Jennifer and Alex Cabezon

It's still winter here in the coastal mountains of Oregon.  There is currently snow on the ground, which is beautiful but I am not really happy about.  This week the girls had one holiday, one snow day, and two late starts at school.  I was an hour late to an appointment because of the late start, and we had to cancel a commitment that we had this evening because we don't know if there will be more snow tonight and it will be dangerous to drive. Just a couple of weeks ago, we were commenting on the mild winter and the early flowers coming out.  The daffodils were almost ready to bloom. This morning as we drove to school, everything was coated in white: the pastures, the trees, the distant hills covered in fir trees. It was so beautiful you wanted to just stop and soak it all in. The sun was coming out, beginning to melt the snow, which was falling off of the trees and raining down on the car as we passed.  The river was reflecting the blue of the sky, bord...

“Entering Tsunami Hazard Zone” We pass the sign along the highway as we drive into Seaside.  I pass the sign a few times a week, at least.  Seaside is our nearest town, where we go to Safeway, visit the library, the post office, take the recycling, and perhaps the second-hand shop. I am used to the sign now, I barely notice it as we drive by.  But I am aware of it. Several years ago, scientists made a rather startling discovery.  The looked at the geological record and realized that the Pacific Northwest has a repeated history of big earthquakes, out under the Cascadia Subduction Zone, followed by a large tsunami only minutes later.  Roughly every 250 years.  The last one was exactly 318 years ago. Basically, we know the “big one” is coming.  It’s pretty much a fact.  There WILL be a large earthquake, 9 on the Richter scale, immediately followed by a devastating tsunami. I have thought lot about this. How you could not when your...