Head for the Hills!

At a few minutes before 3:00 p.m. (Hawaii time), about an hour after midnight today (their time), Shakespeare's "Scepter'd Isle" was shaken by an earthquake registering 5.2 on the Richter scale, which lasted about ten seconds, centred (Spellcheck goes crazy when I use British spellings) near Kingston-on-Hull, from a depth of about ten kilometres.  It was the first such "big" temblor in more than a couple of decades.  According to the Earthquake Awareness website, the UK experiences 2 to 3 hundred quakes a year, only ten per cent of which are noticed.  Since 1580, eleven people are known to have died from earthquakes in England, most of them from "falling stones." 

Breaking News: Noted Snob, Snot, crypto-Nazi, and over-published Right-Wing Nut-Case (Why, Oh why?,  did he play the clavichord and advocate the decriminalization of marijuana?--making it impossible to despise him in the way that his politics, and his insufferable attitude, should have made him despicable), William F. Buckley, died today, at the age of 82, at his home in Stamford, Connecticut.  Dans un age moins mur, he had an absurd, Afghan Hound-like patrician elegance and suave comeliness that would have been de trop in a gay man, but which, in him, charmed and exasperated.  I, for one, will miss him.