Things to ponder
It was during the middle of the viewing of the movie King Kong that we, as children, met fear head on. In the mid 1960s, in the darkened great auditorium of Horden Hall in Moose Factory, that we got our first taste of science-fiction animation.
Holey Moley, King Kong sure scared the heck out of everyone in the audience, including me. Up there on the big screen, the King looked enormous and we felt the excitement growing and growing and some felt compassion for the giant ape. As the fight between humans and the giant simian started to get rough, the special effects took a toll on our tender eyes and emotions. The ground shook realistically and made many of us cry. The movie was just too real and some kids ran out of the theatre. In reality, a small earthquake shook the lower James Bay area and scared a lot more than just a few kids watching a movie.
Sometimes, I have enough time in the day to just think about things in general and try to figure out just what is going on. I have a few theories. For one, the weather… this year, people are longing for the global warming during the winter months and cool days during the summer days. I have a solution: move south of the equator, where winter feels warm and summer feels cool. Simple. In reality, the weather is an indicator that things are just starting to settle down by acting up, shifting around then relaxing for a few thousand years, just as a dog would do to get more comfortable while lying down after a good meal.
Earth has had it good for the last 100,000 years or so, stabilizing long enough to allow mankind to flourish to the degree that we are ourselves changing the climate. As miniscule as we are against the vastness of Mother Nature, mankind is now the major influence on our planet’s atmosphere. But this change comes with costs. It’s that the stirring around causes natural disasters known to wipe out anything around it.
Say for example, there seems to be a lot more earthquakes on the Pacific coast, from northern hemisphere to the south. Chile to Vancouver Island, wherever people are around to notice, earthquakes are happening. The people in Yellowstone National Park are no longer afraid of the bears but are more afraid to be scalded by some erupting geyser full of molten lava than any wildlife around. That is if the wildlife hasn’t abandoned the area yet!
Further north, we laugh at how far away we are from any earthquake zone, but a smouldering molten cauldron of volcanic activity is just northeast of us in Iceland. Remember that volcano erupting and spewing out so much ash that commercial airline carriers shut down operations in fear of flying through the highly abrasive ash clouds. Haven’t heard? Well don’t worry, there is still time at hand as no one is predicting something drastic just as of yet. But don’t forget Pompeii and Mount St. Helens, which blew up so quickly that no one could escape. Yet, to Mother, it was just a little burp in need of relief.
Now, does fracking cause earthquakes? Does it matter? It’ll be too late to appease anyone or even God if all the Earth people are right for a change and the big one goes off in time instead of not! Signing off from fairly stable grounds, for now…