just an afterthought

four hours after the quake. Still awake for some reason. My spouse just moved the thesaurus and the German tapes (heavy, because German) to lower shelves.

wondering: what does one do after an earthquake? Is there an etiquette?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

a passing stranger

"Do you know what happened to me today?" This from a slight, well-put-together woman I smiled at during a walk. She said, "My job is so stressful, I just walked from..." 3+ miles, and she was in work clothes & shoes. She had meant it as a casual, would you believe, how funny, comment. But then she broke down. Not for long, she pulled herself together pretty quickly -- 5 mins of letting it out, tops. But what are we doing to people, in this country? Millions and millions on the edge of endurance. I was home sick on Sunday, and read myself the service out of an antique prayer book. There are verses from the Bible read during services. The surprising thing was that this very old version of the prayer book had about 3x as many verses about the responsibility of the wealthy to give, share, sustain, as the contemporary prayerbook. God, despite the evil that is coming out of the far-right, is not a fiscal conservative. We are, in fact, our brothers (or sisters) keepe...
Read more

Sandy afternoon

Hot chocolate with salt, maple syrup, orange oil, cinnamon and vanilla, just perfect after a long, cold walk. Wind is still strong and cold down by the Verazzano Narrows Bridge. My neighborhood, and I, are relatively lucky. This is the bottom of Bay Ridge, facing Staten Island, what the cabbies describe as 'under the bridge'. We have power. There's a large downed tree uprooted from the sidewalk and fallen across the street fortunately just short of hitting the opposite house, partly because some branches broke off. Lying across the road it's about the height of a man's waist. Down by the Narrows, there's a large hollow pipe, half the width of this tree trunk but at least half again as long, lying on the rocks below the boardwalk and partially submerged. The exposed end is full of bolts and other fittings, I try to guess what it is: something from a ship, or a pier, perhaps? Somewhere a business is probably filing an insurance claim for this lost pipe. There...
Read more