Markleevile (which is actually on the California side) is some hundred and something miles away. Here, it just felt like a very gentle rocking.

I've been in more intense quakes when I lived in Bakersfield, down at the southern end of our Great Valley. We were shocked awake one night around midnight in the summer of 1953 with a loud crash and an intense shake. We had damage: a decanter of Jim Beam bourbon fell from a high shelf in the kitchen, knocking a hole in the kitchen sink! All was not lost, however--the whiskey survived intact.

Most of us who are native Californians take quakes with a grain of salt. Even as far inland as we are, we're still in the Pacific Rim of Fire. We're expecting the volcano near Mono Lake to erupt sometime in the not-too-distant future. Don't worry--it's at least 200 miles away, and very sparsely settled. We don't much worry about quakes. Where we live, we're even pretty much out of what is called the "hundred-year flood plain," where the land is in danger if there's a major flood. We're more concerned now with NO water--not floods. Blizzards, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods--now those terrify us. Thank heavens we live where there are merely temblors now and then!