4/22/1906, Stanford, San Francisco, Sunday (6 days after the earthquake)
(William James Correspondence) To Miss Frances R. Morse: "...Well, when I lay in bed at about half-past five that morning, wide-awake, and the room began to sway, my first thought was, "Here's Bakewell's earthquake, after all"; and when it went crescendo and reached fortissimo in less than half a minute, and the room was shaken like a rat by a terrier, with the most vicious expression you can possibly imagine, it was to my mind absolutely an entity that had been waiting all this time holding back its activity, but at last saying, "Now, go it!" and it was impossible not to conceive it as animated by a will, so vicious was the temper displayed—everything down, in the room, that could go down, bureaus, etc., etc., and the shaking so rapid and vehement. All the while no fear, only admiration for the way a wooden house could prove its elasticity, and glee over the vividness of the manner in which such an "abstract idea" as "earthquake" could verify itself into sensible reality. In a couple of minutes everybody was in the street, and then we saw, what I hadn't suspected in my room, the extent of the damage. Wooden houses almost all intact, but every chimney down but one or two, and the higher University buildings largely piles of ruins. Gabble and babble, till at last automobiles brought the dreadful news from San Francisco. I boarded the only train that went to the City, and got out in the evening on the only train that left. I shouldn't have done it, but that our co-habitant here, Miss Martin, became obsessed by the idea that she must see what had become of her sister, and I had to stand by her. Was very glad I did; for the spectacle was memorable, of a whole population in the streets with what baggage they could rescue from their houses about to burn, while the flames and the explosions were steadily advancing and making everyone move farther. The fires most beautiful in the effulgent sunshine. Every vacant space was occupied by trunks and furniture and people, and thousands have been sitting by them now for four nights and will have to longer. The fire seems now controlled, but the city is practically wiped out (thank Heaven, as to much of its architecture!). The order has been wonderful, even the criminals struck solemn by the disaster, and the military has done great service...." 4/22/2010 40th Anniversary of Earth Day. Unfortunately this has become 'traditional', meaning it has lost its essence, commodified like Christmas. 6.2-magnitude earthquake has hit the Samoa Islands region. 7 large earthquakes since January, plus one volcanic eruption. More frequent activity or just more reported events? 4/22/2011, Friday Earth Day, Good Friday Most active tornado season in centuries—swarms of them. "We've had nothing but tornadoes," she said. "I feel like I'm living in the Land of Oz." It is interesting to compare tornado destruction with tsunamis. A tsunami is essentially a water tornado. 4/22/2020 Patti Smith: "Supplication to nature: If we be blind, if we turn away from nature, garden of the soul, she will turn on us. In place of songbird, the shrill cry of the locusts, devouring the harvest, the terrible crackling of the blazing rainforest, the peatlands smoldering, the seas rising, cathedrals, flooding, the Arctic shelf melting, the Siberian woodburning, the barrier reef bleached as the bones of forgotten saints. If we be blind, falling in our supplication to nature, species will die, the bee and the butterfly driven to extinction. All of nature, nothing more than an empty husk, the unholy ghost of an abandoned hive." 4/22/2023, Saturday Snow Day! Earth Day. Now my routine is to look back in the diary to see what I wrote about it. Earth Day should be expanded to Earth Awareness Month, but later I thought the idea was naive: we’ve had Earth Awareness Decades and nothing has changed. Browsed at bookstore. Apparently, Patti Smith has a calendrical book like this one, Book of Days.
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