8.8 Chilean quake opens “Red Cross Month”

MARCH has been known as “National Red Cross” month since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued the declaration in support of Red Cross efforts to raise funds for World War II services. On the event’s 67th anniversary, the earthquake in Chile underscores the importance of emergency relief services. Nothing is more urgently required following an earthquake than fresh, potable water. To help get it to Chilean quake survivors, click here to be taken to the American Red Cross. Donations of $10 or more are as easy to make as a purchase on Amazon.

Chileans line up for fresh water in the aftermath of Saturday's 8.8 quake. Photo: Roberto Candia, AP via the Los Angeles Times. Click on the image to be taken to LA Times' quake coverage.

High good, low bad: Mead in February 2010

Memorial by artist Oskar J.W. Hansen to the men who died in the construction of Hoover Dam. For more on Hansen's work for the dam-building project that made the federal Bureau of Reclamation a defining force in the naturally dry west, click on the image. Photo: Gregvreen's Photostream, Flickr

Between 96 and 112 men died in the construction of Hoover Dam, depending on how you count the deaths (from the time of the dam’s commission in 1922 or from the start of construction in 1931).

Did they die to make the desert bloom, or because the massive federal works project  offered jobs job during the Great Depression? Whether they took one for a buck or a bloom, ever since the dam’s completion and the filling of Lake Mead behind it in 1935, the captured water has gone to both desert farming in California and Arizona and a massive Southwestern housing

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