Interesting phrasing

[Laurence Horn]

On Aug 24, 2011, at 10:36 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 8/24/2011 09:54 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>> BTW, the news claims (truthfully, I suppose) that the quake was "felt" in 22
>> states and Canada.
>>
>> Felt by what super-sensitive devices?  I'm in an adjoining state and neither
>> I nor anybody I've asked felt or noticed anything at all.
>
> You're too grounded, Jon.  People on upper floors in Boston and
> Cambridge (Kendall Square area) alleged in television interviews that
> they felt it.
>
> I did not, in Arlington -- MA, that is.  But I live near the top of
> "The Foot of the Rocks" -- from which British flankers fired on the
> patriots during their retreat from Concord -- from the elevated side,
> that is, not the foot -- and beneath me is bedrock.  There would be
> less earth motion than in the land-fill areas of Boston and East
> Cambridge.  (I also slept through an earthquake in San Francisco, so
> perhaps I am not typical.  But then again, I grew up not too many
> blocks from the Jerome Ave. elevated.)
>
My daughter, in NYC (Ridgewood, Queens to be precise), was in a ground floor apartment and said it was like being on a subway platform when the express goes by.  My colleagues and family members here in New Haven (not on the ground floor) definitely felt it; I probably did too but processed it as a large truck, which happens a few times a day and rattles my office slightly.  In Bethesda, books fell off shelves but nothing huge, and that seems to be true of people I know in Virginia as well (even in Charlottesville, a few miles from the epicenter, someone I know who works at the UVA Hospital complains that it only interrupted work for 5 minutes, although it did make him nostalgic for home (Santa Cruz, where the whole downtown was wiped out by the '89 quake).

LH

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