Sometimes you just feel the need to share a thought or an experience, so I am starting this thread.
San Francisco - 100 years after the Big One
By contrast to the somber mood that gently hangs over San Francisco at this moment, it is a glorious day in this city. After several weeks of rain the sun is shining brightly and is very warming and refreshing. People seem more friendly today and there are many of them here to "enjoy" the memorials of the day. Victorian costumes are abound and wreaths adorn momuments that survived the trials of the ages.
I spent an hour today looking out of my office window, conveniently above Market Street, enjoying a parade in celebration of San Francisco's rebirth. I was thinking of my grandfather, a man that I never had the pleasure to meet, and how he had been an earthquake survivor. He had just come from Italy and had only been in America for a few months when the ground shook his newly layed roots. Among the school children, marching bands, and local union marchers, were the fire department and the American Red Cross. I looked down at the long line of emergency vehicles and though to myself, "It looks like the calvary is here." It was at that moment that I reflected back on what I had read and the pictures that I had seen earlier that morning on the train in to town.
The building I was in was new compared to the lovely gothic one sitting across the street. That building had been one of the few to survive both the earthquakes and the fires after them. Two buildings over from me on my right had stood the Call Building. It survived the earthquake but it was consumed by fire shortly after. 100 years ago to the moment, the street that I was overlooking was on fire. Had I been standing where I was then, I would be standing on, or buried under, a pile of rubble.
I looked back at the parade, back at the calvary and thought, "If the earthquake were now, these are the people who would save me, because they think that my life is worth more than theirs." It was a very humbling moment.
The calvary left and was followed by cheerleaders making human pyramids while promoting HIV/AIDS awareness; something that you never would have seen 100 years ago. Very modern, very San Francisco.
Like the Phoenix, San Francisco has risen.
I am at the picture on this page, in the current times, just slightly right of the tower. The tower was burnt to the ground.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science....ap/index.html
Felt the need to share
