"I feel like I'm on death row. . ."

". . .just wasting time waiting for the executioner to show up."

Or so a friend of mine wrote in an e-mail this morning.

You know, I DO get that. I'm going to lose a big chunk of my soul the day the last hono dies, and there's a fair chance I'll see that day in my lifetime.

As a kid raised on "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" and J. Cousteau, I always had a dream to dive with the turtles. Now I've done that, and swam far off the reef through the break till the bottom disappears in inky blackness . . .now I've done that.

Of course, this is why individual heroism is more important by the moment.