Happy Birthday, Kamau Brathwaite!

A great day to be back – Kamau Brathwaite’s birthday. Happy eightieth birthday, Kamau! And many, many more happy birthdays to come.

We tried to squeeze what Kamau has meant to us, husband Martin and me, into a few words, which we submitted for an upcoming issue of POUI, a new journal forthcoming from UWI’s Cave Hill campus. The submission was late, mea culpa, and we haven’t heard back from them, so in case it doesn’t make the issue, here’s what we said:

Early sixties. Kamau and Doris came. After that nothing was the same. Pam and Martin were in Noel Vaz's production of RITES OF PASSAGE at the Creative Arts Centre. Mortimo on the big drum, Archie Hudson-Phillips the fucking negro man. Nothing like that before. We still have the marked copy of the book. Martin took Kamau's course, "History, Society and Ideas". After that he wasn't the same. Now we join in the Missa Solemnis to celebrate fifty amazing years. Ave, Kamau. Vere, rara avis, sui generis! Happy Birthday!

Over the years, I’ve written poems for Kamau. The first, called simply, ‘Poem,’ appeared in my first collection, Journey Poem, in 1989. It’s reproduced here as it appeared on page 41.

POEM

It grows inside you
like a child
its meanings secret
like the peal of bells
heard
and their music
long after

The rubric scratches
on the retina
the drums sound
but no spirit starts

Until
the fingers of the blood
assort the images
the wind remembers
sifting the long grass
the womb impulses
summoning
the beast

In
a new testament
the Word

for Edward Kamau Brathwaite

In 2000, there was a wonderful celebration of his 70th birthday at NYU facilitated in part by Tim Reiss, Professor Emeritus in Comparative Literature, in which I was privileged to take part. Poets, scholars in many disciplines, singers, artists, philosophers and admirers gathered to celebrate Kamau’s 70th birthday. On that occasion, I read a much longer poem dedicated to Kamau called "Caliban Calypso". It appears in my third book of poetry, Certifiable, published in 2001 by Goose Lane Editions, Fredericton, B.C. There’s a link to "Caliban Calypso" here:

http://www.nyu.edu/calabash/vol2no1/

And finally, a suite of sonnets for Kamau called “Remembering Nothing.” The suite is one of thirty or so that constitute the book of poems on which I am currently working. It's tentatively titled, Litany on the Line: subversive sonnets to remember the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. The first two sonnets in “Remembering Nothing” appeared in an issue of BIM: Arts for the 21st century, a recent revival of the original BIM, but the entire suite is composed of three poems and I reproduce it here, as we wish Kamau once more, Happy Birtday! Happy Birtday! Happy Birtday, Kamau, from everybody! Happy Birtday!

Suite Six: Remembering Nothing
For Kamau Brathwaite

Minnesota: Dakota word meaning 'water stained with sky'

There is a continuing candlelight vigil for peace on a bridge across the Mississippi in Minnesota, once a week, every week.

Let me remember nothing, not recall
this watchful bridge of fireflies that spans
a torrent with a name we schoolers spelled
a pride of little cats unfettered from
the cages of our elementary zoo who screeched
"M-I, crooked letter crooked letter I, crooked
letter crooked letter I, hunch back hunch
back I — that's how you spell Mi/ssi/ssipp/i!"
The vigil fires watch one night every week,
week after week a humming loop of light
bright chant against the Babylon of war.
Dakota people join the elements
to make a name for water stained with sky.
So Minnesota writes its liquid prayer.

Let me forget the brethren and their queens,
jacketed men and their fat bougie wives,
students war torn from skirmishes inside
the muddy trenches of the minibus,
beggars, vendors, workers in the health trade,
the tourist trade, the education trade,
the trades of politics and government,
joined with sweat-pasted fingers to declare
before the Mighty Eagle's embassy:
"You people better stop this war." These tilt
the forces: Arab men tortured in Abu Graib,
Sioux warriors cut off at Wounded Knee,
Darfurian women raped, numberless slaves
wave after wave corralled in this green sea.

Let me not recollect you ached to fight
sharpies manipulating war machines
who conned the credulous with WMDs
to raise crusades against the infidel –
and there are those who don’t believe in hell?
Those silver pieces changing, changing hands
for guns, grenades, tanks, rockets, missiles, bombs,
the miscellaneous tambourines of war…
All you with palms crossed by those pretty coins?
Beware the anthem rising in your throats
beware your fingers plucking at those strings
beware your feet tap-tapping to the notes.
What if the show you staged and took to play
abroad opened upon the Great White Way?

© Pamela Claire Mordecai 2010

Stephen Colella, LKTYP Dramaturg and dramaturg for EL NUMERO UNO

Today was the first preview of El Numero Uno. The villagers in Lopinot are out in the world, fabulously costumed, gorgeously lit, making their own music and telling the story of their town's predicament and how they deal with it... Big thanks to everyone, actors, creative team, administrative team, front of house, production, sales, marketing, volunteers, sponsors, the remarkable thespians, ahrdi zina mandiela, the director, and the artistic director, Allen MacIniss, who took a chance on a teenage pig. So many people have worked together to make El Numero Uno happen, one of them being LKTYP's dramaturg, Stephen Collela, whom we feature today.

Stephen, who hails from south of the border, down Philly way, is a graduate of the Masters of Philosophy (MPhil) Dramaturgy program at the University of Glasgow and has a BA in English with Minors in Theatre and German from Loyola College in Baltimore. Among his past projects at LKTYP: Co-adapter of Love You Forever…And More Munsch (Dora Award, Outstanding TYA Production/Canada Council Theatre for Young Audiences Prize), Dramaturgy for The Princess & the Handmaiden, Hana’s Suitcase, i think i can (Dora Award, Outstanding New Musical), and Touch the Sky.

Stephen kindly agreed to answer some of my questions. Here's our little chat.

Dramaturgs seem to do all kinds of things, according to which country or which theatre tradition, or indeed which company they work with. What is your job at LKTYP?

Well, as you said, dramaturgs do all kinds of things and that holds true not just for the position in general but for my work at LKTYP as well. The primary focus of my work is our new play development. For our purposes, this means not only working directly with the playwrights, in the workshops and on the scripts, but also casting and organizing the workshops, managing the play development budget, managing our unsolicited script submissions, reading previously produced scripts and working with Allen, our Artistic Director, on our long-term planning. In addition to this work, I also coordinate our auditions, see productions that we could potentially present at our theatre, occasionally work with Educational Services on the study guides and proof all of our external documents. I also get involved with mundane things like tech support and fixing photocopiers, but that's more by happenstance than design. I have probably left a few things out, but one of the best things about my job is that the requirements are diverse and that helps to keep things fresh and interesting.

Dramaturgs are sometimes playwrights. Have you written plays?

I, along with Sue Miner, adapted five short stories of Robert Munsch that were staged at LKTYP. The play was called Love You Forever...And More Munsch. It won the Dora Award for Outstanding TYA production that year and was produced at Carousel Theatre this past fall. It will also be running for a week at the Stirling Festival this summer. But, other than that one piece, no other playwriting for me yet.

Does dramaturgy differ from play to play?

Dramaturgy is always different play to play, even working with the same playwright. There isn't really a set process. It depends on the individual needs of the play as well as the individual needs of the playwright. There are similar features in that each dramaturgical relationship requires good communication and a healthy amount of respect for who you are working with and what you are working on, but every instance needs to be tailored to the project's needs.

You were involved with developing El Numero Uno over a number of years. Is this usually the case?

I think it's normal to expect a script to take at least a couple of years to develop. Plays come to us in very different states. Sometimes they are a kernel of an idea and other times they have already had a few drafts and been through a workshop process. Frequently they end up somewhere in between. What is important is not to allow a schedule to dictate the development of the play, but to work to the needs of the play and allow the development to run its course before deciding to program it. Giving the play (and the playwright) that time to breathe and take the proper amount of time with the development as they require is what leads me to say that normally a couple of years is to be expected.

Was there anything particular or peculiar about El Numero Uno?

Can I say the playwright and not have her upbraid me? Of course I am teasing, except to say that she was particularly lovely and peculiar in her indulgence of my occasional brattiness. I would say that the particularness of El Numero Uno is, as Allen has said previously, the Shakespearian nature of the language. And I take that not just to mean the poetry of it, but also that it uses an English that is at once both familiar and strange to the majority of North American speakers. That character and richness is what made the play both fascinating and challenging. For me it required extra special care to be sure that I understood everything I was responding to. Fortunately I had a lovely group comprised of the playwright, director and workshop actors to help illuminate that process for me and make that task as easy as possible.

Any final comments?

When all is said and done I'll miss being able to work with Pam, but I'm glad that her little wiggly pig has finally made it to the stage.

Many thanks for answering my questions, and for helping to make El Numero Uno happen, Stephen!

Making music in EL NUMERO UNO

Here's Cathy Nosaty, our brilliant composer, conductor, sound designer and music maker, who featured in Jahworld's post of January 22.

Here's a great quote from Frank Zappa.

"Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best."

Zappa was an American composer, electric guitarist, record producer, and film director who died in 1993 at the age of fifty three. A versatile self-taught composer and perfomer, he wrote rock, jazz, electronic, and classical works. He penned the lyrics to all his songs and was an iconoclast who frequently used humour to criticize the status quo.

As a person for whom words are life and livelihood, this capitulating to music isn't easy, but there's a certain inexorability about Zappa's logic. I'm not entirely sure how songs found their way into EL NUMERO UNO, nor what prompted me to think I could write both lyrics and music for Uno's signature tune. But willy-nilly the songs came and melodies insinuated themselves, some traditional, some that would need to be written for the purpose. The play that has emerged would not be what it is without them.

Watching and listening to Cathy work with the cast of EL NUMERO UNO to make the music happen is riveting. She weaves instruments and voices, separately and together, lays bedtracks, discovers sound trails, conjures with these elements – because it is conjuring, it is magic, this thing that cements words and actions, marries players and audience and moves them into an other space, beyond conflict and contention, that is at once full of sound and joyfully quiet.

Music is indeed the best and Cathy is indeed a consummate music maker.

How to survive during earthquakes: Doug Copp's "TRIANGLE OF LIFE" with links to comments/advice from the Amer Red Cross, Snopes, the UWI Seismic Unit

This post ends with ten recommendations for earthquake safety from a man named Doug Copp, who is the Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager of American Rescue Team International. (The American Red Cross points out that this is "a private company not affiliated with the U.S. Government or other agency".) Copp's recommendations came to me from a friend in Fort Lauderdale who had been sent them by a classmate of ours who lives and works in Bel Air, near Port au Prince, Haiti.

Go to http://www.bpaonline.org/Emergencyprep/arc-on-doug-copp.html for the 'American Red Cross response to "Triangle of Life" by Doug Copp.' The ARC takes issue with some of Doug Copp's recommendations (nos 1, 4, 6 and 8 below, as far as I can gather) and defends its "Drop, Cover and Hold On" advice as being appropriate for structures built according to US codes and specifications.

The American Red Cross article (I recommend that readers look at it themselves) ends like this: 'The American Red Cross, being a US-based organization, does not extend its recommendations to apply in other countries. What works here [i.e., in the US] may not work elsewhere, so there is no dispute that the "void identification method" or the "Triangle of Life" may indeed be the best thing to teach in other countries where the risk of building collapse, even in moderate earthquakes, is great.

Readers should also check Snopes

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/triangle.asp

which publishes Copp's article in its entirety as well as reservations about his advice. (Many of these are quarrels with Copp's professional behaviour.)

Caribbean readers may wish to consult advice from the UWI seismic unit at
http://www.uwiseismic.com/General.aspx?id=15

Interestingly enough, The American Red Cross and Doug Copp agree that standing in doorways is NOT RECOMMENDED. The UWI Seismic Unit continues to give that advice.

Here are Doug Copp's recommendations. I pass them on for your consideration, (a) aware that (1) is obviously an exaggeration – his syntax is dicey as well – and (b) with my own warning that jumping from windows, balconies and openings that are high off the ground can result in injury and death.

TEN TIPS FOR EARTHQUAKE SAFETY

1) Most everyone who simply "ducks and covers" WHEN BUILDINGS COLLAPSE are crushed to death. People who get under objects, like desks or cars, are crushed.

2) Cats, dogs and babies often naturally curl up in the fetal position. You should too in an earthquake. It is a natural safety/survival instinct. You can survive in a smaller void. Get next to an object, next to a sofa, next to a large bulky object that will compress slightly but leave a void next to it.

3) Wooden buildings are the safest type of construction to be in during an earthquake. Wood is flexible and moves with the force of the earthquake. If the wooden building does collapse, large survival voids are created. Also, the wooden building has less concentrated, crushing weight. Brick buildings will break into individual bricks. Bricks will cause many injuries but less squashed bodies than concrete slabs.

4) If you are in bed during the night and an earthquake occurs, simply roll off the bed. A safe void will exist around the bed. Hotels can achieve a much greater survival rate in earthquakes, simply by posting a sign on the back of the door of every room telling occupants to lie down on the floor, next to the bottom of the bed during an earthquake.

5) If an earthquake happens and you cannot easily escape by getting out the door or window, then lie down and curl up in the fetal position next to a sofa, or large chair.

6) Most everyone who gets under a doorway when buildings collapse is killed. How? If you stand under a doorway and the doorjamb falls forward or backward you will be crushed by the ceiling above. If the door jam falls sideways you will be cut in half by the doorway. In either case, you will be killed!

7) Never go to the stairs. The stairs have a different "moment of frequency" (they swing separately from the main part of the building). The stairs and remainder of the building continuously bump into each other until structural failure of the stairs takes place. The people who get on stairs before they fail are chopped up by the stair treads - horribly mutilated. Even if the building doesn't collapse, stay away from the stairs. The stairs are a likely part of the building to be damaged. Even if the stairs are not collapsed by the earthquake, they may collapse later when overloaded by fleeing people. They should always be checked for safety, even when the rest of the building is not damaged.

8) Get near the Outer Walls of Buildings or Outside Of Them If Possible – It is much better to be near the outside of the building rather than the interior. The farther inside you are from the outside perimeter of the building the greater the probability that your escape route will be blocked.

9) People inside of their vehicles are crushed when the road above falls in an earthquake and crushes their vehicles; which is exactly what happened with the slabs between the decks of the Nimitz Freeway. The victims of the San Francisco earthquake all stayed inside of their vehicles. They were all killed. They could have easily survived by getting out and sitting or lying next to their vehicles. Everyone killed would have survived if they had been able to get out of their cars and sit or lie next to them. All the crushed cars had voids 3 feet high next to them, except for the cars that had columns fall directly across them.

10) I discovered, while crawling inside of collapsed newspaper offices and other offices with a lot of paper, that paper does not compact. Large voids are found surrounding stacks of paper.

More on Catastrophes

Funny, the extent to which we're brainwashed, the extent to which we are, most of us, committed to being part of the herd, to looking to someone else, some supposedly expert person, to tell us how to think and what to do. (You’ve heard my views on experts before.)

When I was a young woman, I started opening taps in public bathrooms with my elbow. I'd seen how poor people's habits of hygiene were, and epidemics of this and that were beginning to move fiercely here and there. I thought it was a good idea, but was also secretly ashamed, having been made to feel foolish about my obsession with cleanliness when I was a child. I'd hardly have imagined that years later, I'd see this elbow routine recommended in pamphlets and books on hygiene, that, along with pushing doors open with your back and not putting your handbag on the bathroom floor, etc, etc. All of these were old habits for me but it would take the threat of vicious, swiftly speading viruses before their basic good sense would be evident.

We all believe there's nothing to be done about earthquakes. They arrive of their own volition and in their own intensities, and we can’t tell when they will come. I don't believe that. I've already said on this blog that if we keep pumping massive amounts of viscous matter (as in, oil and pitch) and natural gases out of the earth, we're removing cushions that the earth's mantle needs. It stands to reason – otherwise they wouldn't be there. It's the equivalent of saying we can take air out of our lungs, or water out of our bodies, and have it make no difference. But the earth isn't alive, is it? Or is it?

I've seen one article that suggests that the earthquake was caused (perhaps accidentally) by the massive manipulation of waves in the ionosphere, but I'm not going there till I find out whether it's from loonies, mischief makers or serious people. I think it's within the realm of possibility, and I'm as far from New Age as anybody could get. A bit of a conspiracy theorist maybe, but that's just because I believe Donne and "doubt wisely". I don't see why I should bow down and worship science and expertise that is demonstrably less scientific and expert as the days go by. Makes a lot more sense to me to worship an inscrutable God. At least he’s up front and says his ways are higher than mine and I’ll only start to figure him out after long study.

But we've been programmed remarkably well. We trust our banks and insurers to be reliable, our doctors to be skilled, and our levees to hold, until something disastrous happens. Consider, after all, how we've behaved since the economic collapse. Have people changed their banking habits, switched their business away from the Big Banks? Not that I've heard. Those very banks are making enormous profits once again. We know those experts are greedy robber barons who ruined – wait for it – the world economy, but we trust them with our hard earned pence anyway.

Consider that in 1975, E.B. White wrote an essay about how vulnerable the city of New York was to precisely the kind of attack that arrived in 2001. But E.B. White was a literary man, not an expert on war. What would he know?

So even if no one else is interested, I'll try to find out what the Chinese, and anyone else studying the matter, have discovered in their efforts to predict earthquakes. The devastation in Haiti would have occurred to no purpose if we, in Haiti and elsewhere, don't try to learn all the lessons it can teach us. There are obvious ones about helping one another, building homes and offices better, the importance of re-forestation, and so on, and there are less obvious ones about, say, how to move with dispatch when catastrophes happen. Why, for instance, is aid getting to Haitians so slowly? There was an interesting sermon at mass this week about how good Jesus was at crowd control. The people were pressing in on him, so he got in a boat and put out to sea and preached from there. No danger then, of people crushing one another in their rush to get close to him. Similarly, he sat people down before he fed them and distributed the food so they all got. Maybe we should check with him?

We’ve learned from recent tsunami events and there’s now a warning system that’s been proved to work. I think there are efforts we can make to at least foresee when earthquakes might happen, and so prevent the kind of massive loss of life and wholesale devastation that's occurred in Haiti. Selah!

EL NUMERO UNO takes musical shape with Cathy Nosaty

Friday, January 22 2:00 p.m.

I sat in on readings of EL NUMERO UNO last week. Our director, ahdri zina mandiela, lets me visit as the play takes shape. Thanks, ahdri! I appreciate it.

Long time since I’ve been this side of a stage.

This week the cast is on its feet, Astrid Janson’s dazzling costumes are being fitted, Kimberly Purtell is working on lighting design, and Cathy Nosaty is busy with the music. And that’s just a little bit of what’s going on.

A while back, I promised more about some of the people who are part of the creative team. It won’t be everybody because so many amazing folks are working to make UNO happen, but I’ll do my best. I thought I’d focus on the behind-the scenes folks, whom the public don’t usually pay attention to quite as much as they pay attention to the actors.

I’m going to the theatre a bit later to listen in as Cathy, our sound designer, works with the cast, and serendipitously – well, sort of – today we feature Cathy, whose talents are multifarious. An award-winning musician, composer, conductor and music educator, Cathy was one of the first recipients of The Banff Centre's Paul D. Fleck fellowships. Like another friend of mine who hails from Winnipeg, she’s also a poet-of-the-moment, an e-mail rhymester who lets no time stir before she delivers a message in verse!

So here’s Cathy’s bio-note, a missive in the meticulous manner of Chef Trenton of Cochonville, punctiliously penned by Cathy herself.

Thanks Cathy! Especially for transforming my likl Uno tune!

“Cathy is delighted to be part of the creative team for EL NUMERO UNO! She has created scores for theatre productions for regional and independent theatres across Canada and her work has been heard on international stages with Ronnie Burkett’s Theatre Of Marionettes. At LKTYP: GHOSTS AND LADDERS (Dynamo Theatre), THERE’S A MOUSE IN MY HOUSE (Carousel Players), COMET IN MOOMINLAND (Manitoba Theatre For Young People) and the LKTYP productions I THINK I CAN, THE MAN WHOSE MOTHER WAS A PIRATE and THE NUTMEG PRINCESS. Documentary film scores include BIODAD, BELOVED: THE DOMINICAN SISTERS OF ST. CECILIA, and the animated series DARK YEARS co-composed with her partner Mark Korven. Last year she was Assistant Conductor/Keyboardist for the Canadian company of JERSEY BOYS and has been nominated for four Dora Awards for original music, sound design and musical direction. “

Can we avoid catastrophes like the earthquake in Haiti?

First, manners. Best wishes for 2010! Hope you were fortified in body and spirit over Christmas, Kwanzaa and/or Hanukkah, and that you are warm and well and anticipating a peaceful, productive year.

So hard to say that with Haiti on my mind. There’s something apocalyptic about the devastation caused by the earthquake on January 12, which occurred at 4:53 pm and was also felt in Jamaica, in the parishes of Portland and Kingston and St Andrew. The terrible ruin and the rising death toll urge us to consider what can be done, if anything, to avoid its ever happening again, in Haiti or anywhere else.

Haiti is on the Gonave Microplate, a narrow sliver of the earth's crust at the edge of the larger Caribbean Plate which is south of it and extends over most of the Caribbean Sea. Chris Rowan has an explanation of the event at

http://scienceblogs.com/highlyallochthonous/2010/01/tectonics_of_the_haiti_earthqu.php

The earthquake occurred along the Enriquillo Fault, part of a ‘strike-slip feature’ that joins the Yallahs-Plantain Garden Fault and separates the Gonave plate from the Caribbean Plate. (For non-geographers, think of a fault as a fracture or break running along at a certain point in the earth’s crust. Rock on one side of the break can move sideways with respect to rock on the other side, or rock on one side can move up and the other side, down. Sideways movements are called strike-slip; up-down movements are called dip-slip. The earth can do a combination movement as well.)

Rowan says, “There is nothing particularly unusual about this earthquake given the tectonic context. … however, Haiti is a very poor country... so ...its government was not in a position to really do much to prepare for the inevitable large earthquake, leaving tens of thousands to suffer the consequences.”

(One hopes things are being done about the inevitable super quake that is predicted for the San Andreas Fault.)

What is deeply distressing is that, according to a briefing on naturenews

‘…a team led by Paul Mann at the University of Texas at Austin has been monitoring this fault for some years. In a presentation to the 18th Caribbean Geological Conference in 2008, the team pointed out that their models showed a slip rate of around 8 millimetres per year on the fault. ...they warned that this, combined with the fact that the last known major earthquake near Haiti was in 1751, could add up to yield "~2 meters of accumulated strain deficit, or a Mw=7.2 earthquake if all is released in a single event today".

One of the team members, geophysicist Eric Calais of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, said in an e-mail to Nature: "Unfortunately we were pretty much right on."’

So there was some advance warning. The truth is of course that all the countries on the edge of the plate – which includes a big chunk of the northern coastline of South America as well as central America and most of the islands in the Caribbean – ought to be on continuous earthquake watch.

But what does the state of watchfulness entail? What can people who live in earthquake-prone zones do? We know some of the things: have adequate building codes that are rigorously enforced; conduct regular earthquake drills in schools and workplaces so people know what to do when they feel the first tremors; have medical kits widely available and encourage people to get basic training in first aid; maintain emergency services that have protocols in which they are well versed and the resources to execute them. Perhaps, adapt some of the building styles of the Japanese who have endured this kind of seismic activity for ages...

The ideal thing, though, would be to know when the earthquake is coming.

There is one famous case where the successful forecasting of a quake led to the saving of many lives. In 1975 Chinese officials ordered the evacuation of the city of Haicheng (population one million) mere days before a quake that had a 7.3 magnitude. Only a small portion of the population was hurt or killed. If the city had not been evacuated, fatalities and injuries could have been in the hundreds of thousands.

The observation of animal behaviour was in part what led to the prediction of that earthquake. Geologists tend to dismiss strange animal behaviour as a reliable predictor of earthquakes, but biologist Rupert Sheldrake disagrees. He admits that odd animal behaviour doesn't occur before all quakes, but his research on major quakes such as those in California (1994) and Greece and Turkey (1999) identifies peculiar activity in caged birds, dogs and cats preceding the tremors. The Chinese continue to study animal behaviour as a predictor – snakes, horses, cows and pigs all behaved oddly prior to the Haicheng event.

Sheldrake, who feels that more research into this predictor should be done, proposes a hotline or web site where people could report any strange behaviour in their animals. The incoming messages could be analyzed by computer to determine where they originated and pinpoint any areas from which there were sudden surges in incoming calls or e-mails, since these might indicate that a quake was imminent. Checks would have to be made to ensure that the behaviour couldn't be attributed to other sources and, so as to avoid issuing false warnings, the animal data would be used in conjunction with other monitors such as seismological measurements.

Sheldrake feels that "Such a project would capture the imagination of millions of people, encourage large-scale public participation and research... What is holding this research back is not money but dogmatism and narrow-mindedness."

All this, according to National Geographic http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/11/1111_031111_earthquakeanimals_2.html

There are now many amateur weather watchers worldwide. Perhaps bloggers, tweeters and other internet users could take on the project. Surely there are scientists who would collate the data, and surely it would be better (and less costly) to evacuate and find that an alarm was false, than fail to follow the animal cues and face devastation. The world is full of towns and cities that are not earthquake proof. Haiti is by no means alone in that respect. And increasingly we are being taught that we should listen to the planet. It can speak eloquently to us if we don't decide that we are determined not to hear.

It's hard to imagine that listening to the dogs and cats might have spared Haiti. For sure, our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti.