Why metageologist? Well, firstly I don’t use meta in the sense of ‘beyond’, which is how some of my Arts educated friends interpreted it. I have no pretensions to transcend or transform geology. Instead I’m referring to the geological usage such as ‘metagabbro’, which refers to something that used to be gabbro but has been changed (by metamorphism) into something else. Appropriately for a blog, I’m talking about myself – once a geologist and now something else.
Here I (mostly) stick to Geology, drawing on my post-grad level education and experience as a publishing academic. I hope the fact I am a metamorphosed geologist lets me bring a different perspective on things too.
My aim is to educate, inform and sometimes amuse. I won’t be topical, I will be eclectic. Also I’m from England, so I will spell things funny and I will say things I don’t really mean for comic effect.
If you enjoy reading my posts, and get even a fraction of the enjoyment I get from writing them I’ll be a happy blogger.
If you want information on new posts, you can follow me on twitter @metageologist or you can join the select band following me on Facebook.
Finally a quick word of thanks to Chris Rowan and Anne Jefferson for making me so welcome here at all-geo.org. After a few years it feels just like home.
Welcome! We’re so glad you’ve graduated to your own blog!
Very nice to have you posting. My initial work as a geologist was all metamorphism and now I am mostly doing dirt as a geomorphologist.
At you original blog website, you posted on UK Chalk. Towards the end, you asked why there aren’t (more) significant chalk formations in the US.
The US does have large chalk formations, as noted within the 4 comments to that blog post. This ancient global map, posted on Ian West’s Geology of Dorset webpage, yields the answer. Another may be found by Google searching on Kansas chalk. Most of the surface outcroppings have been eroded away. The chalk originated from ancient inland seas the bisected the main US craton (a fascinating topic in its own right), and it explains why large limestone formations can be found in the southern and central Great Plains areas.
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~imw/jpg-Lyme/11LYM-Jurassic-Palaeogeography-General-m.jpg
By chance, I came across your writing – as rich and complex as the diverse geology underlying the British landscape. Something in the way you write brings some presence of the place; the weight, the forces, the climate. Deeply physical; in a different way than MacFarlane. And with more humour ! Hugely enjoyable.
Part way through introducing a group of 12 year olds in a Waldorf/Steiner school in /South Africa to the wonders of the mineral world, I have just come across your writings. Doing this block for the third time in 9 years, I find myself evermore enthralled.This time the subject has coincided with the death of a teacher who first inspired me with this. He too would have appreciated both your awe and wonder at the beauty and mystery of the processes and their results – and shared the humour! (note the give-away English ‘u’ in that word). I look forward to many musings and browsings. Thank you for having ‘met’ a geologist….
I was all set to deliver a lecture next week on the time-scales of metamorphism…then came across your blog, and found out that everything I learned in undergrad is outdated and possibly wrong. Thanks, Simon, for your very useful re-telling of this interesting story, and for reminding me that one should never underestimate the amount of learning that happens when you try to teach something!
My grandmother was born in New Almaden, California. Her mother tongue was Spanish. The mines there were for quicksilver and no longer used there were shacks rather than houses. They lived in ‘camps’. There was Cornish camp and Spanish camp. Her father came from Tepic in Mexico, a mining town. New Almaden is named after Almaden in Spain an Arabic name which means the mineral( understood quicksilver – mercury) which was used to free the gold from ore. All of these mines were Cornish run! From the Cornish my grandmother learned to make Saffron bread and I suspect her empanadas were pasties. Elizabeth David in her book on English cooking gives as proof of the Phoenician contact in the use of saffron. New Almaden is near San Jose and in the Sierra (far away) the Grass Valley gold mine was Cornish. By the way Gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in Sacramento in 1848, the next year was the Gold Rush and the prospecters were called ’49ers like our football team, not 1850. The novel Angle of Repose (a mining expression) is set in New Almaden and another mining town.