Stories in Stone by David Williams

I struggled with the first chapter and was not sure that I would continue.  It just did not grab me, but in this case perseverance paid off.  As I went in a little deeper I was caught up in the author's madness - the use of buildings to discover the source of stone to tell the geologic story while getting back to the building he could tell some of the human history.

It was a very satisfying exercise and one I enjoyed because of my love of history and geology.  I do like architecture, but not to the extent of the writer, but I am curious about what some of the buildings really look like.  The few black and white photographs were not adequate to illustrate the points and satisfy curiosity, but the stories and words were more than adequate.  Here are a couple passages I like.

The first one I need to qualify - I am writing this while the temperature at my home just south of Duluth is -22.   "Three hundred and thirty million years ago, during the Mississippian Period, you could have sailed a boat across most of the middle part of North America. You would have floated over future Illinois, Kansas, Iowa, Colorado, Arizona, and Indiana, though you would not have moved fast because you were in the windless zone of the globe we now call the Doldrums. In addition, you would have needed plenty of sunblock, as your boat would periodically cross the equator, which, because North America tilted almost 90 degrees to the northeast, ran from about mondern-day San Diego through Duluth, Minnesota."

The second one appeals to me on many levels - "Despite the numerous benefit of pens over chalk, whiteboards are far from ideal.  Chalk dust can be an irritant to some people, but generally the large particles settle out of your nose before they have a chance to get into your lungs;  whiteboard cleaners, though, produce toxic fumes.  The cleaners come with some warning labels.  Another drawback to whiteboards is the residue of writing that doesn't wash off, no matter how much cleaner you use.  And when someone uses a sharpie pen by accident, you cannot erase it from the whiteboard.  Furthermore, half the time you try to use dry-erase pens they don't work because they have run out of ink.  Then what do you do?  Toss them in the garbage so they can end up as landfill.   No one ever has to doubt wheter a piece of chalk is usable, and when it becomes to small to write with, you can just carry it outside and buy it.  It will soon degrade and disappear without a trace.

"As I wandered the hallways at Stevens, I couldn't help but wonder if today's students are missing out.  Where once they could have continued the centuries-old tradition of employing fossil sea critters to write or draw, on a metamorphosed slab of fine-grained marine sediment, now they write on petroleum-based, plastic whiteboards with an odoriferous, chemical-filled pen.  In a society where our failed connection to nature surely has contributed to our failed understanding of human impact on the land, the loss of slate and chalk is one more example of how we are taking nature away from children and replacing it with something artificial."