Ordovician fossiliferous limestone | Dublin, Ireland | November 2010

The fossiliferous limestone facade of #4 Kildare Street in Dublin. Brachiopods and crinoids, oh my, indicate an ancient coral reef, evidence that Ireland was near the equator in the Silurian period.

We understand so little about this marble we live on and yet what we grasp, comprehend, maybe even know, amazes to no end. “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known,” as Carl Sagan said. Humbled while enhanced, this is enough reality and truth for me. Today, I am thankful for the Earth.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

And, boy, are my arms tired. No, really, they are, what with the more-than-200 photographs I took. I’d have taken more, especially ones of rocks and more rocks, but I had to switch cameras at one point followed by the great Sony battery FAIL. You gets what you gets.

The Pulls at Toner’s Pub | Dublin, Ireland | November 2010

Lots of great stories to go with the photographs, but I will say this: The people of Dublin and surrounding towns are some of the friendliest and most hospitable I’ve come across. Your friendship, genuine interest and good behavior are so valued and reciprocated by them. I don’t know about D and Killer (my estimable travel partners), but I’ve never been comped this much food and drink ever before, not even the last time we were in Dublin. Which tells you something a lot of New Orleanians already know: get away from the city center and tourist areas and to the residential areas and small towns.

Speaking of New Orleans, Fahy’s and the C&VB owe me a cut for how much and well I’ve marketed on their behalf. Expect a small Irish invasion starting in a few months’ time.

Back to our regularly-scheduled programming. Such as wanting t-shirts with awesome-bad math puns on them.

And taking the advice of better and funnier writers than me: “Making high-pitched noises won’t solve your problem if your problem is a complete inability to cope with change.”

This is why I don’t squeal. I moo.

Yes, I’m back. You’re welcome.

I belong to a professional geophysical society whose executive committee has proposed the formation of a women’s network. Similar networks are American Association of Petroleum Geologists’ PROWESS committee and Society of Professional Engineers’ Women’s Network.

Why bother? Who’s going to fulfill your energy requirements, for starters? Consider it a staffing problem.

A large hurdle for geoscience is the growing inability to attract and retain excellent scientists, in general, but women, in particular. If the requirements and perception of women geoscientists are not acknowledged and acted upon soon, we stand to lose valuable professionals to other more attractive but perhaps not as fulfilling professions. The continuing double standards for women with family and the identifiers used to describe women scientists need addressing, especially in the male-dominated field of geophysics. Women can use mathematics and physics to address the world’s energy needs just as well as men can (some even more so) but refer to us as “sympathetic and nurturing team players” as if that’s a bad thing or “on the mommy track” and see how far that gets us. More critically, how does it grow the profession?

You don’t believe that this happens today? Forget the men (and women) who think women who wish to raise families while working have no place in the workplace and check this: Just a couple of days ago, I had to dispatch a guy who joked that the name of our proposed professional society should include a “snarky reference to Mother Earth, periods and emotionalism” and continued with “Gaian Cretaceous chocolate-bingers.” Why are menstruation, our feelings, and pink sparkles the first things to come to professional male minds about professional women, when the known reality is that we, too, are … hold on … professionals who do not operate on these terms when at work?

This is the overt bullshit we’re up against, along with the stealthy and unspoken kind.

Many young female geoscientists have already benefited from the sense of community created by women in the sciences, both through professional and online networks. As they move beyond school and into the workforce, they hope to keep those ties strong. Furthermore, women currently in the geophysical workforce can continue to provide support and growth opportunities to one another.

So, this is my query. In the year 2010, armed with the learnings of various women’s societies to date, research into women’s issues and online tools such as Twitter, Facebook and forums, what would the must-haves of your science-focused women’s professional network be?

Here are some suggestions that have come in so far:

• Include networking strategies explicitly to identify and support mentoring connections.
• Partner with an established network.
• Encourage the mingling of academics and industry professionals.
• (This one’s mine.) Encourage social media less for recruiting and more for actual conversation like in the geoblogtwitosphere. It’s so much more organic and honest, i.e. what we really need, when it isn’t formal and enforced.

What else? I’m all ears. Oh, and don’t say the network needs women. It’s been done to death and many of the folks proposing the group are actually men. There are male feminists, remember?

Suggested Reading:

• • Highly Allochthonous | Diversity in the geosciences and the impact of Social Media
  • Science Progress | Women and Diversity in Science
  • Futurity | Reference Letters Cost Women Jobs?

The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History | November 2010

I don’t know what it is with Folse’s and my fascination with crows. Or theirs with us.

Reading his latest, I recalled my grandmother feeding me as a small child, especially during the festival of Pongal, with the words, “Kaka pudi, kanu pudi.” A little morsel of whatever I ate would first be set aside on the plate for the crow. I’ve learned since then that it is inauspicious for Hindus not to feed a crow before eating themselves.

That dreaded “inauspicious” word again. I swear it’s been holding orthodox religious folks back for millennia, however brilliant and capable they are without all of that nonsense.

But, crows have followed me all over the world, even where they are commonly not found (like my current backyard) and one can’t help but feel there is something to that. I believe D will kill me if I begin to feed them given that they already take turns sitting on our roof and no other, tapping on it with their beaks. It’s like they’re trying to Morse-code a message to us, a language I don’t understand, unfortunately. Or there are some really tasty bugs living in our eaves.

Crazy, smart, beautiful, misunderstood birds. No wonder Shani rides a crow. Shani, not Yama who rides a water buffalo. There’s a difference.

Crow realized there were two Gods-
One of them much bigger than the other
Loving his enemies
And having all the weapons.

— Crow’s Theology by Ted Hughes