Birr and Emo, is one of the few places in Ireland where the population increased during the Great Famine. That was because it was home to the first Irish Quakers, who fed and sheltered the local people, keeping them alive while hundreds of thousands died all over the country.
In 1821 there were only 19 families in the village but in the census of 1841 that figure had risen to 254 homes and between 1841 and 1851 it increased again.
The link with the Society of Friends is permanent.
In the Quaker graveyard there is an 18th-century headstone in memory of William Edmundson, who is described as "the first member of The Society of Friends who settled in Ireland".
In another graveyard nearby lies the remains of Ireland's heaviest man, Roger Byrne, who was said to have weighed more than 50 stone when he died in March 1804.
Rosenallis also had a famous parish priest during the 1960s.
He was Father Thomas Kennedy, a relative of Boston Kennedys, who used to supply both spiritual advice and Irish wolfhounds to the clan.
Above all, according to Larry, the book is a story of one community with three religious beliefs, Roman Catholic, Church of Ireland and Methodist, all operating harmoniously in the village.
A Century of Rosenallis Parish, 1900-1999, which costs £25, is available in the bookshops of Portlaoise and in Rosenallis.