The earth seems to be shaking, rattling, and rolling in both explained an unexplained ways with increasing frequency. A week of major earthquakes -- Mexico (7.4), Chile (7.1), Fiji (5.1), Japan (5.2), Australia (5.6), Turkey (5.2), Russia (5.3) Indonesia (6.2) New Guinea (6.6), etc. -- while not thoroughly surprising in the wake of recent solar storms, is concerning all the same. If I lived in a seismic area, like say California, I'd be really on edge.
Stranger than the quakes are new reports of the metallic, rattling sounds that have been the subject of discussion for some time. Posted above is a Dreamland interview with Linda Moulton Howe who has a very detailed report on an off-the-charts sound experience in Wisconsin and something very similar in Georgia. Howe interviewed city administrator Lisa Kuss who gave a very thorough rundown on everything that was not the cause of the extremely loud booming and banging noises that had rattled residents in their shoes. But after methodically discounting every possibility from earthquakes to water systems to mining to military activity, Kuss did a complete turnaround at a local meeting and blamed a 1.5 earthquake some 30 miles away. It is a laughable suggestion. But it sounds like the price tag for the research into the phenomenon was getting a tad high, which could explain the urgency to put the matter to rest.
I learned this morning that there was 3.1 quake not 40 miles from me last night. I felt and heard nothing. To put it another way, if a 1.5 quake could cause days of ongoing sounds like trains colliding, as one resident described it, the state of California would be unlivable for the continuous racket.
A typical day in California
At least for me, the matter remains without satisfactory explanation... kind of like the spate of dead birds which plummeted from the skies a little over a year ago. The final explanation offered on that one? Impact. With what? Who can say? Maybe the 1,000+ birds that all died at once in Arkansas did so after they flew into various things because they were so upset by fireworks, and that's official. No one had ever set off unlicensed fireworks in Arkansas before, I guess. And only in Arkansas are birds so freaked out by them. Other birds are pretty impervious to fireworks, hence the paucity of sudden bird deaths every other New Years Eve and Fourth of July. This stuff just insults my intelligence.
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