The Nature of Things

A few weeks ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the oldest known American bird in the wild was a Laysan Albatross named Wisdom. Wisdom was 60 years old and she had just produced a chick on the Midway Atoll in the Pacific where she breeds. Then came the earthquake and the tsunami. All over the area, seabirds and their helpless chicks were swept out to sea and drowned by the thousands. It was initially feared that Wisdom and her chick were among them. But Wisdom hasn't survived 60 years in the wild by being stupid. Her nest and her chick were on higher ground. National Fish and Wildlife Services personnel soon were able to verify that the chick had survived. But Wisdom was nowhere to be seen. This was not necessarily indicative of tragedy though, because albatrosses often spend days cruising and feeding over their ocean home before they return to feed their chick. And so it proved to be with this bird. This week she returned. Wisdom tends her chick. ( P...

The ever-expanding catastrophe faced by Japan's people as a result of last week's earthquake (now rated as a 9.0 on the Richter scale), the tsunami that followed, and now the very real possibility of a nuclear disaster is almost too awful to imagine. No, in fact, it is too awful to imagine and, frankly, I am not sad that my imagination is not up to the task. All the reports about the events that I have seen or heard emphasize that Japan is about as well-prepared for disaster as any country can be. They are well-aware of the seismic neighborhood in which they live, and they expend every possible effort to make people knowledgable about what could happen and to get them ready for the eventuality. Even so, the devastation is terrible and the tasks people face in rebuilding their lives seem almost beyond human capabilities. It breaks the heart and stuns the mind. And yet, in spite of all that, if one can manage to step back for a moment from the human devastation and simply c...