StumbleUpon | TapwaterJ's blog posts

http://TapwaterJ.stumbleupon.com/review/29719912/

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:36:46 -0800

Continued from Part I, Above

A Wolf in the Strawberry Field - Part II

That summer I convinced my parents of the need for a dog and, for almost a year, I had one -- Tugboat. He was half standard poodle, half Airedale, and all trouble. Early one morning, we took Tugboat and my grandmother's basset hound, Belle, with us to pick strawberries for the pancakes that my grandmother made as big as a dinner plate and loaded with fresh berries and whipped cream. When we got to the field, Tugboat took off and began running in circles and barking like crazy. Belle, the older saner dog, walked over to where Tugboat was circling, put her head down, and began a low growl. My sister, who was ahead and closer to the dogs, turned and ran past me toward the farmhouse yelling, "It's a wolf! There's a wolf in the strawberry field!"

Finding yourself abandoned in a strawberry field with a wolf and two dogs is a time for a decision. If you are under 10 it is a very difficult decision. I mean, there is panic but then there is the prospect of a wolf and two dogs, which is pretty interesting. My compromise was to stand where I was on the edge of the field and watch to see what would happen. After five or six minutes of watching Tugboat hop around frantically barking and watching Belle quietly hold her ground, my sister appeared with my grandfather, who was carrying a rifle. He walked over to the dogs, turned to my sister, and said, "Susan, it's a possum." Interestingly, her personality never really changed after that.

In my other wolf memory I was younger and staying with my grandparents alone. The temperature had fallen far below zero Fahrenheit and the snow was so cold and brittle that the light from the mercury vapor lamp in the yard made a sound when it hit the ground. It is difficult to convince my friends here in the South just how noisy snow can be. I remember being asleep on the couch in front of the fire, and then being wrapped in a blanket and carried by my grandfather to the strawberry field. A few hushed words were spoken as we entered the bright moonlight of the open field and there, standing and looking at us, was a wolf. We all stood and took a quiet measure of the moment until it turned, and began loping north across the field. I don't remember going back to the house after that -- in fact, I don't remember anything of the memory after that moment, and never talked to anyone about it afterward. So many years later, there is no one alive to ask if it even happened.

Creative Commons License

~ ~ ~

http://TapwaterJ.stumbleupon.com/review/20299150/

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 05:12:38 -0700

Earth Day

April 18, 1906: Mother Nature 1, San Francisco 0

1906: San Francisco is destroyed by an earthquake so powerful that it is felt from Coos Bay, Oregon, to Los Angeles, and as far east as central Nevada.

Wired, Tony Long

"What became known as the San Francisco earthquake and fire struck at 5:12 a.m., when the San Andreas Fault gave way, tearing the earth wide open from Humboldt County, near the Oregon border, to San Benito County, a hundred miles southeast of San Francisco. The epicenter was on the fault line just offshore from the San Francisco-San Mateo county line.

The earthquake had a magnitude measuring anywhere from 7.8 to 8.3 -- a precise method of measuring seismic activity did not exist in 1906 -- but it was enormous by any standard. There have been larger earthquakes recorded in California, but none so near a major population center. And damage was widespread all along the fault line. The town of Santa Rosa, 50 miles north of the Golden Gate, was flattened. Stanford University, in what was later to be named Silicon Valley, suffered severe damage.

But turn-of-the-century San Francisco was, by far, the most populous and important city in California -- it was the cultural and financial hub of the entire West Coast, in fact -- and almost all the attention was focused on the carnage there.

Even without the fire that followed, the damage was severe. The earthquake kept shaking for a full minute. By the time it subsided, a number of buildings in town had collapsed. Brick buildings with foundations of unreinforced masonry, especially those standing on land fill, proved especially vulnerable."

Earthquake in Illinois: What's up with Wabash Valley?

Big Earthquakes

Little Earthquakes

Stellare's Earth Day Post

~ ~ ~

http://TapwaterJ.stumbleupon.com/review/17837406/

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 11:28:22 -0800

kaushik chatterjee

http://TapwaterJ.stumbleupon.com/review/17543333/

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 10:00:32 -0800

miriana

http://TapwaterJ.stumbleupon.com/review/17428584/

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:45:56 -0800

istvan sandorfi

http://TapwaterJ.stumbleupon.com/review/17171979/

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:30:39 -0800

piotr margiel

http://TapwaterJ.stumbleupon.com/review/16789683/

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 07:50:01 -0800

intao

http://TapwaterJ.stumbleupon.com/review/16625700/

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 08:37:04 -0800

carmen spitznagel

http://TapwaterJ.stumbleupon.com/review/16507560/

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 07:11:38 -0800

angel boligan

http://TapwaterJ.stumbleupon.com/review/16376868/

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 16:14:08 -0800

george rustchev