News coverage of tragedies draws us in. It is like the traffic slowing down on the freeway in the opposite lane from a car crash. There is no impedence but people rubber-neck and jam up traffic by slowing down to watch.
I think we have slowed down to watch Haiti. We are all saddened and shocked by the images we see.
Reporters have also shared information on earthquakes. I learned occurence is more frequent than I thought. If I lived in California, I might turn the channel when they begin to speculate. Living in Minnesota makes me feel safer. At least it did, until they began talking about how many areas could potentially have earthquakes.
Remember hearing about a great earthquake in Missouri in the early 19th century caused by the New Madrid fault? It made the Mississippi run upriver and supposedly rang church bells in Boston
I heard there is a fault line that runs under the Mississippi between the Twin cities. That is pretty close to home. Time to Google. The first article I read was an archived newspaper from the Little Falls Transcript (my hometown) about cupboards rattling from a tremor felt in the early 1900's. Minnesota has had quakes measuring up to 5.0. Most of them are smaller and epicentered in the western part of the state.
http://www.morris.umn.edu/earthquakes/glance.pdf
All this earthquake talk might have triggered my imagination because I thought I felt a small tremor yesterday. Turns out it was only Ted Kennedy rolling over in his grave. You heard the election results from Massachusetts, didn't you?
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