Last week, Laura Askew, co-owner of Askew Drilling Co. in Jonesboro, scheduled a homeowner who had spent some $25,000 on plantings and is now past the 30-day window allowed for watering professionally installed landscaping. The total outdoor watering ban took the home-owner by surprise.

"He was real upset about it," she said.

With neighbors now routinely squealing on each other for outdoor illegal watering, drilling a well has become a sensitive proposition. Several homeowners who had wells drilled in recent days did not return phone calls or declined to talk on the record. The Grayson homeowner said she didn't want to call attention to her property.

The rumble enveloped Littleton, Mass., and dozens of nearby towns at 1:23 a.m. yesterday, a grating noise that witnesses said sounded like a truck crashing, a lumbering freight train, or a 747 buzzing 100 feet from the ground. As windows rattled and floors vibrated, people sat up in bed, dogs barked, and weary baseball fans awoke on couches with their televisions still flickering, wondering if the Red Sox had won.

"I thought, oh, my God, the furnace blew," said Ann Carey, 64, who was jarred from sleep in her Westford bedroom.

It was a 2.5-magnitude earthquake with an epicenter near Littleton Common. No injuries or damage were reported, but it rattled homes from Milton to Hollis, N.H. Another minor temblor shook the Merrimack Valley earlier this month.

The emergency switchboard lit up at the Littleton police station with reports of explosions and accidents on Interstate 495. "We had two people working the phones, and we still couldn't keep up," said Sergeant Robert Romilly.

A 0.9-magnitude aftershock followed at 6:04 a.m., said John Ebel, director of Boston College's Weston Observatory. There have been a dozen minor tremors near Littleton since the 1970s, with the last coming on Oct. 8, 2004, the day Red Sox slugger David Ortiz hit a 10th-inning home run during a championship playoff run. Is there a correlation?
[See? I told you so! - TriSec]

"One can only hope," Ebel said.

NEW YORK – Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the nation's first and largest nonpartisan organization for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, today urged Congress to override the President’s veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) reauthorization. SCHIP includes two little-known provisions which help the families of critically wounded troops. The provisions provide one year of employment discrimination protection to family members caring for severely injured troops, and extends permitted work leave for those family members from three months to six months. Congress passed SCHIP earlier this month, but President Bush vetoed the legislation for reasons unrelated to these military families’ amendments. This Thursday, the House will vote on whether to override the President’s veto.

“Any member of Congress who supports the troops should vote to override the President’s veto. If SCHIP fails, so does this protection for families of our most grievously wounded troops. These service members and their families carry the heaviest burdens of this war and they need all the help they can get,” said Paul Rieckhoff, IAVA Executive Director. “Thanks to improved battlefield medicine, thousands of troops are surviving catastrophic injuries, but they face long and painful recoveries at home. The last thing these wounded heroes should have to worry about is whether the loved one at their bedside is going to lose his or her job.”

One in five severely wounded troops say a family member or friend has been forced to give up a job to care for them. This is true of Annette McLeod, who is featured in the national TV ad campaign IAVA is running this week to demand that Congress and the President improve care for veterans. Mrs. McLeod’s husband, Specialist Wendall McLeod, sustained multiple, life-threatening injuries while serving in Iraq. “When my husband returned home grievously wounded, it ripped my life apart,” said Mrs. McLeod. “I lived in South Carolina, but Wendell was being treated in Washington, DC. After just three months, the human resources department at the factory where I had worked for 20 years said I had exhausted my time off. Being forced to give up my job made a heart-wrenching and difficult time even harder.”