Heads bowed. Watched live Japan coverage last night. Unbelievable footage of pastoral landscape  devoured by tsunami. From the air the water looked so slow, but so inexorable. When they turned the helicopter camera back out to sea and you were able to watch a new tidal wave form and roll into shore...you felt like you were watching the birth of the world. Primordial, biblical. Unbelievable--and absolutely hair-raising.

I don't want to mouth empty pieties. But I couldn't watch those fleeing cars being swept away by the water and not be deeply worried.

Also, bad timing for my in-laws' trip to Tokyo. They arrived the day before (everyone is fine--but no one's idea of a vacation after that).

Unbelievable.