Motion and Elephant Jokes (46)
Another very long day.
The sky was mostly clear, enough clouds to hide the indecent blue. The high was 84˚F.
I was up at 6:30 and proofed and edited "A Chance of Frogs on Wednesday" for Bradbury Weather, which is a much better story than I remember. It is the story I was writing when Harlan died.
My meeting with Sandy Ebersole at the Geological Survey of Alabama (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa) was at 1 p.m., and the drive's about an hour long. Allowing for dumb shit, we left the house about 11:30 a.m. What is truly remarkable here is that this is, by far, the greatest distance I've traveled, about fifty miles, from this desk since COVID-19 lockdown hit in March 2020. Before yesterday, the farthest I'd managed was out to my Mom's house in Leeds, about twelve miles, and I had not done that since Christmas. Really, the only place I go regularly since COVID began is McWane, and that's only about three miles from home, as the crow flies. But I have digressed.
I made my meeting on time, and Sandy and I discussed the short paper we're writing together. In the paper describing Appalachemys ebersolei (named for Sandy's husband, by the way), I informally designated the lowermost beds of the Mooreville Chalk Formation in Alabama as the "Erie Bend member." Our paper will extend the unit into Mississippi, map it, describe it's lithology, paleontology, and depositional setting in much greater detail, thereby formalizing it for the United States Geological Survey as the Erie Bend Marl Member of the Mooreville Chalk Formation. When that's done, it can appear on US geological maps and stratigraphic columns. So, we outlined the paper, what needs doing and who's doing what, and Sandy took me over to the coring lab to meet a young paleontologist named Chase Egli, who's especially interested in fossil sharks (and shares my love of living snakes) and who will be doing some of the fieldwork for the paper. I left the Survey about 3:20 p.m. and we were back home not long after 4 (despite traffic on I-459). Amazingly, I did not experience the expected anxiety, going so far from this room where I have lived most of my life for most of the past thirty-one months. It was the beginning of the end of my self-imposed confinement.
Yes, it all went very well.
Please have a look at our Big Cartel shop. The price of gas and Red Bull are terrifying. Frankly, at this point in my life, my only luxury is a can or two of Red Bull a day.
Tomorrow afternoon I have to write a personal appreciation of Peter Straub for Locus magazine. I have no idea where to begin.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
3:21 p.m. (the building on Hackberry Lane that houses much of the AGS and the collections of the University of Alabama Museum of Natural History)
The sky was mostly clear, enough clouds to hide the indecent blue. The high was 84˚F.
I was up at 6:30 and proofed and edited "A Chance of Frogs on Wednesday" for Bradbury Weather, which is a much better story than I remember. It is the story I was writing when Harlan died.
My meeting with Sandy Ebersole at the Geological Survey of Alabama (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa) was at 1 p.m., and the drive's about an hour long. Allowing for dumb shit, we left the house about 11:30 a.m. What is truly remarkable here is that this is, by far, the greatest distance I've traveled, about fifty miles, from this desk since COVID-19 lockdown hit in March 2020. Before yesterday, the farthest I'd managed was out to my Mom's house in Leeds, about twelve miles, and I had not done that since Christmas. Really, the only place I go regularly since COVID began is McWane, and that's only about three miles from home, as the crow flies. But I have digressed.
I made my meeting on time, and Sandy and I discussed the short paper we're writing together. In the paper describing Appalachemys ebersolei (named for Sandy's husband, by the way), I informally designated the lowermost beds of the Mooreville Chalk Formation in Alabama as the "Erie Bend member." Our paper will extend the unit into Mississippi, map it, describe it's lithology, paleontology, and depositional setting in much greater detail, thereby formalizing it for the United States Geological Survey as the Erie Bend Marl Member of the Mooreville Chalk Formation. When that's done, it can appear on US geological maps and stratigraphic columns. So, we outlined the paper, what needs doing and who's doing what, and Sandy took me over to the coring lab to meet a young paleontologist named Chase Egli, who's especially interested in fossil sharks (and shares my love of living snakes) and who will be doing some of the fieldwork for the paper. I left the Survey about 3:20 p.m. and we were back home not long after 4 (despite traffic on I-459). Amazingly, I did not experience the expected anxiety, going so far from this room where I have lived most of my life for most of the past thirty-one months. It was the beginning of the end of my self-imposed confinement.
Yes, it all went very well.
Please have a look at our Big Cartel shop. The price of gas and Red Bull are terrifying. Frankly, at this point in my life, my only luxury is a can or two of Red Bull a day.
Tomorrow afternoon I have to write a personal appreciation of Peter Straub for Locus magazine. I have no idea where to begin.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
3:21 p.m. (the building on Hackberry Lane that houses much of the AGS and the collections of the University of Alabama Museum of Natural History)