Deeper Oakland: A new provider, an old stone returned

Here we go, new and improved for 2024

Hello Subscribers,
I mentioned in the last newsletter that Tinyletter is shutting down at the end of February, so I’m switching to Substack, where I’ve had an account for some time. This issue is a test, being sent out on both services, Tinyletter first. If you get it in both versions, you’re good. If you don’t get this version, let me know by replying or emailing me at geology@andrew-alden.com, but I think this change will be hassle-free. All of the Tinyletter issues are preserved on Substack, too.

Upcoming

The talk I mentioned in the previous newsletter is coming up: at Montclair Library the evening of February 6 starting at 6:30. I’ll be talking about the geology of Montclair, a special part of Oakland defined like no other neighborhood by the Hayward fault. There will be copies of the book for sale too. This is a good time for books about Oakland. I stopped in at Spectator Books on Piedmont Avenue the other day and they had a tempting shelf full of titles.

A Pilgrimage to Pele

One thing I didn’t foresee last month was being inspired to fly to Hawaii for a few days. The main reason was to return a rock I collected in 1975. I was just twenty-two, a year out of geology school and taking my first real vacation from my first real job when I drove out to Cape Kumukahi, the easternmost point in Hawaii, and picked up a typical surf-rounded piece of bubbly, crystal-sprinkled lava―vesiculated porphyritic basalt―from the 1960 Kilauea eruption. I actually sold pictures of this stone to textbook publishers, so I figure it earned its own airfare back, and besides it’s supposed to be bad luck to take rocks from Pele. I often joked that maybe my life since 1975 has actually been bad luck.

It was a rainy day, off and on, when I drove back to Cape Kumukahi. The 2018 Kilauea eruptions had added several hundred acres to the Big Island and obstructed the old road. In several places I saw steam rise from the still-warm lava. But the rain held off as I picked my way over a lobe of fresh ‘a‘a to the old road, hiked to the point and gently laid the rock down among its sisters.

As I got back to my car, the rain started again, as if to wash the scene clean.

Look at This

An exhibit at the AGU meeting featured a set of quilts made by a researcher on the scientific drillship JOIDES Resolution, Dr. Laura Guertin.

On the left is “A Scene from the Stern.” On the right, more abstract, is “Blue Skies and Cloud Cover,” representing the measurements that the ship’s Second Mate recorded every day on an eight-point scale.

For the past ten years Laura has maintained a blog sponsored by the AGU called “GeoEd Trek,” and several other AGU blogs have been worthy too, but AGU is pulling the plug at the end of the month.

These days video-centric social media like TikTok and Instagram and YouTube are where it’s at, to use an antique phrase. My heart stays where it began twenty years ago, in the blogosphere.

Book News

Although there’s no news to report about Deep Oakland, I continue to see it displayed in our bookstores, which means it continues to sell. I am wondering, though, about the seven specially marked copies I distributed around town in Little Free Libraries. No one so far has reported finding one, let alone reading the book and returning it to circulation. The only data point I have is that the next time I passed one of those LFLs, the book was gone.

Q&A

Sheldon sent me a photo of something I considered legendary, “Berkeley blue agates” collected many years ago from lava flows of the Moraga Formation.

They aren’t very blue but they’re still pretty. I mentioned them in this post a few weeks ago.

Thanks for reading!

Andrew