Summer Reading List Meme

I thought I would jump on board with the Summer Reading List Meme that has been going around this month. Suvrat started it, followed by BrianR, then Eric, Silver Fox, and ITV Brian. Rules are easy: What are you reading/planning to read this summer? This is my non technical list. I am way behind on my journal reading.

In no particular order:

• the Songlines - I recently finished this book (Sunday that is). It was a great read, if a bit slow in some parts. It is a book Jimmy Buffett really enjoyed and even sings about so I thought I would give it a go. It is a sort of ethnographic sketch, something I had not read much of since I took Anthropology as an undergrad. I really liked the underlying theme of threads tying a culture to its creation, heavy on nature. It is also nice just as a rambling, traveling tail.
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• the Namesake - I saw the movie and was interested in the perspective of a Indian family moving to the US and the way they approach it vs. that of their children who are born here. They take a trip with their children back to their native India, weaving a travel tale with a cultural experience. It also seems to be a book about understanding and accepting where you come from and how that can differ from the lives of your parents, relatives and friends, making you appreciate where they are coming from and why they are the way they are. Something I pay more attention to these days in my own life. I also heard the book was much better than the movie, which can be a good or bad thing.
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• Breakfast with Buddha -My sister-in-law got me this one for my birthday and, although I have not heard of it before, my husbands side of the family have had a good record of getting me books that I like, so I am looking forward to reading it (they got me Water for Elephants for Christmas which I read in Jan./Feb., and it was a really great read). It sounds interesting and involves a few themes I am always interested in: roadtrips and buddhism.
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• Fifty Years on the Old Frontier -I picked this book up while I was doing fieldwork in Nebraska a few weeks ago. We had gotten rained out of the field and took a short trip down to Agate Fossil Beds National Monument. I had been there a few times before but this time the kid (he was only in high school!) who gave the interpretive talk before their short film on the history of the area gave a really good talk! It made me interested to find out more about James Cook, the pioneer, rancher, Native American advocate, and fossil enthusiast who lived at Agate Springs and first invited paleontologist to his ranch to study the Miocene fossils found there. There are also some interesting Native American interpretations of the fossils themselves.
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• Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty - I first heard about Ruess in April when I read about him in a National Geographic Adventure article (I guess I also read about him in the book Into the Wild, but I do not remember it). I had been wanting to read more about his adventures and wanderings, and found this book in the Arches National Park bookstore when I was in Moab last week helping with one of our five-day dinosaur digs the museum does. I am looking forward to learning more about him.
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• Cinema Southwest - This is another one of those book I have intended to buy for sometime. I have seen it in many of the bookstores in and around my neck of the woods, and just never picked it up. On the drive down to Moab last week John and I were debating about a film that John Wayne & Maureen O'Hara had shot in the canyon on highway 128 - we could not decided which movie it was (it was Rio Grande by the way), so we decided to just break down and buy it. Many movies have been filmed down here, especially around the Moab area, and we visit these areas enough that we thought it would be fun to know what we were talking about for once and that it would be interesting tidbits we could work into tours and impress our friends with our never ending amount of useless knowledge surrounding fluff like film. :)

So there is my random list. I must admit that one nice thing about not being in the hard core rat race of grad school is the fact that I actually have time to read books I enjoy! And it does not always have to involve paleontology or even science. Crazy concept, but it is actually rather nice and relaxing to still be able to do what I love but also slack off and read some fun fiction every now and then. It is kind of interesting now to look up at my list and realize there is a common thread of travel in these books. Odd, I wonder why ;)

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

SPRING!!!

Thank goodness it is finally here!!! We are that much closer to summer. Thank goodness!!

I guess this would be my entry for the Spring Meme that has been going around. Forsythia in bloom here in town! Quite a happy and welcome sight! :)

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

High Point Meme

It appears that Callan over at NOVA Geoblog started this one. I like mountain climbing (although I am not a high pointer as you will see) but I thought I would play anyway. Here's the tallest points in each of the 50 United States, with Puerto Rico's and Washington, DC's highest points thrown in for good measure. Elevations are in feet above mean sea level. I've bolded the ones I have personally stood atop:

Cheaha Mt., Alabama 2,405'
Mt. McKinley (Denali), Alaska 20,320'
Humphreys Peak, Arizona 12,633'
Magazine Mt., Arkansas 2,753'
Mt. Whitney, California 14,494'
Mt. Elbert, Colorado 14,433' (I now have a mission)
Mt. Frissell, Connecticut 2,380'
Fort Reno, Washington, DC 429'
Ebright Azimuth, Delaware 448'
Britton Hill, Florida 345'
Brasstown Bald, Georgia 4,784'
Mauna Kea, Hawai'i 13,796'
Borah Peak, Idaho 12,662'
Charles Mound, Illinois, 1,235'
Hoosier Hill Point, Indiana 1,257'
Hawkeye Point, Iowa 1,670'
Mt. Sunflower, Kansas 4,039'
Black Mt., Kentucky 4,139'
Driskill Mt., Louisiana 535'
Mt. Katahdin, Maine 5,267'
Backbone Mt., Maryland 3,360'
Mt. Greylock, Massachusetts 3,487'
Mt. Arvon, Michigan 1,979'
Eagle Mt., Minnesota 2,301'
Woodall Mt., Mississippi 806'
Taum Sauk Mt., Missouri 1,772'
Granite Peak, Montana 12,799' (I hear this one is nasty)
Panorama Point, Nebraska 5,424'
Boundary Peak, Nevada 13,140'
Mt. Washington, New Hampshire 6,288'
High Point, New Jersey 1,803'
Wheeler Peak, New Mexico 13,161'
Mt. Marcy, New York 5,344'
Mt. Mitchell, North Carolina 6,684'
White Butte, North Dakota 3,506'
Campbell Hill, Ohio 1,549'
Black Mesa, Oklahoma 4,973'
Mt. Hood, Oregon 11,239'
Mt. Davis, Pennsylvania 3,213'
Cerro de Punta, Puerto Rico 4390'
Jerimoth Hill, Rhode Island 812'
Sassafras Mt., South Carolina 3,560'
Harney Peak, South Dakota 7,242'
Clingmans Dome, Tennessee 6,643'
Guadalupe Peak, Texas 8,749' (nope, but I have been on Emory Peak, the second highest)
Kings Peak, Utah 13,528' (must find)
Mt. Mansfield, Vermont 4,393'
Mt. Rogers, Virginia 5,729'
Mt Rainier, Washington 14,410'
Spruce Knob, West Virginia 4,861'
Timms Hill, Wisconsin 1,951'
Gannett Peak, Wyoming 13,804'

So my list is just sad lol. I have been up a 14er here in Colorado, and many high ones in Montana and Alaska, but I guess just not the highest ones. A good map and comprehensive list of these high points can be found at geology.com. Which ones have you visited?

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

100 Things You've Done Meme: A Geologist's Version

MJC Rocks over at Geotripper has created a wonderful new meme based on the 100 Things You've Done meme that has been going around. Read about how he came up with/adapted this list here. This one is just to great not to do!

Bold the ones you have done and tell us some great stories!

1. See an erupting volcano
2. See a glacier (in Glacier NP, Banff NP, and Alaska, and from a plane while flying over Canada)
3. See an active geyser such as those in Yellowstone, New Zealand or the type locality of Iceland
4. Visit the Cretaceous/Tertiary (KT) Boundary. Possible locations include Gubbio, Italy, Stevns Klint, Denmark, the Red Deer River Valley near Drumheller, Alberta. (in Big Bend NP)
5. Observe (from a safe distance) a river whose discharge is above bankful stage (this past spring when the Mississippi broke the levees the week I moved)
6. Explore a limestone cave. Try Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, Lehman Caves in Great Basin National Park, or the caves of Kentucky or TAG (Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia)
7. Tour an open pit mine, such as those in Butte, Montana, Bingham Canyon, Utah, Summitville, Colorado, Globe or Morenci, Arizona, or Chuquicamata, Chile.
8. Explore a subsurface mine. (worked at one in Alaska - Independence Mine State Historic Park)
9. See an ophiolite, such as the ophiolite complex in Oman or the Troodos complex on the Island Cyprus (if on a budget, try the Coast Ranges or Klamath Mountains of California).
10. An anorthosite complex, such as those in Labrador, the Adirondacks, and Niger (there's some anorthosite in southern California too).
11. A slot canyon. Many of these amazing canyons are less than 3 feet wide and over 100 feet deep. They reside on the Colorado Plateau. Among the best are Antelope Canyon, Brimstone Canyon, Spooky Gulch and the Round Valley Draw.
12. Varves, whether you see the type section in Sweden or examples elsewhere.
13. An exfoliation dome, such as those in the Sierra Nevada. (in Oklahoma [Arbuckles] and Missouri [Ozark Dome])
14. A layered igneous intrusion, such as the Stillwater complex in Montana or the Skaergaard Complex in Eastern Greenland.
15. Coastlines along the leading and trailing edge of a tectonic plate (check out The Dynamic Earth - The Story of Plate Tectonics - an excellent website).
16. A ginkgo tree, which is the lone survivor of an ancient group of softwoods that covered much of the Northern Hemisphere in the Mesozoic. (Love love love Ginkgo trees! I use to walk by one every day one my way to and from school)
17. Living and fossilized stromatolites (Glacier National Park is a great place to see fossil stromatolites, while Shark Bay in Australia is the place to see living ones) - (obviously from my prior post you know I have seen thousands of these suckers in Glacier NP, but have also seen then in the Green River Fm.)
18. A field of glacial erratics (in Alaska, Wyoming)
19. A caldera (in Alaska/Wyoming/Arizona...)
20. A sand dune more than 200 feet high
21. A fjord (in Alaska, Kenai Fjords NP)
22. A recently formed fault scarp
23. A megabreccia (Alaska)
24. An actively accreting river delta (from a plane, does that count?)
25. A natural bridge (Utah)
26. A large sinkhole (Arkansas, Texas, Missouri)
27. A glacial outwash plain (Alaska, Glacier NP)
28. A sea stack
29. A house-sized glacial erratic (Alaska, from my window every morning..I never noticed how big it really was till I was almost up to it! HUGE! Scales are a little off up there at times)
30. An underground lake or river (Arkansas)
31. The continental divide (Montana, Wyoming, Colorado)
32. Fluorescent and phosphorescent minerals (we have quite a nice collection at Augustana)
33. Petrified trees (PEFO)
34. Lava tubes (Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho, where I was stung by a wasp!)
35. The Grand Canyon. All the way down. And back. (ok, I have not been all the way down and all the way back, but I have been down someways and we plan on doing the whole thing this next spring, does that still count?)
36. Meteor Crater, Arizona, also known as the Barringer Crater, to see an impact crater on a scale that is comprehensible
37. The Great Barrier Reef, northeastern Australia, to see the largest coral reef in the world.
38. The Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada, to see the highest tides in the world (up to 16m)
39. The Waterpocket Fold, Utah, to see well exposed folds on a massive scale.
40. The Banded Iron Formation, Michigan, to better appreciate the air you breathe.
41. The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania,
42. Lake Baikal, Siberia, to see the deepest lake in the world (1,620 m) with 20 percent of the Earth's fresh water.
43. Ayers Rock (known now by the Aboriginal name of Uluru), Australia. This inselberg of nearly vertical Precambrian strata is about 2.5 kilometers long and more than 350 meters high
44. Devil's Tower, northeastern Wyoming, to see a classic example of columnar jointing
45. The Alps.
46. Telescope Peak, in Death Valley National Park. From this spectacular summit you can look down onto the floor of Death Valley - 11,330 feet below.
47. The Li River, China, to see the fantastic tower karst that appears in much Chinese art
48. The Dalmation Coast of Croatia, to see the original Karst.
49. The Gorge of Bhagirathi, one of the sacred headwaters of the Ganges, in the Indian Himalayas, where the river flows from an ice tunnel beneath the Gangatori Glacier into a deep gorge.
50. The Goosenecks of the San Juan River, Utah, an impressive series of entrenched meanders.
51. Shiprock, New Mexico, to see a large volcanic neck
52. Land's End, Cornwall, Great Britain, for fractured granites that have feldspar crystals bigger than your fist.
53. Tierra del Fuego, Chile and Argentina, to see the Straights of Magellan and the southernmost tip of South America.
54. Mount St. Helens, Washington, to see the results of recent explosive volcanism. (from a plane, twice!)
55. The Giant's Causeway and the Antrim Plateau, Northern Ireland, to see polygonally fractured basaltic flows.
56. The Great Rift Valley in Africa.
57. The Matterhorn, along the Swiss/Italian border, to see the classic "horn".
58. The Carolina Bays, along the Carolinian and Georgian coastal plain
59. The Mima Mounds near Olympia, Washington
60. Siccar Point, Berwickshire, Scotland, where James Hutton (the "father" of modern geology) observed the classic unconformity
61. The moving rocks of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley
62. Yosemite Valley
63. Landscape Arch (or Delicate Arch) in Utah
64. The Burgess Shale in British Columbia
65. The Channeled Scablands of central Washington
66. Bryce Canyon
67. Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone
68. Monument Valley (just this past 4th of July!)
69. The San Andreas fault (I had Thanksgiving dinner practically on it last year! Yikes!!)
70. The dinosaur footprints in La Rioja, Spain
71. The volcanic landscapes of the Canary Islands
72. The Pyrennees Mountains
73. The Lime Caves at Karamea on the West Coast of New Zealand
74. Denali (an orogeny in progress) (even the summit!)
75. A catastrophic mass wasting event
76. The giant crossbeds visible at Zion National Park (beautiful!)
77. The black sand beaches in Hawaii (or the green sand-olivine beaches)
78. Barton Springs in Texas
79. Hells Canyon in Idaho
80. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado (just down the road!)
81. The Tunguska Impact site in Siberia
82. Feel an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 5.0.
83. Find dinosaur footprints in situ (more than I can count)
84. Find a trilobite (or a dinosaur bone or any other fossil) (check, check, and check)
85. Find gold, however small the flake (Alaska, working in a gold mine....)
86. Find a meteorite fragment
87. Experience a volcanic ashfall
88. Experience a sandstorm (I lived in Lubbock, Texas. I am lucky I still have skin!)
89. See a tsunami
90. Witness a total solar eclipse (once, when I was still in High School)
91. Witness a tornado firsthand. (Important rules of this game). (I grew up in tornado alley, I have seen more than my fair share)
92. Witness a meteor storm, a term used to describe a particularly intense (1000+ per minute) meteor shower (in Alaska, it was AWESOME!!)
93. View Saturn and its moons through a respectable telescope.
94. See the Aurora borealis, otherwise known as the northern lights. (during #92, which made it that much more AWESOME!! Until the moon came up and ruined it all with all that light)
95. View a great naked-eye comet, an opportunity which occurs only a few times per century (Hale-bopp in Yellowstone/Glacier)
96. See a lunar eclipse
97. View a distant galaxy through a large telescope
98. Experience a hurricane
99. See noctilucent clouds
100. See the green flash


Not bad - I am 50/50 - half way there I guess! And John has done 54 of them. Now I just need to find some $$ so I can see something off this continent!

Twelve Months meme

Several folks are doing the Twelve Months meme so I thought I would see what I have done over the past year. The rules for this blog meme are easy: just post the link and first sentence from the first blog entry for each month of the past year.

1. Jan. - So, I have finally made the move.
2. Feb. - The buzz around the Nature article (see my last post) appears to still be going strong.
3. Mar. - Sorry for the lack of post.
4. April - President Al Gore with a special message:
5. May - Unveiled at a British ban-the-bomb rally on April 4, 1958, the peace symbol's peak of potency was in the 1960s, when it was the emblem of the anti-Vietnam War movement and all things groovily counterculture.
6. June - I am back from the badlands and I hope to be able to fill you in on all of it as soon as I am caught up.
7. July - My allergies have been so bad recently that I think I might actually consider something like this...
8. Aug. - Check out this article on Living the Scientific Life.
9. Sept. - The Siyeh Formation (also known as the Helena Formation) is by far the best exposed formation in the park.
10. Oct. - The name Pachyrhinosaur lakustai was finally revealed yesterday for the new Grand Prairie/Pipestone Creek ceratopsian!
11. Nov. - Have you ever had one of those moments in your life that you thought would never, ever happen?
12. Dec. - Traumador of the Tyrannosaur Chronicles is hosting this month's Boneyard carnival and asked for submissions on "My Favorite Museum."

The 5-56 Meme

Brian over at Laelaps tagged me for this book meme. The rules are that you have to pick 10 books (of whatever genre, chosen any way you see fit) and transcribe the 5th sentence on page 56 of each book. Here are my books - can you guess where the passages came from?

1. "He came alongside my boat and told me the flats was still closed."
2. "The problem that concerns us here is one that has received little consideration: What happens to those incredibly numerous and vitally necessary inhabitants of the soil when poisonous chemicals are carried down into their world, either introduced directly as soil "sterilants" or borne on the rain that has picked up a lethal contamination as it filters through the leaf canopy or forest and orchard and cropland?"
3. "Such elevations are common on large neoceratopsian squamosals, Centrosaurus and Chasmosaurus usually displaying two or more."
4. "So the world of the Late Triassic had some of the same groups as we see in the Morrioson Formation but overall was rather diffrent."
5. "Their huge heads, bristling with sharp spikes and luxuriant bony frills, their solid, four-legged bodies, all suggest rhinoceros-like body plans run amok in the Cretaceous."
6. "The ossified braincase (better preserved in related forms from the later Devonian) was a relatively long and slender structure, conrasting in shape with that of arthrodires."
7. "He didn't phone, but two days later she was out walking with a friend when they bumped into Ed, who was on a training run."
8. "The buckeye, light as it was, felt like it weighed a hundred pounds."
9. "In Walcott's time, the slate of Precambian life was absolutely blank."
10. "The rock of the fossil is shaped, down to the tiniest detail, like the original bone."

I tag Silver Fox (when she gets back from her trip), Traumador, Laura, Zach and I owe one to Amanda ;)

Wild Animals in the Field meme

The other day Brian from Clastic Detritus started this domesticated animals in the field meme, with Silver Fox, Geotripper, Bryan, and Life-long Scholar following. So I thought it would be fun to see what kinds of wild animals folks run into when in the field - so consider this a Wild Animals in the Field meme. Feel free to include any funny/interesting stories!

From Glacier National Park: I never get good shots of bears. I have seen so many, but I never have my camera in hand when I see them usually. Maybe that is why I am still around ;) Bears are so awesome!




This marmot is sitting on a stromatolite. That was pretty cool!

Piceance Basin:

Nebraska Badlands:

Yes, this rabbit is in a tepee. Smart rabbit!

There are many more where those came from, but I figured that was probably good for now. What have you all seen??

Domesticated Animals in the Field meme

Silver Fox's blog reminded me of this new meme, and since I have not blogged here in a few days (check my other blog), I'll join in on this one (sorry for the over use of the word 'blog' in this post lol). Brian at Clastic Detritus started this domesticated animals in the field meme, with Silver Fox, Geotripper, Bryan, and Life-long Scholar following. So here is my contribution for the domestic side of things: a horse. I saw him this summer while working in the Piceance Basin. He did not want to have anything to do with me, other than watch. I really could have used a ride out of there about then too. Ahh well.

5 Minerals

Another geology meme - already! Callan over at Nova Geoblog offers the next challenge:

"Which five minerals do you think are the most important ones to know, and why? In other words, if you had to introduce a non-geologist to just five of the earth's multitudinous building blocks, which ones would you choose to share, and offer a justification for each."

I am thinking along the same lines as some of the others who have responded, so some of these may not be very original...and I am also thinking along the lines of introducing minerals to a non-geologist and what they could take away from learning these 5. I feel like my "whys?" are a bit lame, I apologize ahead of time:

1. Quartz: It's every where! People even worship it (not sure why). Its very common, so easy to show in different mineral states and rocks; and who can forget SiO2. The different colors make it easy for a non-geologist to enjoy and remember also.
   
2. Calcite: Easy - caves, fossilization and invertebrates. Heck, trilobites used calcite for their eye lenses! Its fun!
   
3. Feldspar: The most common mineral in the earths crust, easily recognizable, & found in igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks. Of course plagioclase feldspars are also one of my favorites so I might be a little partial here.
   
4. Magnetite: People are always amazed by this one - the magnetic properties surprise people and they will play with it forever. Its a iron ore, and can be found in banded iron formations, and something fun - "Crystals of magnetite have been found in some bacteria (e.g., Magnetospirillum magnetotacticum) and in the brains of bees, of termites, of some birds (e.g., the pigeon), and of humans. These crystals are thought to be involved in magnetoreception, the ability to sense the polarity or the inclination of the Earth's magnetic field, and to be involved in navigation. Also, chitons have teeth made of magnetite on their radula making them unique among animals. This means they have an exceptionally abrasive tongue with which to scrape food from rocks." [link] Now, wasn't that fun?
   
5. Clays: They make foods I like hold together better so I can eat them (chocolate, ice cream...), they are used in makeup, paint, toothpaste, ceramics..... How cool is that. They are stable, platy, like to stay suspended and stick to my cars paint. Clay rocks.
   

The Six Word Memoir meme...

I have been tagged by Amanda of Self-designed Student:

the rules are:

1. Write your own six word memoir
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
4. Tag five more blogs with links
5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play


So here is the first thing that came to me late last night:

"Still ambitious after all these years."

I tag:
Silver Fox
Doctor Vector
Mel
Laura
Ron