What seems dangerous often is not--black snakes, for example, or clear-air turbulence. While things that just lie there, like this beach, are loaded with jeopardy. A yellow dust rising from the ground, the heat that ripens melons overnight--this is earthquake weather.

--Amy Hempel, from one of my all time favorite stories, In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried.

With the powerful earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, Taiwan, and Turkey in the last two months, it feels like earthquake season. Luckily, it's not--the [...]