Seismic Media

In our national corridor of power
Was a quake felt in many a tower;
Though the trembling in it
Would last for a minute,
The twittering lasted an hour.

From the Beltway to Broadway, and from the Federal Reserve to the New York Stock Exchange, people up and down the East Coast stopped what we were doing yesterday, gripped by fear and uncertainty at the (mostly) slight trembling of the Earth and swaying of buildings. The 5.9-scale quake, which would have barely raised eyebrows in California, unleashed an all-time wave of Twitter messages as millions of earthquake virgins used social media to share their "first time."