Throughout my life, there has been no galvanizing force, no emotional punch in the face, no dose of true reality on the level of a tragedy. Growing up in the 1980′s and 90′s, the largest tragedy we had was Pearl Harbor. My grandparent’s generation would all remember what they were doing that day. The same can be said for the assassination of president Kennedy. Every teacher I had from grade school up to professors in college could tell you what they were doing the day that Kennedy was shot.

Our generation hasn’t been so lucky…

The past decade has had, what it seems to me at least, a heaping dose of epic tragedies. From 9-11, the Tsunami in the South Pacific, Hurricane Katrina, and now the earthquakes in Haiti, the past ten years have had their fill of tragedy. And please believe me when I say this is by no means an exhaustive and definitive list of the tragedies we have faced as a world, but they are some of the ones which had the largest effect in recent time.

I will never forget where I was on 9-11. I was driving up I-93 to Andover listening to the radio when Howard Stern got a call about it. I made the mistake of switching to a news station thinking that they would have more information, when it turns out Howard stayed on the air and had callers giving eye witness testimony for the rest of the morning. When I got to work, some co-workers had found a TV and I was able to see exactly what was happening. I had, unsuccessfully, been trying to get a hold of my sister Laura who lived and worked in Manhattan.

Continue reading →