By Debbie Coleman-Topi

Most Missourians don't give much thought to earthquakes. After all, residents here are more likely to encounter tornados than their natural disaster cousin, quakes. But, news of three recent, massive ground-splitters thousands of miles away first in Haiti, then in Chile and now in Taiwan, have some Missourians wondering about the status of a major seismic fault that cuts through the state's southern tip.

There's a little bulls eye in the area of the boot heel," explained Robert Herrmann, professor of geo-physics at St. Louis University, where he conducts research at The Earthquake Study Center. The fault spans southeastern Missouri, northeastern Arkansas, southern Illinois and western Kentucky and Tennessee.

An earthquake Tuesday afternoon near Sikeston, Mo., which is located within the New Madrid Seismic Zone, simply added to speculation about the possibility of a larger quake there. The quake, about 150 miles from the epicenter, registered 3.7 magnitude while the quakes in Haiti and Chile measured 7.0 and 8.8, respectively. Another earthquake, which measured 6.4, hit Thursday in Taiwan. That means recent earthquakes struck Jan. 12, then six weeks later on Feb. 27 and less than one week later, March 4.

By Cleon Rickel

U.S. Rep. Dennis Moore, who announced that this is his last term, hinted to Kansas Democrats at their annual Washington Day celebration in Topeka that his wife Stephene may file for his office.

He made a point of looking at his wife and then telling Democrats “to stay tuned.”

Moore’s hint brightened what has been a rather grim year for Kansans Democrats in which they had difficulty finding viable candidates, and gives them a possible candidate for with as much name recognition as Moore does in his Kansas City-metro Congressional district.

Cleon Rickel

Gardner voters have recalled two city council members who opposed Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s plan to build an intermodal center and logistics park on the city’s outskirts.

Gardner Recall Committee had forced Tuesday’s recall election by filing a petition claiming council members Mary Peters and John Shepherd, and a third council member, had violated the Kansas Open Meetings law, which they had denied.

The recall committee said that the council members had met together in violation of state law prior to sending separate letters to Mayor David Drovetta urging changes to a city charter ordinance establishing the powers of the mayor and city council.

Steve Shapiro

If one could determine the makeup of a theatrical production by its look, after both the extravagant and flamboyant sets of “Into the Woods” and “Around the World in 80 Days,” and the spare staging of “Palomino,” the Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s set for its new drama, “Broke-ology” is, in the best sense, shabby.

This production, by an illuminating new playwright, Nathan Louis Jackson (born in Kansas City, Kansas, where his fiercely-felt domestic drama is set), reproduces a house residing in the Quindaro district: inside, an old air-conditioning unit is taped to one window, old board games fill a seen-better-days cabinet, and in the center is a sagging sofa; outside, dogs bark and the neighborhood is an unkempt collection of weeds and thugs.

The design by Meghan Raham includes a screen door, which gets a lot of action, always slamming—after a while, one waits for the noise. It turns out to be the sound of a family shutting out its possibilities.

Judy Ancel, President, The Cross Border Network

A hundred and four years ago in the Mexican State of Sonora copper miners for American owned Cananea Consolidated Copper Company went on strike. They were protesting deplorable conditions, inequality between the 5,360 Mexican miners who earned 3.5 pesos a day and the 2,200 American workers who got five pesos for the same work. The strike was greeted with violent repression by the company which summoned an American posse, led by Arizona Rangers. The striking miners reacted by lynching two Americans who had fired on the strikers. Strike leaders were then arrested and imprisoned.

The Cananea strike gets the credit in Mexico for starting the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Photojournalist David Bacon writes, “The 1906 battle not only heralded revolution to come, but was the first strike organized on both sides of the border, by the first real cross-border activists,” the Flores Magon brothers who had organized in communities of Mexican railroad workers in East Los Angeles and St. Louis. The Flores Magon brothers supported the Industrial Workers of the World, which organized low-wage workers without regard to color or immigrant status. After the Cananea strike, the brothers spent years on the run, not only from federales of dictator Porfirio Diaz, but from U.S. authorities. They were eventually sent to Leavenworth, where Ricardo Flores Magon died.

Elle Molique

Sex is all in your head.

So much hype is thrown out into the cultural mind about the techniques involved in improving a person’s sex life that what should be a simple thing becomes more complicated than it probably needs to be. Kind of like that sentence. Are we missing the point entirely?

I am not a psychologist, but having a somewhat screwed-up childhood forces a person to acquire some knowledge in the area. I know I am submissive by nature, yet I am somewhat of a strong personality out in public. Nothing new there. I constantly attract submissive men, which is a tough situation because nobody is holding the whip. This mostly leads to miscommunication and a difficulty navigating my own psychology enough to make sex as fun as the theory of it.

Karen Land

Recently, Jigs (my German Jagd Terrier) discovered a fresh, hot passion.

In my new home, I have a small, antique woodstove that once was used on a train caboose. The stove body is tall and slender, standing several inches off the ground on four graceful legs.

Jigs took to the stove like Pooh to a honey hive. At first, he was reasonable and reclined on the rug just a few feet away. Over time though, Jigs inched closer and closer until finally he designated the hottest spot in the house – between the stove and the wall – as his and only his.