{"id":947,"date":"2019-03-29T20:07:32","date_gmt":"2019-03-30T04:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/?p=947"},"modified":"2019-09-26T21:49:29","modified_gmt":"2019-09-27T05:49:29","slug":"terra-non-firma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/2019\/03\/29\/terra-non-firma\/","title":{"rendered":"Terra Non Firma"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was easier to believe in solid ground before it became common knowledge that the Earth is a sphere with tectonic plates rafting over molten rock; unlike the popular myth, not even turtles go all the way down.\u00a0 It\u2019s been nearly 4 months since the November 30th\u00a0<\/sup>earthquake, yes, but also 55 years since the 1964 quake.\u00a0 There are those who have become hypersensitive to every slight jolt and quiver, whose home pages have changed \u2014 perhaps permanently \u2014 from the innocuous Kitten War\u00a0<\/em>to the Alaska aftershocks website, now measuring the anxieties of their lives not in Prufrock’s coffee spoons, but in logarithmic fractions they never paid much attention to before.<\/p>\n

And why not?\u00a0 To my mind, this particular local zeitgeist was best captured by Louise Juhnke 54 years ago.\u00a0The Anchorage Times was the recorder of daily Anchorage history from 1916 to the day its doors closed in 1992 (joined in the late 1940s by the Anchorage Daily News), and one editorial page feature was called Poet\u2019s Corner (or, depending on the day\u2019s typesetter, Poets\u2019 Corner or just plain Poets Corner).\u00a0 On March 27th<\/sup>, 1965, on the exact anniversary, her poem March Jitters\u00a0<\/em>was published; it applies just as much to the aftermath of 2018 as to that of 1964. \u00a0For decades, the only way to find that poem would have been by looking at frame after frame of microfilm, or by choosing the right Times clippings notebook from among thousands.\u00a0 But as of last October \u2014 just in time for the November 30th\u00a0<\/sup>earthquake, if anyone had known to look for it \u2014 March Jitters\u00a0<\/em>and the rest of the Anchorage Times became fully available online back to 1916 \u2014 amazing.\u00a0 Those thousands of clippings notebooks were replaced by searchable full-page scans of the Times: a local historian\u2019s dream for many decades.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to repurpose popular songs as unintended earthquake anthems:\u00a0 All Shook Up<\/em>, Whole Lotta Shakin\u2019 Going On<\/em>, I Feel The Earth Move<\/em>.\u00a0 You can also find in the Times that John Hartford, composer of Gentle On My Mind<\/em>, performed in Midtown at Grand Central Station on May 5th<\/sup>, 1984.\u00a0 It was a little over 20 years after the \u201964 quake when he sang California Earthquake<\/em>: \u201cMother Nature\u2019s got gas, her diet\u2019s gone stale \/ …acid indigestion on the Richter Scale\u2026\u201d\u00a0 To say the least.\u00a0 (http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/y26kqcsj)<\/p>\n

Most people between 3 and 4 feet tall in pre-Star Trek<\/em> 1964 were watching a science fiction puppet show called Fireball XL5\u00a0<\/em>on that Good Friday (the Exxon Valdez spill also occurred on Good Friday and November 30th\u00a0<\/sup>was also a Friday \u2014 what is<\/em> it with Fridays and major disasters in Alaska?) \u00a0Here, we need to switch to the Anchorage Daily News database (which began in 1985) to find that Robert Gottstein hosted a Fireball XL5\u00a0<\/em>party at the 4th\u00a0<\/sup>Avenue Theater on the 40th\u00a0<\/sup>anniversary of the \u201964 quake in 2004: everyone concerned remembered Colonel Steve Zodiac and his crew.\u00a0 You can find episodes (and the remarkably romantic theme song for its target age group) on Youtube.\u00a0 (http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/qfhjcqe\u00a0offers a short sample.)<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll find plenty of Alaska earthquake books in the QE 535 call number area, but it was only in 2017 that the best popular book about the 1964 quake and how it changed the understanding of all earthquakes was published, The Great Quake\u00a0<\/em>by Henry Fountain. (ALASKA QE535.2.U6 F65 2017) \u00a0For photographs, a good place to look is Alaska\u2019s Digital Archives (https:\/\/vilda.alaska.edu); I don\u2019t see any for the November 30th\u00a0<\/sup>earthquake yet, but it’s just a matter of time.<\/p>\n

Yet for all of our own seismological woes, I still think from time to time of those poor people in Chile in 1960. (https:\/\/santiagotimes.cl\/?p=69068) \u00a0Our 2018 earthquake lasted up to a couple of minutes, depending on where you were; think the first two verses of Led Zeppelin\u2019s Stairway To Heaven<\/em>. \u00a0(http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/o9x4u5x) \u00a0The 1964 earthquake lasted about four and a half minutes; think a little over half of Stairway To Heaven<\/em>, up to the words about the May Queen.\u00a0 But Chile? \u00a0Think Stairway To Heaven<\/em>, and then play the first two verses over again.\u00a0Ten minutes is a lot of rock and roll.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was easier to believe in solid ground before it became common knowledge that the Earth is a sphere with tectonic plates rafting over molten rock; unlike the popular myth, not even turtles go all the way down.\u00a0 It\u2019s been nearly 4 months since the November 30th\u00a0earthquake, yes, but also 55 years since the 1964 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=947"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":972,"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions\/972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}