Ten years ago, on March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off Japan’s northeastern shore—the most powerful earthquake ever recorded to have hit Japan—generating enormous tsunami waves that spread across miles of shoreline, climbing as high as 130 feet. The powerful inundation of seawater tore apart coastal towns and villages, carrying ships inland as thousands of homes were flattened, then washed tons of debris and vehicles back out to sea.

Every week, our lead climate reporter brings you the big ideas, expert analysis, and vital guidance that will help you flourish on a changing planet. Sign up to get The Weekly Planet, our guide to living through climate change, in your inbox.Over the weekend, the Senate passed the American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package. The House of Representatives is poised to pass it today, and then it will go to President Joe Biden’s desk.

Image above: The photographer Rose Marie Cromwell documented her experience giving birth and her growing child during the pandemic, in a series called Eclipse.In early March last year, I was heading home from a work happy hour on the subway when I realized that a woman was staring at my belly. She looked at my waist, where my coat was belted, and then at the floor, and then at my waist again, and then she very tentatively offered me her seat. I was four months pregnant.

After the 2002 midterm elections, in which Republicans defied history and added to their House majority, excited GOP figures began speaking of a “permanent majority,” or at least one that would last a generation. George W. Bush’s reelection victory two years later affirmed that Democrats were in disarray: The era of big government was over, Bill Clinton had left a vacuum behind, and Republicans were ascendant.

Everything was normal, until it wasn’t. Last March, we scrambled home, used coffee mugs left on our desks, our worlds shrinking without time for a proper goodbye.In the days, weeks, and months that followed, our “new normal” became just that. Now, a year later, our brains are both grieving and forgetting the lives we once lived.
We are still grieving our Last Good Days. “For me, it’s the last time I swam in the ocean,” our senior editor Julie Beck writes.