Finally Listening

For years, the word earthquake made about the same impression on Southern Californians as the word marshmallow. Neither roused them much. Seismologists kept trying to share their meticulous research on the Big One. Public service agencies urged citizens to lay in supplies of food, water and medicine. Nobody even said thank you.

The sharp jolt of October 1 got the attention of many people who actually made checklists and began putting earthquake kits into place. Scientists found they could get a word in edgewise, but the response still was a bit muted.

Suddenly, an earthquake is Topic A among psychics and their clients, at cocktail parties, nail parlors and over dinner tables, not because of science but because Nostradamus, a French seer with a very low batting average who died 400 years ago, had a vision that there would be “trembling in a new city” because of a rare alignment of five planets in May of this year. He was wrong about the planets; they won’t be in alignment. And dusting off some ancient clairvoyance seems a roundabout way to get peoples’ attention on the subject of earthquakes. But if that’s what it takes, let’s hear it for Nostradamus.