Seventh Street Research Articles

Discovering Pittsburgh: Bridging neighborhoods

The recent collapse of the Fern Hollow bridge in Pittsburgh’s Frick Park might cause a snicker or two, but Pittsburgh bridges are iconic, and icons don’t crumble easily. Pittsburgh bridges have historically connected its greatly diverse neighborhoods and communities. Affectionately known as the “City of Bridges,” Pittsburgh boasts 1,500 bridges, in Allegheny County alone, and is home to the Three Sisters, the only three identical self-anchor bridges in the world: The Rachel Carson Bridge (aka the Ninth Street Bridge) and the Andy Warhol Bridge (or the Seventh Street Bridge) opened in 1926, followed by the Roberto Clemente Bridge (or the Sixth Street Bridge), which opened in 1928.

Camp Oglethorpe: Macon's Unknown Civil War Prisoner of War Camp, 1862–1864 by Stephen Hoy and William Smith

Reviewed by: Camp Oglethorpe: Macon's Unknown Civil War Prisoner of War Camp, 1862–1864 by Stephen Hoy and William Smith Evan A. Kutzler Camp Oglethorpe: Macon's Unknown Civil War Prisoner of War Camp, 1862–1864. Stephen Hoy and William Smith. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2019. ISBN 978-0-8814-6691-1. 234 pp., cloth, $35.00. Before reading further, one may wish to search Google Maps for "Seventh Street, Macon, Georgia," and find the point where that street intersects with multiple [End Page 310] railroad tracks. The rail crossing marks one point on the western perimeter of Camp Oglethorpe, a fifteen-acre prison and the subject of Stephen Hoy and William Smith's Camp Oglethorpe: Macon's Unknown Civil War Prisoner of War Camp, 1862–1864. In contrast to Andersonville, about sixty miles away, this prison contains no marked cemetery, no memorials, and no signs. "Overshadowed by the horrors of nearby Camp Sumter in Andersonville, Georgia," Hoy and Smith write, "the history of Camp Oglethorpe has all but vanished from memory" (1). The industrial ruins on top of the Civil War ruins of Camp Oglethorpe are a reminder of the challenge—and the importance—of recovering the history of this place. The first challenge in writing about an individual Civil War prison is balancing a tight focus with sufficient historical context. Hoy and Smith demonstrate that Camp Oglethorpe covered multiple uses in the 1840s and '50s—from militia training ground to the space for agricultural exhibitions, picnics, and religious revivals (6, 9–12). When Georgia seceded from the United States in 1861, the site became a training camp for Confederate recruits. The rapid increase of Union and Confederate prisoners in early 1862 necessitated the repurposing of Camp Oglethorpe into a military prison (22). In some ways, Camp Oglethorpe's developmental history followed a course more similar to Northern prisons, like Camp Chase, than other Southern ones, like Andersonville. Many Civil War prisons, including Camp Oglethorpe, had disjointed histories. Camp Oglethorpe contained a large number of Union prisoners for only part of 1862 and 1864; it had no significant use as a military prison in 1861, 1863, or 1865. As the authors trace, the Emancipation Proclamation, changing prison policies, and military changes affected the use of the site. The first prisoners arrived in the aftermath of Shiloh. That spring and summer, the population at Camp Oglethorpe grew and prisoners faced a slew of problems that defined other places as well: military officials whose discipline bordered on cruelty, unpalatable food, and—as the weeks and months went on—the growing threat of so-called camp diseases (25, 31). As suffering increased, so too did the number of successful and unsuccessful escape attempts, which often involved enslaved people who provisioned and sheltered fugitive Union prisoners (34, 39). By late summer, with the "Dix-Hill" prison exchange system in place, Camp Oglethorpe began to empty (39–40). Camp Oglethorpe did not become a prison again until May 1864, when the breakdown of the prisoner exchange resulted in captive populations that exceeded early war numbers. Chapter 5, "Fresh Fish," is the second and last chapter to discuss Camp Oglethorpe as a prison; however, it is the heart of the book's contribution to site's history. While the authors tend to avoid direct comparisons, they suggest something important here. The experiences of Union prisoners were worse at camp Oglethorpe in 1864 than 1862. Still, Camp Oglethorpe—even in 1864—never [End Page 311] approximated Andersonville. As with their telling of the 1862 history, Hoy and Smith focus on prisoner resistance, especially escape attempts. Unlike Andersonville, where the US Army let the stockade rot in place, Camp Oglethorpe was neither confiscated by the US government nor long remembered at the local or national level. Hoy and Smith interpret this act of forgetting as an active decision. While Camp Oglethorpe had been the site of celebration in the 1840s and 1850s, the prison years were too difficult to remember. "The discomfort of Camp Oglethorpe's association with Andersonville," Hoy and Smith write, "prompted the city to treat the property as if haunted, as if tainted with memories that were unmentionable" (146). When railroad expansion...

Try It!: How Frieda Caplan Changed the Way We Eat by Mara Rockliff

Reviewed by: Try It!: How Frieda Caplan Changed the Way We Eat by Mara Rockliff Elizabeth Bush Rockliff, Mara Try It!: How Frieda Caplan Changed the Way We Eat; illus. by Giselle Potter. Beach Lane/Simon, 2021 [32p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781534460072 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781534460089 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R 4-8 yrs When Frieda Caplan first worked at the Seventh Street Market in Los Angeles in the 1960s, restaurant and grocery buyers stuck with the basics, like potatoes, bananas, and apples. Frieda, however, always enticed them with new products, such as thenexotic mushrooms, and shifted into owning and managing her own stall. Suddenly there's kiwi, jicama, Asian pears, and black radishes, and Frieda was powering a cycle of new tastes that created new demands and cultivated new tastes. Potter's watercolor scenes capture the bustle of the produce market, the humorous reticence of Caplan's early customers, and her joyful persistence in urging buyers to break out of their culinary cages. A chipper endnote addresses Caplan's rock-star status in the produce world and explains a bit more about the retail produce market than the main text conveys. This will be a delight for nascent foodies, a shift in perspective for picky eaters, and perhaps a subtle reminder that, for those experiencing food insecurity, even a plain apple is a really good apple. Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

“An Honest But Fearless Fighter”: The Adversarial Ideal of Public Defenders in 1930s and 1940s Los Angeles

Early one Sunday in 1948, Frederic Vercoe set out from his home in San Marino, California, for a speaking engagement in downtown Los Angeles. Perhaps he took the Arroyo Seco Parkway, which had opened for drivers 8 years before, linking the city more tightly with its “vast agglomerate of suburbs.” Although the roads may have changed, Vercoe had been making some version of this commute for decades. He had recently retired after a long career with the Los Angeles County Public Defender—13 years as a deputy, followed by 19 years as head of the office—and now maintained a small private law practice downtown. Many mornings, Vercoe would have had business at the Hall of Justice, the ten-story box of “gray California granite” that housed the jails and courtrooms. On this particular morning, he was headed instead to Clifton's Cafeteria at Seventh Street and Broadway. Perhaps, as he drove the dozen miles west into the city, he admired the “geraniums, cosmos, sweet peas, asters and marigolds” that lined the “gardens, parkways, and driveways,” or perhaps he was used to the foliage by now. Vercoe had lived in California for more than 30 years, making him, by West Coast standards, a real “old-timer.”

Innovative precast, prestressed concrete network arches: Elastic response during construction

To the authors’ knowledge, the West Seventh Street Bridge in Fort Worth, Texas is the first precast concrete network arch bridge in the world. Completed in 2013, this bridge consists of 12 identical arches that were precast and post‐tensioned near the bridge site. The prefabricated arches, which were 49.8‐m long and weighed approximately 2,500 kN, were then transported to the bridge site and erected. To evaluate the structural behavior throughout construction and under subsequent live (truck) loading, 224 vibrating wire gauges were embedded in the 12 arches prior to concrete placement. Three‐dimensional finite element models of the arches were also developed to evaluate the structural response under different loading and boundary conditions. Relatively small bending moments were observed in the arches, and the response of the arch elements was generally governed by axial forces. This paper describes the bridge, the instrumentation, and the modeling effort, in addition to the short‐term response of the arches.

What to Read Now: Zimbabwe

What to Read Now: Zimbabwe Brian Chikwava Asked torecommend three titles that would provide greater insight into Zimbabwe today, Brian ChUcwava turned toboth fiction andnonfiction, listing a novel, a memoir, anda collection of stories. Together they span Zimbabwe's pre-independence through the contemporary moment, including the new diaspora.|L j] t jy / I ■iM- - # I Boms Chenjerai Hove (Baobab Books) A powerful, poetic novel(1998)that more or less capturesthe entire gamutof theRhodesianpeasant's experience, thisstory informed and inspiredthe movements pushing for thebirth oftheRepublic ofZimbabwe . AMEMOIR OFZIMBABWE mm DOUGLAS ROGERS nfrTheLastResort : AZimbabwe Memoir Douglas Rogers (Harmony Books) WhileHove'sBones delvesintopreindependence Zimbabwe, Rogers's wry memoir-cum-travelogue is a deft account ofthelater years'of die newrepublic. TheLastResort (2009) is one ofthebestbooksaboutthe Zimbabwe ofrecent years. AnElegy for Easterly Petina Gappah (Faber&Faber) An outstanding and eclectic shortstory collection (2009)encapsulating contemporary Zimbabwe.Humorous and poignant,the collection toucheseverylevel of societyas wellas theexperience ofthesmall nation's newly emergent diaspora. AZimbabwean writer, Brian Chikwava isthe author of the novel Harare North and winner of the 2004 Caine Prize for African Writing for his story "Seventh Street Alchemy." His essay "Free Speech inZimbabwetThe Story of the Blue-Stomached Lizard* appeared in the September 2006 issue ofWW. 61 World Literature Today ...

Healthcare Reform and Nursing

Authors' Affiliations: Senior Director, Federal Relations and Policy (Ms Webb), American Organization of Nurse Executives, Washington, DC; Chief Nursing and Patient Care Services Officer (Dr Marshall), University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston. Corresponding author: Ms Webb, American Organization of Nurse Executives, 325 Seventh Street NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20004 ([email protected]).

The American Association Almanac: A Baseball History Journal, 1902-1952 (review)

Reviewed by: The American Association Almanac: A Baseball History Journal, 1902-1952 Kenneth R. Fenster Rex Hamann . The American Association Almanac: A Baseball History Journal, 1902-1952. Andover, MN: self-published tri-annually. $21.00 per year. Life-long baseball fan Rex Hamann has published The American Association Almanac for the past eight years. With few exceptions, he researches and writes all the articles that appear in this journal. The articles encompass all aspects of the history and culture of the American Association from its origins in 1902 to its first franchise shift in 1952. Now that Marshall Wright's statistical chronicle of the American Association has been published and the minor-league database established, Hamann may expand the scope of his journal to include the later years of the Association (email correspondence, 1-2 November 2009). Hamann's current issue (volume 8, number 1) is subtitled, Louisville's Eclipse Park, 1902-1922 part one, and its one article is devoted to this subject. The article is both more and less than the subtitle suggests. Basing his study primarily on Louisville's two daily newspapers, Hamann discusses the activities of former [End Page 156] major leaguer George Tebeau to locate his American Association franchise in the city in 1902, and Tebeau's search for a suitable site for a ballpark. Tebeau allowed the city's baseball fans to help pick the location of the ballpark in a poll. They could vote for one of three possible sites by stating their preference on a postcard sent to Tebeau's hotel room. In a week, more than 2,500 people cast their ballots and an additional 600 signed petitions favoring a particular location. Tebeau promised that wherever he built the park, it would be modern in every respect. It would have a special no-smoking section and a family section where men would not be allowed unless accompanied by a woman. He also announced that there would be two "ladies days" per week, with the best seats in the park reserved for women. Tebeau eventually selected a site at the intersection of Seventh Street and Kentucky Street for his ballpark. It was an ideal location, close to downtown, near densely populated neighborhoods, easily accessible via several trolley lines, and in the vicinity of the Louisville Slugger bat factory. Work on the new ballpark began in late February 1902 and encountered numerous obstacles. Tebeau fell ill and was confined to his hotel room for several weeks, the weather refused to cooperate, and a group of residents in the neighborhood of the site filed a lawsuit to stop the ballpark's construction. They claimed that baseball was a public nuisance, would attract undesirables, increase noise, and make their homes unlivable. In spite of these challenges, Tebeau and his workers finished the ballpark in time for the opening of the season. Tebeau's Louisville Colonels played their first game at Eclipse Park on April 23, 1902. Hamann illustrates this article lavishly. In addition to a portrait of Tebeau, he includes photos, cartoons, headlines, and drawings from Louisville's two daily newspapers. He reprints the box scores of the first two games played at Eclipse Park. He provides a map showing the location of the ballpark in relation to downtown Louisville and other points in the city. A diagram of the ballpark's odd pentagonal configuration also shows the location of the playing field, clubhouse, scoreboard, main entrance, bleachers, and grandstand seats. Unfortunately, Hamann does not give the park's dimensions until fifteen pages later. Hamann's work is seriously flawed. His story begins and ends in 1902; he discusses nothing beyond the first year of the team's or the park's existence, and even his treatment of that year is incomplete and uneven. He describes the lawsuit filed to prevent the construction of the ballpark and summarizes the closing arguments in the case, but he never mentions its outcome or resolution. He makes passing reference to Louisville's blue laws, which prevented Sunday games, but he provides no further discussion of this important topic in baseball history. Instead of elaborating on these themes, Hamann fills his [End Page 157] pages with trivia. He describes...

The Play—and the Musical—Is the Thing in D.C.

The Play—and the Musical—Is the Thing in D.C.

Commentary: Polypharmacy and Older Drivers: Beyond the Doors of the Emergency Department (ED) for Patient Safety

INJURY PREVENTION/NHTSA NOTES National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Notes Shahram Lotfipour, MD, MPH Federico Vaca, MD, MPH Section Editors Federico Vaca, MD, MPH Herbert G. Garrison, MD, MPH Mary Pat McKay, MD, MPH Catherine S. Gotschall, ScD From the Department of Emergency Medicine, University of California–Irvine, Center for Trauma and Injury Prevention Research, Irvine, CA Department of Emergency Medicine, University of California–Irvine, Center for Trauma and Injury Prevention Research, Irvine, CA Department of Emergency Medicine, The Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC Department of Emergency Medicine, Center for Injury Prevention and Control, The George Washington University Medical Center, Washington, DC National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Washington, DC Reprints not available from the editors. Literature Review of Polypharmacy and Older Drivers: Identifying Strategies to Study Drug Usage and Driving Functioning Among Older Drivers [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Literature review of polypharmacy and older drivers: Identifying strategies to study drug usage and driving functioning among older drivers. Ann Emerg Med. The report “Polypharmacy and Older Drivers: Identifying Strategies to Study Drug Usage and Driving Functioning Among Older Drivers” updates the state-of-the-knowledge about the effects of multiple medications on safe driving among older people. The authors identified 1,600 abstracts published between 2001 and 2004 on polypharmacy, drugs, and older drivers. These abstracts were screened, and 143 relevant articles were reviewed on the following topics: identifying medication use, measuring medication compliance, measuring driving performance, and polypharmacy and older people. The first section of the report examines physiologic changes that affect how older people metabolize their medications. The report focuses on medications most frequently used by older community- dwelling residents, such as benzodiazepines, opioids, antidepressants, and antidiabetics. In addition, the section provides a general overview of the effects of medication use and crash risk. Although prescription medications are the major focus of the review, over-the-counter (OTC) medication use by older people is included where it was reliably documented in the literature. The second section of the report reviews the relative merits of several methods used to measure compliance with medication, including clinical judgment, patient self-report, clinical response, biochemical measures, pill counts, pharmacy records, and electronic medication-monitoring devices. The section also examines the factors affecting compliance with medication regimens. Patient- related factors that correlate with low compliance include limited access to health care, financial problems, communication barriers, Volume , .  : April  and lack of social support. The prescriber-related factors that were found to correlate with low compliance include poor prescriber- patient relationship, poor prescriber communication skills, a mismatch between the prescriber and patient about health beliefs, and a lack of positive reinforcement from the health care provider. In addition, this section examines factors that affect the willingness of older persons to participate in research and offers suggestions to help in recruitment of elderly patients in research studies. The report concludes with a review of the literature on methods to measure driving performance, including on-road testing and driving simulation to measure driving performance. The relative advantages of naturalistic studies (driving in traffic) and controlled driving (driving on a closed course) are presented, along with reviews of the different levels of driving simulation measures, ranging from noninteractive computer graphic or digital video with no motion to interactive computer graphic visuals with full motion. Copies of the 104-page report Polypharmacy and Older Drivers: Identifying Strategies to Study Drug Usage and Driving Functioning Among Older Drivers can be obtained from the Office of Research and Technology, NHTSA, NTI-130, 400 Seventh Street, SW, Washington, DC 20590 or downloaded from the NHTSA Web site at: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/ staticfiles/DOT/NHTSA/Traffic%20Injury%20Control/ Articles/Associated%20Files/Polypharmacy.pdf. doi:10.1016/j.annemergmed.2007.02.008 COMMENTARY: POLYPHARMACY AND OLDER DRIVERS: BEYOND THE DOORS OF THE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT (ED) FOR PATIENT SAFETY [Lotfipour S, Vaca F. Commentary: polypharmacy and older drivers: beyond the doors of the emergency department (ED) for patient safety. Ann Emerg Med. On July 16, 2003, a farmer’s market in Santa Monica, CA, was the site of a motor vehicle crash. As reported by the LA Annals of Emergency Medicine 535

The CMS Medicare and Medicaid Services Manual System goes paperless.

Mary St. Pierre, BSN, MGA, is Vice President for Regulatory Affairs, National Association for Home Care, 228 Seventh Street SE, Washington, DC 20003 ([email protected]). For more information visit www.nahc.org, click on publications followed by HomeCare Bookstore; the manual can be found in the Administrative section, Item No. A-090 publications (or call [202] 547-7424). The cost for members is $90.00, non-members, $180.00.

Avenues of Faith: Shaping the Urban Religious Culture of Richmond, Virginia, 1900-1929

Samuel C. Shepherd Jr.'s Avenues of Faith contributes significantly to the historiography of southern religion and the urban South. The real value of this fine book, however, comes from the author's thoughtful analysis of how those two areas intersect in Richmond, Virginia, in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Centering on Southern Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, the Disciples of Christ, and Lutherans, Shepherd argues that white mainline Protestant groups created a distinctively urban religious culture, at least in Richmond, a city boasting dramatic monuments attesting to its unique past but also “restless” residents such as the journalist/ historian/churchman Douglas Southall Freeman, whose support for various reforms characterized Richmond's progressive spirit after the turn of the century. This church-led progressivism became increasingly evident as the city's “cadres of Confederate veterans shrank” and “the ranks of industrial workers, urban boosters, and reformers swelled.” Church leaders led the way against vice under its various guises of saloons, gambling, prostitution, dancing, and motion pictures. Richmond's Protestant churches went to “work in social service,” attempting to bring the Gospel to bear on modern society. In the metaphor of Hugh David Cathcart Maclachlan, the pastor of Richmond's Seventh Street Christian Church, churches demonstrated “a new language, much like the disciples after Pentecost.” Thus, Richmond's religious leaders played significant roles in the city's juvenile court movement—Maclachlan served as president of the Juvenile Protective Society—and in efforts for prison reform.

Scaphocapitate Arthrodesis

Physicians' Clinic of Iowa, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Cedar Rapids, IA, U.S.A. Northwestern University Medical School, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, Evanston, IL, U.S.A. Address correspondence and reprint requests to Melissa D. Young Szalay, M.D., Physicians' Clinic of Iowa, 600 Seventh Street SE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52401-2112, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected]

Transcultural Nursing Article Praised

California Editor’s note: The N ursing Practice Guidelines for the Cardiac Home Care Patient can be obtained from the Home Healthcare Nurses Association at 228 Seventh Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003 or by calling (202) 547-7424 or (800) 558-HHNA. Home Healthcare Nurse encourages feedback from its readers. Send your comments to: The Editor, 3904 Therina Way, Louisville, Kentucky 40241; via e-mail: [email protected]

Looking for Home Care Cardiac Guidelines

Ft. Scott, Kansas Editor’s note: The N ursing Practice Guidelines for the Cardiac Home Care Patient can be obtained from the Home Healthcare Nurses Association at 228 Seventh Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003 or by calling (202) 547-7424 or (800) 558-HHNA. Home Healthcare Nurse encourages feedback from its readers. Send your comments to: The Editor, 3904 Therina Way, Louisville, Kentucky 40241; via e-mail: [email protected]

Home Care Quilt Fundraiser a Success!

Bristol Hospital Home Care Agency Bristol, Connecticut Editor’s note: The N ursing Practice Guidelines for the Cardiac Home Care Patient can be obtained from the Home Healthcare Nurses Association at 228 Seventh Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003 or by calling (202) 547-7424 or (800) 558-HHNA. Home Healthcare Nurse encourages feedback from its readers. Send your comments to: The Editor, 3904 Therina Way, Louisville, Kentucky 40241; via e-mail: [email protected]

A Question About the Appropriate Nursing Approach: The Author Responds

Pontiac, Michigan Editor’s note: The N ursing Practice Guidelines for the Cardiac Home Care Patient can be obtained from the Home Healthcare Nurses Association at 228 Seventh Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003 or by calling (202) 547-7424 or (800) 558-HHNA. Home Healthcare Nurse encourages feedback from its readers. Send your comments to: The Editor, 3904 Therina Way, Louisville, Kentucky 40241; via e-mail: [email protected]

Major home health regulatory changes in 2000.

Mary St. Pierre, BSN, MGA, is Director of Regulatory Affairs, National Association for Home Care, Washington, DC. Address for correspondence: c/o National Association for Home Care, 228 Seventh Street SE, Washington, DC 20003; e-mail: [email protected]

Endocrine hypertension

Department of Endocrinology & Metabolism, University of California, Irvine–Long Beach Medical Program, Veterans Administration Medical Center, Long Beach, California, USA Correspondence to Ellis R. Levin, MD, Department of Endocrinology & Metabolism, University of California, Irvine–Long Beach Medical Program, Veterans Administration Medical Center, 5901 E. Seventh Street, Long Beach, CA 90822, USA

Robert Duncan: The Ambassador from Venus

I. The Antediluvian World I would shake the Mahjong table, and the palace of many gardens and courts, the majestic halls and ramparts, constructed by giant hands from another world, the corridor where the Queen walked in the evening to meet the King, would fall. It seemed as if distant almost real shouts of anguish rose among the tottering ivory walls, and, making my play of earthquake - for I was the genius of the scene - I almost heard the confusion of delicious dismay, grief and fear, echoed in my heart as if bonds of human sympathy united me with the inhabitants of this world I created to destroy again and again. - Robert Duncan, The H.D. Book On April 18, 1906, one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history struck the city of San Francisco. Through the damp morning air, punctuated by the smell of eucalyptus leaves, came what sounded like the engine of a locomotive and then the ground began to shake. It was just after five A.M. when that first tremor struck, a foreshock through which few in the city slept. In a boarding house on Folsom Street, nineteen-year-old Minnehaha Harris tumbled out of bed, and stepping toward the window, swept strands of long dark hair out of her face. The sky was a pale blue-black, and behind the clouds, barely visible, the last of the morning stars were fading into the dawn. From out on the street came an unusual early morning cacophony - the song of sparrows, the distant barking of a dog, and the ongoing rumble. Suddenly the building leapt as if a wrecking ball had been driven into its side. The girl turned and called out for her mother in an adjacent room. What echoed against her own voice was a sound unfamiliar to her - the wail of wood grinding against wood, an eerie chores rising through the hallways of the tenement. Within seconds of the first temblor that had pulled her from her bed, the great earthquake of 1906 roared along the San Andreas Fault. Several miles to the north, in a small house in East Oakland, a twenty-three-year-old housewife named Marguerite Duncan woke with a start. The windows were rattling and her two-year-old son George was crying in his bedroom. As she stood up, the building shifted beneath her feet - first to the left and then to the right, twisting from side to side as if the entire house were being slowly pushed down an embankment of sand, gathering momentum until the furniture danced spastically upon the hardwood floors. Marguerite lifted George and his sister Edna from their beds, carrying them down the stairwell and toward the front porch. Glass was breaking everywhere, and some blocks away in downtown Oakland the facades of the new granite buildings on Broadway were plummeting to the sidewalk. For those who witnessed it from the street, the scene was nearly indescribable. Overhead trolley wires whipped through the air and snapped. Lamp posts were bent from side to side like saplings in a wind storm. It would be another twenty-six minutes before the ground was completely still. In San Francisco the fires erupted almost immediately. At the post office on Seventh Street and Mission, the walls caved in, slabs of marble cracked open, and chandeliers crashed to the floor, sending shards of glass into the air like sparks from a welder's torch. On Howard Street, the walls of the American Hotel collapsed onto an adjacent fire station. A blaze that had started at the corner of Hayes and Gough was creeping across the Western Addition toward City Hall. Another fire was reported in Chinatown, and another at the Hearst Building on Third and Market. A few blocks away a man lay pinned beneath a steel beam. While he cried out for help a small group of onlookers gathered around. The flames were approaching, and two of the bystanders tried to pull him free without success. Finally a lone figure stepped from the crowd, kneeled down before the trapped man, and drawing a revolver, put a bullet through his head. The crowd dispersed and the mangled corpse was consumed in a sheet of fire that swept across the intersection. …