There are no words.

I can't even express what I'm feeling this morning, hearing that the exact areas where I lived and worked in Japan were hit by the massive 8.9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami. I just feel sick—to my stomach, and to my heart. I watched video after video and read every article I could get my hands on. I know those places. I lived there, rode my bike on those streets. I've ridden trains through, I've visited the seaside. I know those people, they are mine. I belong to them.

Disasters like 9/11 and the Haiti and Chile earthquakes spring to mind. Of course my heart ached for those people. But this is something different yet. This is like a part of my heart is gone. I'm nervous and numb and I can't think of anything else.

So much for homeschool today.

This Boomer isn't going to apologize

I can say firsthand that if boomer parents have anything for which to be sorry it's for rearing a generation of pampered kids who've been chauffeured around to soccer leagues since they were 6. This is a generation that has come to regard rising affluence as a basic human right, because that is all it has ever known -- until now.
This Boomer Isn't Going to Apologize - WSJ.com

I don't know if, born in 1968, I can rightly say that I'm a Baby Boomer or not; but my siblings all qualify, and I am undeniably of the same generation they are.

To this entire article, I say AMEN. I feel no guilt for the impact I've made on the earth. I do my utmost to be responsible, to leave things better than I found them. What's more, I think the progress that has occurred in virtually everything in my lifetime is near miraculous. It's a wonderful time to be alive, and I'm not sorry—even in the slightest—that I am alive. I hope to leave behind a footprint of some kind, carbon or otherwise, that lets people know that I walked this gorgeous, fabulous earth for a number of years beginning in 1968.

What kind of world are my kids inheriting? It's light years ahead of the world I had at their age, and improving every day. No apologies here.

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