And you may ask yourself, "My god, what have I done?!"

I've been married almost two decades. I'm the father of a girl (9) and a boy (6), who only updates his family's web page every few months or when some disaster strikes. I'm spending this year on a serious-literature chain gang known as the Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch, which means I'm on about page 180 of 760 with a couple dozen other fools. I organize a soccer league for children with special needs. I edit books and chat on an e-mail list for editors. I'm usually proud of America. I know we have our shortcomings, but any country that can put Paul Wellstone, Dennis Kucinich, and Barbara Boxer in national office isn't completely bad. (Though I wish Ms. Boxer were more liberal.) I'm a sports fan. My favorites are baseball (L.A. Dodgers) and football (USC Trojans), but I'm willing to pay attention to the championship of almost any athletic contest, because I think humans striving to be better than their limits, better than their past, is sublime. (Almost, I say, because I believe boxing should be outlawed.) I have volunteered a lot—donating blood, working polling places, studying wildlife, serving on boards. We haven't done enough, because the world is still painful and muddy and hungry. Keep going.