Now that I've put my brain back together after all the grad school insanity, I really should finish up some of the posts I've left hanging. It seems like months since I was in Boston, even though it's only been...well, weeks. Two very long weeks. Anyway, this one's about the geology I came up with on the last day I was there, walking the "Freedom Trail". I probably walked about ten miles that day, mostly because I got out early and everything I wanted to see was closed, which meant a lot of backtracking.
I started out in the North End, where I had a lovely time looking at the outside of Christ Church (the Old North Church). Can't interrupt services, after all, especially when they're nice enough to open the place to visitors the rest of the day. (This isn't really geology, unless you talk about the clay that went into the bricks, but it was pretty.)
Just as you cross out of the North End (going over the I-93 tunnel), there's a nice little park between Cross Street and Surface Road. And in that park, they have lots of paving stone. It's really pretty, too, and worth the staring when you sit down in the middle of the sidewalk to get a better look at it. (This one's pretty big, about 3x4 feet.)
Whee, isoclinal folding! Not migmatites, although Callan's entry made me hope I was lucky enough to have found them in Boston - more likely just some really squished gneisses. I don't know much about geology in the northeast, but maybe someone can hazard a guess as to where the city got the stone. Here's a smaller sample with my foot for scale.
For the soft rock crowd, we have the plaza outside Faneuil Hall Marketplace, which claims to mark the original Boston Harbor shoreline. There are a lot of other strange little markings carved into the stones here - maybe someone from the crew of National Treasure got drunk and decided to add a few extra "clues" for the villains to follow.
Just across the street to the north is the New England Holocaust Memorial. It's really quite a clever use of an industrial setting: there are a series of six hollow glass towers built over a line of steam vents. The steam rises up into the towers (or chimneys?), which are engraved with six million numbers representing those killed in the Shoah. Each tower represents one of the principle death camps.
The memorial was very haunting, but what also interested me were the construction materials. Here's an example of the stone used throughout:
The memorial website says it's "black granite", which I suspect is more a building supply term than anything a geologist would recognize. Maybe some sort of diabase? I didn't think it would be respectful to be crouching next to it with a hand lens and a pocketknife, so I didn't look all that closely. If anyone can hazard a guess as to what "black granite" translates to, go for it.
There are two burial grounds on the Freedom Trail, and, unlike places that use lots of marble, Bostonians of the past seem to have favored more robust materials. There are many headstones dating from the 17th century, for instance, and despite Boston probably having a good share of chemical weathering processes to offer, the engravings are still readable. This one is in the King's Chapel Burying Ground, and it has alternating bands of silty and sandy material - perhaps even a turbidite deposit? There's a lot of folding (even to the point of being overturned) in the middle, but none at the bottom, which is puzzling.
The Granary Burying Ground has some witty commentary in granite.
Finally, a contribution to the Airliner Chronicles. This is shortly after takeoff, looking down on some mosquito ditches in a salt marsh. Mosquito ditches were dug into marshes in the Colonial period to drain standing water and sometimes to mark property lines. In later times, particularly after the Civil War, when soldiers were bringing home malaria, they were dug to control the mosquito populations. One of my undergrad classmates did her senior thesis on the effects of these ditches on tidal flux, and apparently many areas are removing them entirely, because they eliminate wetlands and affect the volume of fresh water that reaches the salt marshes.
I probably won't bother with the MT photos, since I won't be going there (and even the UPers admitted that the place wasn't very pretty at this time of year). I will be hiking the Billy Goat Trail this weekend with Callan, though, and I'll definitely have some good photos from that. If he doesn't beat me to it, that is. :)
And, of course, the Lamborghini. Mostly because I'm blogging from fabulous sunny Houghton MI, and I don't want to spend the entire evening on the computer. Not to mention I'm a little teensy bit tired, having almost missed my connecting flight and sprinted the entire length of the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. So instead of geology, you get amusing signage. Enjoy.
I spent a lot of time up in the North End, the "Little Italy" area, where everyone has that wonderful Italian sense of humor.
I'm pretty sure I was in Boston.
Any Tolkein fans out there? This tavern on Union Street is for you.
They were probably right.
Everybody really does know your name there, especially if you're wearing a conference badge.
This one's not so much a sign as an ironic situation. Look familiar? No? Ever heard of the Boston Massacre? Well, that's the memorial. Yep, under the truck. See that circular stone thing in the median? That's the commemoration they agreed on for a major event in the course of the Revolutionary War.
Sheesh.
This was another "sheesh" moment. Alexander Agassiz was a famous geologist, and this was the United States' first national honor society, so naturally I had to take this photo. Unfortunately, in order to do that I had to stand in the doorway of...a Banana Republic. Yes, an historic building given over to not-so-high-fashion retail. Yuck.
And finally, the photo you've all been waiting for - proof that someone, somewhere in the world, said, "I have $300,000 dollars to burn. I know! I'll buy a Lamborghini Murciélago and have it painted the color of Gak!"
Oy.
Sometime in the next few days I'll talk about geology. For the moment, though, I've taken care of the important part, which was the car.
Part 1 of the Boston trip, starting with a few photos from the actual NSTA meeting. (Next up will be my walking tour of the city, including the green Lamborghini and what geology I ran across - and there was some!) All in all, it was an interesting experience. I got to talk to a few hundred science teachers, discovered that they will take anything marked "FREE" (and some things that weren't, which is how I learned not to leave anything personal on the table), and found out just how many times I can watch a preview video without sound before I start making up lewd dialog for the characters (approximately fifty).
Meeting the teachers was, for the most part, encouraging, although what we heard from the Texas and especially the Massachusetts attendees was really sad. Earth science is, in parts of Texas and all of Massachusetts, being entirely eliminated from the K12 curriculum. In MA, the political reasoning was pitiful; there was no standard exam for Earth science, so it couldn't be kept in the curriculum, and they wouldn't write an exam because they were taking it out. Not only that, in both TX and MA, teachers were fighting the misconception that Earth science isn't "hard science", like physics or chemistry. Which is, frankly, bullshit. There isn't a "hard science" out there that isn't used in Earth science at some point. Why else do geo majors have to take a year of physics and chemistry and some biology and computer sciences? What do the school boards think we do, fingerpaint?
Okay, end of rant, save for the plea that if you're aware of any attempts to eliminate K12 Earth sciences in your state or county, help the teachers save it. Go to meetings, testify, ask pointed questions, offer your expertise, do whatever you can. Because these teachers are desperate.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming:
This is half of the exhibition hall. The booth I was at was in the same row as the butterfly people and a deep-sea drilling program whose mascot was, I kid you not, named Bubba. And he was actually there, standing next to a life-size cartoon version of himself.
The Seaworld people brought an entire menagerie along - flamingos, possum, albino pythons, hawks, bald eagles, alligators...you name it. The penguins were especially cute.
Bill Nye the Science Guy put in an appearance. He was very popular, although I think they eventually let him have some food after the third day or so.
There was also a Sputnik nearby, although as far as I know it wasn't signing autographs.
Volcanoes turn up in all sorts of interesting places... (Someone suggested that we should add the Mentos to the Diet Coke without the plastic tube, but unfortunately the conference security people nixed that.)
Weyerhaeuser brought a pretty little soil profile from Mount St. Helens.
And, naturally, there was a robot playing the trumpet. (I tried to get it to do the Haydn concerto, but it told me to talk to its agent. And then tried to sell me a car.)
Showing tomorrow sometime soon: My 10+ mile walk around Boston, which reminded me exactly how out of shape I am, and the lengths people will go to to show off how much money they have.
Just as you cross out of the North End (going over the I-93 tunnel), there's a nice little park between Cross Street and Surface Road. And in that park, they have lots of paving stone. It's really pretty, too, and worth the staring when you sit down in the middle of the sidewalk to get a better look at it. (This one's pretty big, about 3x4 feet.)
Whee, isoclinal folding! Not migmatites, although Callan's entry made me hope I was lucky enough to have found them in Boston - more likely just some really squished gneisses. I don't know much about geology in the northeast, but maybe someone can hazard a guess as to where the city got the stone. Here's a smaller sample with my foot for scale.
For the soft rock crowd, we have the plaza outside Faneuil Hall Marketplace, which claims to mark the original Boston Harbor shoreline. There are a lot of other strange little markings carved into the stones here - maybe someone from the crew of National Treasure got drunk and decided to add a few extra "clues" for the villains to follow.
Just across the street to the north is the New England Holocaust Memorial. It's really quite a clever use of an industrial setting: there are a series of six hollow glass towers built over a line of steam vents. The steam rises up into the towers (or chimneys?), which are engraved with six million numbers representing those killed in the Shoah. Each tower represents one of the principle death camps.
The memorial was very haunting, but what also interested me were the construction materials. Here's an example of the stone used throughout:
The memorial website says it's "black granite", which I suspect is more a building supply term than anything a geologist would recognize. Maybe some sort of diabase? I didn't think it would be respectful to be crouching next to it with a hand lens and a pocketknife, so I didn't look all that closely. If anyone can hazard a guess as to what "black granite" translates to, go for it.
The Granary Burying Ground has some witty commentary in granite.
Finally, a contribution to the Airliner Chronicles. This is shortly after takeoff, looking down on some mosquito ditches in a salt marsh. Mosquito ditches were dug into marshes in the Colonial period to drain standing water and sometimes to mark property lines. In later times, particularly after the Civil War, when soldiers were bringing home malaria, they were dug to control the mosquito populations. One of my undergrad classmates did her senior thesis on the effects of these ditches on tidal flux, and apparently many areas are removing them entirely, because they eliminate wetlands and affect the volume of fresh water that reaches the salt marshes. 
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