"shakestheground -- I've just started reading your thread in this forum, because I was wondering about the source of your name. It reminds me of, well, earthquakes. (I've got a bit of a fascination with earthquakes -- I'm a geologist, and I was in an earthquake at a pivotal point in my life.) Anyway, your posts are incredible and moving, and I'm only on the 2nd page."
Elly law have mercy, you gone make my head swell up so big I ain't gone be able to leave the office until someone comes and deflates me. It won't be too long, I assure you.
So the name, well, I could make up something about the amount of coffee I drink. I believe the world is not operatiing on a sleep deficit, but a caffine deficit, you can sleep when your dead. But it is more mundane than that. About 1992 I was going to a lot of Pow Wows, trying to learn about the remnant native culture of the southerastern US. I thought I would like to have an "Indian Name" and knew I would have to come up with one for myself. I love how those names seem more authentic if they are adjectives reather than nouns, like "Paints His Shirt Red" vs. "Peaceful Doe" (yes, I watched Jeremiah Johnson last night on DVD, It had been recomended to me a while back by someone I forget who, amazing the difference in movie making 34 years makes).
So anyway I decided I would just look for the name and would recognize it when I saw it. One day at lunch at the hospital I worked at, garnisheeing the paychecks of the uninsured working poor, one of my co workers was laughing and while her mouth was open in laugh I heard her voice say "Shakes The Ground" and I said "Oh, okay". I can't explain how she did this, but she was probably talking about a cable tv character Shakes the Clown, and I consider myself to be a clown, if this were still a traditional society I would have job security.
It appealed to me because of the genealogy I have done and continue to do, shaking the gound in which the ancestors are buried and making them wake up and tell their stories, largely by directing me to where they can be found in the written record. I believe the written word to be sacred. ever time we commit a thought to writing we are sanctifying it.
My cup runneth over it looks like.....