Sad?

Yes, it was difficult and sad to demolish the home in which we shared so many memories with family and friends, including our marriage and the birth of our children. We've been planning this for a long time, though, and along the way our committment has grown in many emotional and financial and logistical steps. For us, the demolition on Wednesday was another step, and not the sudden leap that observers may perceive.


There's nothing left of our house now - even the concrete rubble you see here has now been removed. But our attachment is to this place, this community, and the people who live here, and that transcends the structure of wood and concrete that has stood on the property for 80 years.

The other difficulty I'm less comfortable about is building a house during wartime. But is it really wartime? It's hard to tell, with the nation's objectives so unclear and the burden of sacrifice falling upon so few. Our president has recently called on us to "sacrifice" by watching the disturbing horrors of war on television, but we don't actually get those channels in America, and it doesn't seem much like sacrifice anyway.

What is clear is that there are far too many people in this world for whom the destruction of their home is violent, not voluntary; arbitrary, not planned. We are privileged to live in a community free of that threat, with the support of our family, friends, and neighbors. We must not forget that privilege, and work to extend it to others.