Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Reading about the whole nuclear meltdown situation in Japan is very scary. Japan just can’t catch a break and even start to recover from the earthquake and tsunami. Now they have to deal with radiation too. I was almost six when Chernobyl happened in 1986. And when that happened all the wind blew the radiation on Belarus, where I was living until 1993. So I lived with the idea of radiation in the environment for seven years of my life, not that I could register the severity of the situation and the government initially did not let on too much on the seriousness of it. But I grew up knowing about instruments that measured radiation and that we had to do that in our country house (dacha) where we grew vegetables and fruit in the summer. And I lived in Minsk, not really that close to the radiation zone. My parents do remain convinced that my father’s thyroid cancer developed because he traveled close to radiation zone for work sometimes. Ok, I really don’t want to make this nuclear disaster in Japan all about me, I’m just trying to work out some thoughts about it and why I can relate to this particular threat much more viscerally than to the idea of an earthquake (although that was terrible).

I did not have to go to teach the writing class today because of Spring Break and that was nice and necessary.

I finished editing a friend’s article and worked on Islam lecture for tomorrow. And I finished Season 4 of “Grey’s Anatomy.” One more season to go to catch up.

Exercise: 30 min walk