Accretionary Wedge #41 Most memorable geologic experience I've witnessed?

Ron has put out the call for AW #41 here.
What is the most memorable geologic experience I have witnessed?????   I have a couple in mind and am thinking about which one to choose.  I know if you live long enough you will experience quite a few of them like I have.  I think the first that effected me the most was when Mount St Helen's blew her top.  My dear friend Lockwood had just moved out there to Oregon and I was worried sick that he was affected by it.  I was never so relieved as I was when he sent me a long letter telling me how wonderful the geology of Oregon was and this was before he decided to make geology his major.  It's no wonder he decided to switch over after experiencing what he did.  But to me that is his story to tell and not mine.  So now I have to decide on something else.
  I've felt two earthquakes, where I knew they were earthquakes but they were pretty minor events in the long run of things..

I've seen the Mississippi flooding and that is pretty impressive too and also scary when the place you are trying to get to is on the other side of the bridge.

I-20 bridge from Louisiana to Mississippi heading east.

Mississippi River over its banks near I-20

actually crossing the river looking first north and then south

Heading from east to west

 The best photo of the extent of the flooding did not download.

Here's a different crossing of the Mississippi, taken a couple of months later where you can still see the effects of flooding in the area. I was heading west.

 In this one we are traveling west about to cross the I155 bridge between  Tennessee and Missouri.

  I did see a tornado form and didn't even realize it at the time.  I was shooting a video of a rainbow and the sunset and did a panoramic view and didn't even realize I had captured this.  My husband was watching TV and called me to it.  He said remember that storm we drove through on our way to Galveston?  Well it spun off a tornado and here's the video of it on the weather channel. It touched down in Arcadia Louisiana.  I decided to look at my video too and was shocked at what was on it.

  But the most haunting by far was seeing the devastation of Katrina. I didn't actually get to see the area affected until it was a couple of years later.  As we were traveling to New Orleans and were on the road to it I was so mesmerized by the total destruction of the area I was totally speechless. I thought I knew what to expect based on the news reports and such.  I had read "The Control of Nature" by John McPhee and thought he had explained it so well.  I had seen the aftermath of a tornado and the band of total destruction where nothing was left but toothpicks.  I had even seen the aftermath of other hurricanes but nothing I had previously experience had prepared me for what I saw. I had never seen anything like that. It was mile after mile of nothingness - everything was gone.  All I could think of at the time was this is how it must look after an atomic bomb has exploded.  There was nothing green growing and there was a covering of dust/dirt over all of it. It was all totally destroyed. It also helped that I had driven the area numerous times and was familiar with a lot of the land marks that were now gone. It was so mind numbing I failed to take any pictures of it.   Now I wished I had but at the time all I could do was stare out the window trying to process it all.  At the time I thought there's nothing to even try to take of a picture of because it was all gone.  Why take a picture of nothing? It all became a blur because I started to cry since it was so devastating to me.  I was just so glad when we got to the French quarter and at least there was some things that still looked familiar. I realized then that the French quarter was built where it was for a reason. It was the highest ground around in that area. No wonder it has lasted all these centuries.
   After that year we went back to the area each year.  For a couple of years afterward it was still the same and it would still blow my mind to see it. One time I tried to take pictures but they did not turn out because of the speeds we were traveling.  The stuff I wanted to get was all a blur.  Each time I went after that I failed to take pictures because I was usually in the area for business reasons and didn't think to bring my camera.  Then about the fifth year after Katrina the area started to look like it was coming back.  Finally this past year it started to look like it used to but there were still areas where you could still see the destruction from it.  Now I'm amazed at how rapidly it is recovering.  Mother nature always amazes me.

  Here's Wikipedia  link on  Huricaine_Katrina . 
  Now here's my impressions of that time when it actually did occur ( August 20 & September 2005).    I live in the Northwest corner of  Louisiana.   The area is the third largest in the state as far as population goes.  Naturally we were the place where a lot of the victims were evacuated to since the hurricane never made it that far.  (In fact when Katrina did finally come through to us in the NW corner it was a nice gusty breeze - no rain which we did need at the time).  Through out the city there were evacuation spots set up.  In the past there had been other hurricanes where people had to evacuate and we thought we were ready for this one. We had practiced our drills and thought we knew how to set up and be prepared such an event.  Boy were we naive.  Within hours all the available spots were filled. They were scrambling to find other locations.  Overnight our city had doubled in size.
   They started to call for donations.  They wanted anything you could spare- food, water, clothing, cleaning supplies, bedding.  I remember having just cleaned out my kids closets so we could have room for their new school cloths. (at that time I had a 18, 14 and 6 year old; non of which ever wore the same cloths, one was slim, one regular and the other was 8 years behind and I didn't like storing cloths for that long.)   I had a huge pile all set to go to goodwill but as soon as I heard the call I decided to take it to the designated drop off center instead.  I also decided I would do volunteer work there since I am a stay at home mom and that's what I do best  - Volunteer my time with various organizations when I'm not helping with my husbands/ family business.
  I'll never for get driving up to the Hirsh Coliseum  and being stopped by security.  They asked me what I wanted.  I said I wanted to volunteer helping with the evacuees.  They asked me to show them my Red Cross training card.  I did not have one, they were only having properly train people help volunteer with the evacuees at that time.  I was very surprised by this since I had helped at other shelters before and that Red Cross training was never required.  They were going to turn me away, when I told them that I had a trunkful of kids cloths - that they wanted.  They told me to take it over to a certain drop off location but warned me not to interreact with the evacuees.  I thought that such an odd request, but agreed to it.
   I went to the place to drop off the clothes.  As we were unloading the boxes I had put them in, a bus pulled up filled with brand new evacuees.  What I saw still stays with me to this day.  They unloaded the people.  The first thing I noticed was that none of them had shoes on. Their shoes had been taken from them because they all had been in the water and the water was filled with all sorts of contaminants.  Most of them were also not properly dressed.  I tried not to look or stare out of respect for them.  But some of them you couldn't help but to notice the look of total hopelessness on their faces, faces I'll never forget.  I had never seen faces like that before, the anguish and despair just tore my heart open.  I wanted to help them but felt totally helpless.  Now I knew why they only wanted trained volunteers.  The big thing was knowing what to say to them and in most cases it was just keeping your mouth shut and let them do the talking. At that time there was no way they would let anyone take a picture- pictures would have derogated them, this way they still had their dignity..  Even though no pictures were taken the memory has never left me and will always haunt me.
    Later in the week they started to let non train people help serve food and do routine things for them.  Different places would have areas set up where there was free food to be had.  I helped serve food at the church I was attending at the time. They were all so grateful for everything that was being done for them.  They would just thank you over and over and I felt embarrassed because I was just doing what was the right thing to do and know they would have done the same for me if the roles were reversed. I felt like I wasn't doing enough but I didn't know what else I could do?
    Most of them left to stay with other family members as soon as they found a place where they could go.  The ones that didn't went looking for housing, withing weeks most of the shelters were closed down.
    I remembered at the time we were trying to sell a house.  It had been rent property and the tenants had just moved out.  We were tired of renting it and put it on the market.  As fate would have it, we had no offers for it so it sat there vacant.  Our best friends ended up having his family come live with them.  Having 9 extra people in their small house was driving them crazy. (Imagine all of your in-laws moving in on you unexpectedly with no date when they could move out.) To help them out we let his family live in that rent house for over 6 months, rent free, until they were finally able to move back to their homes in the New Orleans area. For some reason the house never sold  with them in it - no one wanted to evict the hurricane evacuees.  It was a hardship on us but it was one we could afford and bear and was nothing compared to what they had gone through. At least I finally felt like I was helping out in a small way. 
   I remembered having the family over for dinner a couple of times and then they inviting us to eat with them.  We would listen to their story of their ordeal.  They would tell it over and over but it was always fascinating to hear because there was always some other perspective that they remembered but at first thought was unimportant compared to the magnitude of the other stuff..  Maybe some day I'll write it down but right now its too long to tell.
   I do remember the frustration they had with getting federal help.  When they got up to their family in our town all they had with them was the cloths that they had on that day.  They lost everything. My friends momma only had a pair of slippers to wear for days.   How do you prove you have what you have and  insurance and all that other stuff if all of your papers and pictures are destroyed?  They were just so grateful that they got out alive because at one point they almost got trapped by the water.  And that's what struck me the most was how grateful they were, and how thankful they made us feel for having what we had and being able to share it with them.  I just wished I could have done more for others, but at least I knew we did what we could at that time.

    Right now I saw in the paper the other day that the federal government was suing some people that got paid too much money from the disaster relief fund due to their incompetency.   I can't tell you how angry that makes me.  Those people needed every single cent they got.  They had to start over with everything.  I can't believe the government is trying to get it back.  It was their mistake and they can afford to loose it more than those poor victims. 3-4,000 is nothing to government but it is everything to those victims.  If it was up to me I would have it docked from the idiots pay that made those mistakes.  They never had to suffer like those people did that lost everything.

Now I muse upon when and where the next disaster will fall. Will I be prepared?  I'm just grateful that Louisiana made it through another hurricane season without a major one hitting its shores. I'm grateful I live where I do and don't have to worry as much about the hurricanes as much as the southern part of my state does.  I just wonder where the next one will hit.

Accretionary Wedge #40- Geo Pumpkins

Michael Klaas put out a call  for Geo-Pumpkins  here. And here's the finished Accretionarly Wedge #40.
To be honest I really wasn't in the mood to carve a pumpkin since I've been around them for a month, selling them to give the proceeds to local charities.  I was in charge of the discovery center and for a week I talked about pumpkins to 3 - 5 year olds.  I had about 2500 students come by.  Its lots of fun to see their reactions and I find it very rewarding. 
   I decided to do something very simple.  I had a little baseball pumpkin that I decided to use.  He had been tossed around and I was surprised he had not cracked open.  I thought of him being as hard as a geode.  It just made sense to turn him into a geode.

Geode Pumpkin

   (I am having a lot of trouble down loading images. Geode pumpkin took more than one try and two different images, I had moved on to another image when it up this one up, of the baseball pumpkin next to a geode.)

 

 I did show the pumpkin patch here with one of the unusual pumpkins.

 This was the sign I used to show how a pumpkin grows.  It also showed some of the world record pumpkins.  The largest was 1810.5 lbs grow by Chris Stevens of New Richmond WI on 10-9-2010,  and also the world record largest pumpkin pie 3,699 lbs baked in New Bremen Ohio.

I'm going to include some of the pumpkins I had the kids see and touch.  I thought that they were all pretty interesting. 
So here are my pumpkin friends that I would show.
The first one got called Casper the ghost since he was all white. Geode pumpkin is right next to him, before he metamorphosis into geode pumpkin. He could be considered to be chalk since he is so white.

 I called this one dendritic I mean trellis because of the way the color was channeled on him reminding of that type of drainage. Here's more views of it.

trellis drainage looking pumpkin

The next ones are shale in color so I called them that.

shale pumpkin

This was shale pumpkin since it looked like shale.  Here's another view of it.

 
 The next one looked Metamorphic to me.

This one I called serpentine since it was mostly green.  also it had that zone where it looked like it had been metamorphized into the color it was. This pumpkin had definitely undergone some usual processes for it to end up the way it did.

( This is really frustrating its not downloading what I want it to and is taking repeated attempts to get anything and when I do get it its not in the order I want it.)

Lava pumpkin

And this pumpkin would get the most reaction with a oh yeak!! I didn't know what to call it.  Maybe this should be my conglomerate pumpkin.

pumpkin floating in water

 Here's my square pumpkin I used when I would read about Spookley the Square pumpkin.

Now I muse upon what pumpkins I'll have next year.  Because they are always so different and varied.

Accretionary Wedge #39- dress Barbies as geologist

The AW call has been made by Evelyn  Geonery's .  She wants us to dress our Barbies or Ken's as geologist.
I'm having trouble down loading images with Blogger right now so I don't know if I'll be able to post my image or not.  But thinking about Barbie's has brought back some memories that I'm going to first share instead.

    When I started kindergarten in the fall of 1960 all of my new friends seemed to have Barbie Dolls.  They had recently come out and were very popular.  I started to want one.  So for Christmas I asked Santa for a Barbie Doll along with a couple of other things.  I got a Baby Doll instead.  I came from a large family and Santa only brought us one gift and my parents would give us cloths.  I knew that was all I was getting for Christmas.
   I had to wait for my birthday.  My birthday came in September and I didn't speak up and say what I wanted.  Again I knew I would only get one gift.  We had had a fire in our house that year and my bed was destroyed in the fire.  I got a new bed for my birthday gift - it wasn't exactly what I wanted, but I knew it was all my parents could give me.  It was more important for me to have a good bed to sleep in than it was to have toys.  I had to swallow my tears and accept things for the way they were. I would wait for Christmas.
   I decided I would ask Santa again for a Barbie.  Instead I got a stuffed, pink,  musical Teddy Bear that I called Hunter because of the hunter green cloths she had on when I got her.  She played 'Rock a by a baby in a tree top,'  I loved that Teddy more than anything else and had her for many a year. She finally disintegrated away from being loved raw because she was held so much.  She was a lot better gift than a Barbie doll because I could snuggle and sleep with her, she was my best friend and constant companion.  I figured Santa really knew that teddy bear was a better toy for me.  My parents did surprise me and gave me a toy sewing basket instead of cloths. (I didn't play with that sewing basket much until I finally did get my Barbie.  I would spend hours sewing cloths for her and that started a love of sewing that has lasted to this day.)
   I had to wait for my birthday to try again for a Barbie.  I figured out that I probably wouldn't get one from my parents but had better luck if I got one from a friend.  I had gone to a couple of my friends parties and the most popular gift given was a Barbie doll.  So I asked for a birthday party instead of a present.  My mom was reluctant at first but then gave in and I had my birthday party.  I had about 8 friends show up.  I got Barbie outfits but no Barbie.  Everyone there had assumed I had already gotten a Barbie since most of them were already owning more than one Barbie by that time.  What they wanted most now was the cloths for her, so they gave me what they wanted to get not what I wanted.  I didn't mind so much because I could bring the cloths to my friends houses and I could still play dress up with their Barbies.  But it just wasn't the same as having my own Barbie to play with.  I wanted a Barbie more than anything else. 
  By then I was becoming more and more of a tomboy since I enjoyed playing outside so much.  Since I had so few toys, I discovered the wonders of nature.  I found there were things outside that could keep me entertained for hours and hours.  There was always something new and exciting to see.  I started to pick up rocks and see how different they could be.  But I still was a child and wanted toys to play with too.  So I had to wait for Christmas to try again.
   This Christmas it was going to be different.  I decided since Santa only gave me one toy I would make sure he knew I just wanted a Barbie and nothing else.  That was all that I put on my list - 'BARBIE'.  That was all I asked for.  I thought surely he would understand since I had just the said the one thing that was what I wanted.  Instead I got a Madame Alexander doll - 'Beth' from the Little Womens' series.  Beth was beautiful and a whole lot more expensive than a Barbie doll, but she just wasn't a Barbie.  I took her and put her in my toy drawer and basically only pulled her out when I couldn't go outside to play. (I found out years and years later, the reason my mom gave me that doll was because she had always wanted one.  Since I didn't play very often with dolls unlike my sisters, she knew I would keep it in good condition. I still have her and my other Little Women dolls I had gotten as I got older, they sit in a box in the closet - nothing much has changed.)
  Getting back to Barbie, by then I figured out that no one was ever going to give me a Barbie.  The only way I was ever going to get one was I would have to go out and buy one.  I had gotten a dollar from my grandmother for Christmas. I went to the store to get one and found out that they cost $2.99. I was seven years old and realize if I just waited for Christmas and birthday money it would be years before I would have enough  money saved up to get one. I had to figure out a way to get the money sooner.  I asked how I could get money and was told I could earn it. 
  Back then in our neighborhood you could recycle glass bottles.  You could get 1 to 5 cents for them depending on their size.  Most were about 3 cents. I remember taking our families red wagon to my neighbors houses and asking them for their glass bottles.  No one was willing to give me any until one elderly neighbor asked me why he should give me his bottles when they were worth money to him too.  I was very disappointed and started walking away until he called me back.  He told me he would work out a deal with me.  If I took the bottles to the store for him he would let me keep one cent for every bottle I took.  One cent was so much better than nothing and I readily agreed to do it.  I found that solution worked well with some of the other elderly neighbors as well.  It took about about a year for me to get the money together since they would only let me come by every couple of weeks, but eventually I did get the money together.
  It was one of my happiest days of my childhood when I was finally able to go to the store to buy my Barbie.  I had the 2.99 saved up, only problem was no one had ever told me about taxes.  She really wasn't $2.99 but $3.03.  I was not able to get her at that time. It really tore me up as I had to put her back on the shelf since the sales lady wouldn't budge on the taxes and my mom just wouldn't give in and cover it.  I had to go and earn the four cents more.
  Finally I was able to get one.  At the time, I had blond hair and blue eyes.  I wanted  the one that looked like me that I had picked out earlier.  She was no longer there.  I had to settle on one that was a brunette and blue eyes, like my sisters. She just didn't grab my heart like the first one.  I got her home and played with her all day.  But after a couple of days playing with her, she was boring and not near as much fun as I had envisioned her to be.  I like my outside nature 'toys' so much better.  I would only play with her when the weather was bad.  Most of my playing with her consisted of me sewing clothes for her.
   Most of the time she just sat in my toy drawer.  Then one day my  younger sister was home sick and decided to play with her.  She cut her hair to make her look like her.  She was ruined to me and I gave her to my sister since it was so obvious she wanted her. I was hardly ever playing with her by then and it made no sense to me to keep her.  My sister loved playing with dolls and was doing it all the time, she was overjoyed to get her. She treasured her so much more than I ever did and it made me feel good to know that she was with a better mama than I was ever going to be with her.  I never played with or had any other interest in Barbies again.  I ended up having three sons and never had a reason to get another one.
    Now this Accretionary Wedge is to dress a Barbie up as a geologist.  Needless to say I had to go out and buy one.  I was amazed that after 50 years I could get one for $5.47 at Walmart.  I thought for sure they would be more expensive than that.  Well I wasn't so totally off by that -- there were some collector ones that were in the 75 dollar range and there were some fancy ones in the 25 range,  yet I was still able to get one like I had always dreamed of getting for just $5.47.  She came with just the basic swim wear stuff just like my first one.

   Now I muse upon the fact that even though I never played much with Barbies she did teach me so many  things. She started me in the habit of recycling items my whole life. She made me aware of the environment and  how fragile it is.   She taught me how to work and earn some money. She taught me how to save my money so that I can get the things that I want. She taught me about taxes, a lesson I never forgot after that. She made me realize Santa wasn't real.  She created a love for sewing in me. She taught me the joy in giving things to others.
   Barbie, also made me realize that growing up in middle class America I should be satisfied with all that that I did have.  All I really needed was the basics to live  - food on the table, a relatively safe shelter over my head, a few cloths to wear and a warm bed to sleep in.  Anything more than that was a blessing and should be something to be valued, treasured and appreciated to its fullest and not taken for granted.  For the record I never considered my family poor.  I grew up in the suburbs of middle class America, with hard working parents that paid their taxes and made sure our basic needs were met. There was very little money left over for other things like toys.  I was grateful for all that they could give me. My family was very typical of those in my neighborhood and we all considered ourselves very fortunate to live where we did. (I love the USA). To me that was being middle class. Besides what could be more middle class than that - to own a Barbie, which I did?
  I'm sure there are other things she taught me too but right now I can't think of them. 

Now  for her  Accretionary Wedge debut.
Miss AW-39 from LA.
Gold Digger Barbie

 She can't tell the difference from galena which she is resting on top or or copper which she is leaning against.  All she did find was fools gold, just like me.
Now that she's all pooped out - here she is doing what geologist seem to do best.

Hold a beer!  Look how revived she looks.


PS here is what she looked liked before the rock hounding hit her.

 (addendum 1-27-12 I went home for Christmas and brought back some old family photo's that I've been scanning into the computer for my family and guess what I found? A picture of me playing with my sewing material and me making cloths for my doll from that Christmas.)

Two calls for the Accretionary Wedge

Dana over at En Tequila Es Verdad
posted  the call that is shown below.  I was wondering if we were going to have a Accretionary Wedge for this month.  Imagine my surprise to find out there's two call for posts.  I'm grateful she posted this information. Now I have to get to it.
  I'm debating how much trouble I should go to since I've had so much trouble with Blogger this week and have been avoiding it so that I don't destroy my computer.  Also I've been working in the pumpkin patch and haven't had time to get on the computer very much.

   I might not get to carving a pumpkin - I'm kind of sick of them right now because I've been working with them since the first week of Oct.  But I can share a pumpkin I worked with over the last couple of  weeks that got the kids going - oooh yuck. So now I'm going to try to see if Blogger will let me include the image.

This is so frustrating.  It didn't include the first image of the pumpkin I wanted but it did include the one I wanted of the patch itself. And it did include another image that I thought would be good to include also.

Pumpkin patch

 Here's another 'yuk' pumpkin.  This one will be kind of hard to carve, but its interesting and goolish in its own right and really doesn't need anything done to it.

Unusual looking pumpkin

As for the Barbie stuff I'm musing on that since I've never been one to own or play with Barbies.  I was always more interested in collecting and looking at rocks and playing in mud holes.

Accretionary Wedge: Deadlines Fast Approaching!

October 28, 2011 at 4:35 am Dana Hunter

The Accretionary Wedge carnival’s starting November with two back-to-back kinda-Halloween-themed, um, themes. Posts are due soon, so you’d best scramble if you’re planning to wedge yourself in.
(Please forgive that last little joke. I know it wasn’t funny. I’m functioning on fractional amounts of sleep just now, and I think my sense of humor went to bed without me.)
Deadline November 1st: Dress Barbie Like a Geologist! Or any sort of scientist, really. And it doesn’t have to be a Barbie. In fact, since I haven’t got a doll, I might be doing a doll’s house sort of thing, if I can get my crap together. Those of you with children, or who have friends or relatives with children: steal a doll away from their toy chest. Rip it from their chubby little hands if you must! Sure, they’ll weep now, but wait until you return their dolly all scienced up. They’ll not only have the most awesome doll on the block, they’ll have inspiration for a future career doing something much more interesting than standing about in implausibly high heels in a shocking pink house with a horrid pink car in the driveway.
Deadline November 7th: Geo-Pumpkins! You were going to carve a pumpkin for Halloween anyway, right? Make it geo-riffic! You don’t even have to have a blog of your own for this one – Michael will host your pics for you.
Instructions for submissions are at the links above. Get crack-a-lackin’!

Accretionary Wedge #38

 Anne Jefferson put out the call for post for the Accretionary Wedge -38

here

 This got me thinking about things.  I would have been a professional student if I had enough money to stay in school.  Unfortunately my money gave out when I finished my masters.  I decided to go to work for a couple of years and then head back to academia and try for a PhD.  But along the way my plans got waylaid and I never did get my PhD in geology.
  While I was in school there were always some geology course being offered that I felt I just had to have to be a well rounded geologist and ended up taking those instead of other elective classes.  At the same time I would sign up for the geology classes, my dad was always after me to take some business courses and asked me why I hadn't gotten into the courses he wanted me to take. Since I was paying my own way I thought I knew what was best for me. I was going on the advice of my geology professors.  Besides it was too inconvenient for me to take those business courses.  They were in a different college and you had to get special permission to be in them.  I didn't want to go through all the trouble of getting all those forms signed ect...   In the long run I never did take the business courses when my dad wanted me to take them. 
    After I graduated I wished I had listened to him.  The first thing my company did was to encourage me to go back to school and to get a Masters in Business Administration (MBA). They were a business and they wanted everyone who worked for them to know how a business operated.  Having an MBA was important to them and I quickly realized that if I wanted to have career with them I needed to go back to school and round out my education in the areas were I was lacking.
  Well guess what to get a MBA you first have to have the basic business courses. I needed those business courses now. So I was back in school taking the require curriculum to get a business degree which I needed so I could obtain a MBA.  After awhile I did drop out of my classes because I found working on wells and going to school don't necessarily agree with each other.  I had to drop everything when I got caught on a well for over a month and missed my midterms exams. 
   Later I was able to go back to school and I did take all the course work so I could become a Certified Public Accountant (CPA).  I thought being a  CPA would be more beneficial for me than a MBA since more people had MBA's but very few had a masters in geology and were also CPA's.  I never did take the CPA exam for personal reasons, but I did use all of my accounting background.  They were especially helpful to have when my husband went to work for himself and I could do his books from our home. The biggest benefit  was the flexible hours and being able to be there for my kids when they had school activities that needed parental involvement. 
  In the end I was glad I went the accounting route since that kept me working during the oil bust of the late 80's when you couldn't find work as a geologist in the oil industry. Just about everyone I knew who was a geologist at that time ended up having to change careers. - very few of them were able to keep gainfully employed as geologists and most of those did it as independent contractors/consultants.  I did try to be an independent contractor for awhile, but as time went on I did less consulting and concentrated more on my husbands business since I couldn't generate enough business on my own and his was really taking off.

So now all I have to say to geology students out there is this: try to get as much business background as you can because if you want to work as a geologist you have to know basic things about the business.  If nothing else you should be able to analyze their income statement and balance sheet to make sure they are a viable company to work for.  If you go into academia you still need to know how to make a budget, and write grants - its all about the cash flow.

Accrectionary Wedge #37 - Sexy Geology

Lockwood put out this call for  Accretionary Wedge 37 on July 27.  Its hard to believe the deadline has arrived.  Normally I like to do these things early, but I've been having major computer troubles ever since Yahoo and Mozilla firefox has had updates which ended up crashing my computer.  The computer has been in the shop and I just got it back today.  Just in time so I could get something out for the wedge.

Call for Posts, AW #37: Sexy Geology

July 27, 2011 by lockwooddewitt

This month’s Accretionary Wedge asks the titillating question, “What is ‘Sexy?’”  Hint: we’re not talking Victoria’s Secret.

I mean geology that makes your heart race, your pupils dilate. Rocks and exposures that make you feel woozy and warm. Structures and concepts that make your skin alternately sweaty and covered with goosebumps. Places you’ve visited, read about, or seen photos of that make you feel weak-kneed, and induce a pit in your stomach.

Click over to read the full description of what this month’s topic is (and is not) meant to entail. If you have a post to submit, please leave a comment and link either here or at the original call for submissions, so I can find it when I go to assemble this edition.

   When I saw this there were a lot of different places that came to my mind.   But then I narrowed it down to one.  But after reading this Roadtrippin'  post by Dana  and seeing the pinnacles at Crater Lake with this Volcanic ramblings part 1 teaser @ Outside the Interzone post at Lockwood's I'm torn between which one to choose. Now he's added even more pictures of those pinnacles at this post what-is-sexy-geology that make me even more titillated .  With both of these locations I have never been to, but just the thought of them sets my heart racing. Decisions, Decisions.  I'm in such a corundum. Which one to choose.
   So my two choices are both in U. S. National Parks.   I've read about them and have heard people talk about them a lot.  Everything I hear about them just makes me want to go all the more so and gets me so excited just thinking about them.  The two are BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, TEXAS. and  CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK, OREGON. The one thing I've noticed about both of these locations is that they have unique volcanic structures associated with them.

   I studied Crater lake in school only when we studied it, the instructor was teaching us about 'caldera's' and said it should be called 'Caldera lake not Crater'.  That caught my interest and ever since then I've wanted to see it.  To me it was pretty neat thinking the lake formed in the center of a volcano. While Big Bend I never heard about until I got out into the workforce with a petroleum company.  But its Big Bend that's won the coin toss, which is good because I know Lockwood and Dana Hunter are going to do such a good job with Crater Lake.

  If first heard about Big Ben when I went to work for Marathon Oil.  On the 1st or 2nd day on the job I asked my boss a simple question.  "How did Marathon get its name?'  I was expecting an answer along the lines of something to do with Marathon running or something about Greece at Marathon  or events relating to the battle and the legend of Pheidippides.  The answer surprised me.  He said they were named after the Marathon mountains in Texas.  He then clarified his answer by saying that was the area where the Old Ohio Oil company found a lot of its reserves that lead to the company being able to be the size company it was at the time.  He then told me if I wanted to find out more about the company I should read the book "Portrait in Oil" by Hartzell Spense (1962). Its all about how Ohio Oil became Marathon.  (It took a while to find a copy of the book but I finally got one and read it).
   After I had talked with him I was curious about the Marathon Mountains.  I went to my Rand McNally Road Atlas of Texas and looked for them.  Well Texas is a big state and I couldn't find the Marathon Mountains on them.  So I went back to my boss and asked him exactly were they were.  He said they were part of the Permian Basin in west Texas, just north of the Big Bend National Park, where the Rio Grande river dips down into Mexico. My boss was the main geologist for that office and he just loved geology.  He then said something that got me intrigued about the area - he said 'Now that's a park for a geologist if there ever was one.  It's got a little bit of everything there.  You should go there sometime.  If you ever end up in the Midland office you most definitely will get a chance to see the park then.'
   I went back to my office to find the Marathon mountains- I couldn't find mountains but I did find the Marathon basin and the town of Marathon just like he said it was--just north of Big Bend National Park.  Since it was such an important area to my company I felt like I needed to learn as much as I could about the area as possible.
  I thought I would make an weekend trip so I could see Big Bend for myself.  I looked my map of Texas and realized it was about 750 miles away.  I knew from driving to other areas that it would be a two day trip just to get there and another two day trip to come home.  Also I knew I would want to spend as much time as possible there once I got there. I would need a whole week of vacation just for that trip (and I wouldn't have that for at least one year)  Driving was out.  So I looked into flying there.  That was out too because it is in west Texas and there just is not much there.  The closest place to fly into is El Paso but you still have hours of driving to get there.  The price of the flight was outrageous too, neither location is popular destination spots and it just about made me pass out when I saw how much it was.  So flying was out also, and all I was left was to dream about it and add it to my bucket list of things to do before I die.
   So whenever I heard of anyone going to the area I would ask them to tell me all about it.  Every time I heard anyone talk about it, it just would make me green with envy with wanting to go there. One geologist friend said to me 'imagine a volcano, that is dormant.  Now imagine a river cutting it in half and you can traverse through that volcano.  It was the most incredible thing he's ever done.'  He must have been talking about the Chisos Mountains in the center of the park.
  Another friend that went there is an artist and she said it was an incredibly beautiful place to visit.  It gave her a lot of inspiration just staying there. She really felt like she was in a desert when she went there.  She liked the way it was so remote and she could get back to nature.   I found this very interesting because I love places that get me back to nature.

   While I was with Marathon I would very occasionally come across some of the electric logs in that area that was north of the park and other areas associated with the Ouachita Orogeny.  It was highly faulted with thrust fault from the Ouachita Orogeny. Imagine that during the Paleozoic Era there being an deep ocean where shales, limestones, chert and novaculite were deposited.  The chert and novaculite have a very distinct characteristic look to their formations and make it very easy to map over large areas because they were so massive since they were in the deep ocean.  It would blow my mind to see these same sequences layer one on top of each other over and over again.  Each layer was there because it was thrust on top of the other when the northern continent collided with the southern continent to from one huge land mass.
    In the book 'Geology of National Parks, 6th ed' by Ann G. Harris, Ester Tuttle & Sherwood D. Tuttle (1975/2004) Chapter 53 pgs 791-804 Big Bend National Park, they talk about being able to see some of this in the northern part of Big bend at the Persimmon Gap area.  In fact not only do you see the thrust plates of the Ouachita Orogeny but the effects of three Orogenys.  As they put it 'The Paleozoic rocks in the thrust slices are the result of the Ouachita orogeny.  Later, during the Laramide orogeny these rocks and their Cretaceous cover unites were altered by overthrusting.  More recently , the rock unit have undergone extensional faulting due to Basin & Range deformation. (Tauvers and Muehlberger 1988  Persimmon Gap in Big Bend National Park, Texas; Ouachita Facies and Creatceous Cover Deformation in a Laramide Overthrust. Geological Soc. of America South Central Sec, Centiennial Field Guide v.4 p 417-422. )
Just imaging that boggles my mind.- thrusts upon thrust then normal faulting also.  How they ever figured that out must have taken an incredible amount of time and imagination.  Now I want to go see if their interpretations are reasonable.  (I bet it is just from the seeing the subsurface stuff that I have seen).
   Also what I keep on thinking about is here we have sedimentary rocks that must be changed into metamorphic rocks.  Not once but twice- I'm sure there has to be some pretty unique geologic features associated with that.
  Then it dawn upon me that the Big Bend park has all three rock types: sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous.  What could be more exciting to a geologist than an area where you can observe all three types.  Not only that the rocks come from three distinct Eras: the Palezoic - shelf to deep ocean; The Mesozoic with Cretaceous formations that are transitional, shallow marine deposition, to the top formation (Javelina Formation) that is non-marine deposition complete with dinosaur bones (pterosaurs) and silicified wood. And finally the Cenozoic with igneous intrusions, volcanic ash, hydrothermal mineralization and normal erosion, deposition feature. I could go on about other things it has like anticlines and canyons but I think you get an idea what the place is like.
   Talk about a complex area!!!  I would have been happy to go there just to look for dinosaur fossils in the Javelina formation.  It's a good thing its in a national park and you can't gather samples there otherwise I would have figured out a way to get there a long time ago.

   To me this place seems to have it all, and that is why I muse upon Big Bend being such a geologically sexy place to visit.   

Oops I forgot to add the link for Big Bend National Park info it's here.

I want to thank the ones who helped me AW#36

I just want to thank On-the-rocks, Meg and Cujo359 for your comments to my blog post here; about being able to download slides to the computer.  Your suggestions have really come in handy and I really, really appreciate them a whole lot.  Words can not begin to describe how thankful I am to all of you.

As soon as I read On-the-rocks comment  this weekend, I went out to Best Buy and Radio Shack to see what they have.  I was able to pick up a Ion Film 2SD for about $70 (Tiger direct had them for $64 but this way I got it right away and I didn't have to pay shipping and handling. Plus they were able to show me how it work to make sure it was exactly what I wanted.)  Then have spent the rest of the weekend going down memory lane.  It may not be the best one out there, but it is so much better than nothing at all.  I went with this one because I could transfer the stuff to SD-cards which I later plan on storing in a lock box or a safe because they are so small and can store so much data.  The SD-card also lets me download it to the computer.

Some of the pictures have turned out great, and some not so great.  A lot has to do with the slides themselves.  I couldn't get over how some of the slides had faded or turn yellow so much.  I could tell different slide material - Kodak verse Fuji made a difference.  And some I know I took to professional photo shops to get developed while other times I took it to Wal-greens.  In the end you get what you paid for.  Being a poor college student at the time, I always went the cheapest route.  But I have gotten years and years of enjoyment out of them so I've always been grateful to have them.  Some of the ones that I have shown a lot - (I guess the bright light of the hot bulbs caused it) have really faded while others in that series that weren't shown as much have not. 
   Well I can't show you all of them but I can show you a few of what I'm talking about.

Here's one that turn out well, but I never had it printed up because the strobe for the flash was off and it didn't take the full shot - this is what I was thinking about when I wrote you never knew what type of photo you would get.  Unlike digital nowadays were you would just simply reshoot the shot.  Or photo edit it.  Which I did. 

 Can you guess who this is? - I'll give you a clue - he has had stuff in the geoblogsphere. ( Here's what I can do with it now-a-days with editing - does this help any more?.)

How about this one does that give you a better guess?

Here's a shot that I did have made into a photo and you can see the difference in the two.   I must admit because I was getting so many things developed at that time I did go the cheapest way possible with everything.  You  can see it yellowed a lot and the blues have faded but there is over 30 years of fading with the slide.  But like I said its better than nothing at all.  I did keep the photo in an album in a controlled environment, while the slides were stored in an attic that could have also led to some fading due to the storage conditions it was subjected to.

The shot was taken on July 4, 1977 while we were having a break during field camp.  We made an excursion over to Lake Tahoe, CA.  I thought that lake was the prettiest thing I had ever seen, this was after weeks and weeks in the desert with very little rain.  All that wonderful cold water.

Some of them aren't the best but they still bring back the memories.
 Like I'll never forget learning to repel at Clifton Rocks Ohio so that I could go rock climbing. Knowing those techniques were sure handy when we climbed to the top of Seneca Rocks in West Virginia.

Clifton Rocks, Ohio Oct 78

Clifton rocks Ohio, Oct 78

rock climbing at Clifton Rock, Ohio Oct 78

 

 Here I am  climbing up.  Someone else was using my camera and didn't know how to adjust the lenses for being in the shadows. So it was always dark to see, thus no prints made.

I was so proud to make it to the top of Seneca rocks and to add my name in that band-aid tin box that had peoples names had who made it up there.  There were not as many as I thought there would be.

Seneca Rocks, West Virginia at sunset.  May 1977

Or I'll never for get silly things people did on field trips.
Like this one where we were looking at an oolite (forgot to write down where the oolite was located just labeled the slide oolite.  Now I can't remember anything about it except it was somewhere near the east coast, in the mountains.)

Or my friends getting bored and decided to horse around on a log while we were studying the erosion process of the Chargin River, Ohio.

Or the geomorphology professor's field trip, where I'll never for get him showing us erosional features. With him going into his own world, not paying attention to any of the dangers,  but so excited about showing us things, and getting us just as interested as he was. Then to top it off we got a flat tire and the silliness that ensued with that..

 This was some feature associated with glaciers.   I think it may have been an end moraine, but I really can't remember exactly what it was.

Erosion on a river in Ohio

Here he is walking over this overhang not caring that there was about a 20 foot drop to the river below.  There was no way I was going to go over there and check out what he was so excited about. I could see the effects of river erosion very well just where I was.  Besides I didn't think that ledge could hold all of us.

 Then the flat tired happened and the field trip came to a complete stand still. We all just sat around and watched, well not all of us watched some did other more constructive things. There were just so many people that could help change a tire.  We made jokes about how many geologist does it take to change a tire and things along that line.

And then there are some pictures that seem to get better with age like this one of the sunrise over the north rim of the Grand Canyon.

or this sunset in Nevada on Highway 50.

Highway 50, Eureka Co, Nevada  July 1977

And finally here's the one image I wanted to share and got all the help with again thank you for getting a good image of Eureka, Nevada on July 19, 1977.

Oh the memories how wonderful they are, especially the ones of my loved ones that have moved on to other places.  Again Thanks for making this all possible.

Now I'm musing what photo editing program I should try to get these more back to their original colors.  When I get that figure out there probably will be more stuff to come.