Earthquake,.. on the East Coast?!

Yes, it's true. We Californians like to share, I guess. Did you know that one of North America's biggest earthquakes actually occurred on the Mississippi River in the early 1800's? So this is not unprecedented, although unexpected.

I love this map, which includes what we call 'authoritative' data sources (from USGS data feeds and others - agencies that are responsible for tracking this type of information and we know we can rely on) and then data from the general public - you really get a sense of how strong the liquifaction of this quake was (so much soil on the East coast! Not as much rock as we Californians have) and how far away it was felt. Seeing information in geographic space can give you a better sense of an event, a deeper understanding of what happened.

Monday already?

Father Robert Joerger, Debbie Philips, Father Edward Beck. Picture taken from Philips' blog.

Seems so, so I'll just send you directly over here to read a nice blog post to get you through today and many days to come - inspiring words from Father Edward Beck, a Passionist Priest in New York from a retreat he gave on Martha's Vineyard. Rob and I first met Father Edward at a retreat he gave at our Church. We are able to visit him periodically, primarily when he comes to the West Coast, but this past summer we bugged both him and Father Robert over in New York.

River Rats

Our awesome home away from home! Yep, we had the double wide and we wore it well!

Seriously, the only thing I can focus on in this picture is that Froshy is really getting close to being even with me. Yipes.

Yeah, they look ready for bed, right? I don't think they can get any blonder without being dayglo colored.

I actually look... relaxed! Could it be because of no wifi or cell phone towers anywhere? Brown beast is peering over my shoulder.

Parker Dam, where we'd zoom to, cut the engine and fling small, life jacketed bodies out of the boat and into the river. I flund myself in as well, to keep the small ones from drifting far, far away.

Collecting river shells on the shore.

This is what summer time is all about! We had such a great time! Besides the sand bar incident. And the bouy incident. I didn't mind falling off the seadoos a few times. And I survived Froshy driving me into every wake imaginable when it was his turn on the 'watery-vehicle-of-death.'