A post about Arkansas gems, fossils, and rocks is overdue. This crinoid piece is especially well-preserved. Here is a bit more information about crinoids.
We spent many hours sorting and breaking apart Mississippian and Ordovician rocks. What joy!
Crinoid stalk or stem pieces:
This sample was not available to bring home :-(.
My Mom, Smith College friend, Karen, and I had a great time exploring northwest Arkansas.We found brachiopods, crinoids, quartz crystals, and explored Crystal Bridges Art Museum, Thorncrown Chapel, the Ozark Folk Center and Blanchard Springs Caverns located in Fifty-Six, AR. Little Rock Central High School was the last stop before dropping Karen at her aunt's home in Hot Springs and heading back to Bentonville.
We almost missed the road to Thorncrown Chapel, even though we were expressly looking for it. It was worth the trek!
The outdoor artwork and plantings are some of my favorite parts of Crystal Bridges.
Pappy and Lightning entertained us at the Ozark State Park Folklore Center.
More highlights:
Mom and Maizie were big fans of the Frank Lloyd Wright home:
We enjoyed the geodesic dome:
Alas! I left my iPad atop my trusty Subaru at one of the last overlooks on the way from Hot Springs to Bentonville. I saw it fly off in the rear view mirror. The photos were not in the cloud. So, a few photos from my friend and from my phone remain. It was most memorable and mom can now answer the question “Why are you going to Arkansas?” with some of these images.
Mom liked the half-mile trek through Blanchard Springs Caverns in Fifty-Six, especially.
And we all really liked the giant bronze spider, Maman, holding her marble eggs protectively over the main entryway at Crystal Bridges.
[I am writing this on my phone without a 'u' key so the photos will do most of the talking this time around.]
Hope you'll have a chance to make Arkansas plans some time. It is The Natural State and it is a Gem!
Steph
We spent many hours sorting and breaking apart Mississippian and Ordovician rocks. What joy!
Quartz crystals:
Crinoid stalk or stem pieces:
This sample was not available to bring home :-(.
But, this brachiopod sample was:
My Mom, Smith College friend, Karen, and I had a great time exploring northwest Arkansas.We found brachiopods, crinoids, quartz crystals, and explored Crystal Bridges Art Museum, Thorncrown Chapel, the Ozark Folk Center and Blanchard Springs Caverns located in Fifty-Six, AR. Little Rock Central High School was the last stop before dropping Karen at her aunt's home in Hot Springs and heading back to Bentonville.
Pappy and Lightning entertained us at the Ozark State Park Folklore Center.
We enjoyed the geodesic dome:
Alas! I left my iPad atop my trusty Subaru at one of the last overlooks on the way from Hot Springs to Bentonville. I saw it fly off in the rear view mirror. The photos were not in the cloud. So, a few photos from my friend and from my phone remain. It was most memorable and mom can now answer the question “Why are you going to Arkansas?” with some of these images.
Mom liked the half-mile trek through Blanchard Springs Caverns in Fifty-Six, especially.
And we all really liked the giant bronze spider, Maman, holding her marble eggs protectively over the main entryway at Crystal Bridges.
[I am writing this on my phone without a 'u' key so the photos will do most of the talking this time around.]
Hope you'll have a chance to make Arkansas plans some time. It is The Natural State and it is a Gem!
Steph
Northwest Arkansas is growing in leaps and bounds. The cost of living is low, it is culturally and geologically astounding, and beautiful in the fall, winter, and spring. The summers, however, are another story, I understand. . .
ReplyDeleteConsidering the current culture of Arkansas and other states in that region (Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Missouri) I don't think I could even consider visiting there and supporting them, much less moving there.
DeleteI wonder if educated (young) women from those throwbacks could organize and move to other parts of the country en masse, or at least in a publicized fashion, leaving the state to dribbling old white men and misogynists?
I know. It’s really unfortunate that northwest AR is lumped in with the rest of the state. The northwest is quite progressive.
DeleteIf I were a young woman in one of those other states, I’d surely move. But, I doubt I’d have moved there in the first place.
But many were born there; what do you do when you have a choice? Right thinking young men should also protest, this isn't just a women's issue.
DeleteI doubt enough would do it to have a practical effect on the culture and economy (unlike, for example, all the immigrants removed from Alabama that's created real problems for agriculture) but the optics of an organized and publicized migration might have an impact.
Bummer about your iPad, I assume it was entirely destroyed in the fall? There are services that can recover drives, or at least try to. Drivesavers.com in California is one, good reputation. I had a drive they couldn't salvage, but they didn't charge for their failure.
ReplyDeleteJust a little curious how this was possible: "[I am writing this on my phone without a 'u' key so the photos will do most of the talking this time around.]
Back to the bigger picture, did I ever mention that E. Fay Jones, Thorncrown Chapel's architect, was a Frank Lloyd Wright intern? I've known a couple of the interns, it's interesting the differing directions they took their architecture.
But I'm more curious about the fossils and crystals you found; perhaps that's because I'm less certain about what the pictures show. Especially the crinoid.
. . .Speaking of architects, sorry to hear of I. M. Pei’s passing today.
DeleteAt 102 he certainly lived a full life. People I knew who worked in his office over the years praised his knowledge and talent, and his quick insights into the essential nature of the problem and a solution.
DeleteI don't know that he reached the greatness of a Louis Kahn, Alvar Aalto or (sometimes) Frank Lloyd Wright, whose buildings (I think) reach the highest pinnacles, but he was an excellent practitioner.
Every time I needed a ‘u’ I had to cut and paste a ‘u’ from elsewhere. Not impossible, just tedious.
ReplyDeleteYes, I did know about EFJ. Of interest to me was the owners’ wanting to open up the chapel to the world, rather than keep others out. I was particularly sad to lose those images, as the colors of the stone and pews are so deep and rich. Yes, the iPad is complete toast.
As to the fossils, the first photo shows the crown of the crinoid. It’s a rare find. The stem pieces found in the fourth photo are much more common. I will add a diagram of the crinoid parts.
Note that crinoids are animals, not plants, despite their plant-like shape.
DeleteIs this your type? >>>
ReplyDeletehttps://daily.jstor.org/the-font-detectives/
I liked the accompanying article on the Dyslexie typeface to help dyslexic readers.
DeleteAs useless as the knowledge is to me today, I've always appreciated the semester I spent in print shop class in 7th grade.
My wife keeps jewelry in a California job case hanging on the wall.
That’s a great use for a California job case!
DeleteSchooled ya:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.sciencenews.org/article/50-million-year-old-fossil-captures-swimming-school-fish
As paleontologist Alice Cooper says, school's out forever.
DeleteA different song came to mind.
DeleteIt's annoying that this was formatted as an image, but I was NOT going to retype it.
ReplyDeleteI don't blame.
DeleteSome of these overlap with the ones on your image:
Grammar walks into a bar
(Not mine – alert the Foo if you know the source)
A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
A question mark walks into a bar?
A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out — we don’t serve your type.”
A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
A synonym strolls into a tavern.
At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar — fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.
A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.
An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.
The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.
A dyslexic walks into a bra.
A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television getting drunk and smoking cigars.
A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.
^^^I don't blame you.
DeleteAn onomatopoeic shotgun walked into a bar-room.
DeleteWhat would Mel Brooks' 2000 Year Old Man have to say about 3000 year old bagels?
ReplyDeleteCircular reasoning? ;-)
DeleteThere's a hole in that thinking.
DeleteDo cell phones make you horny?
ReplyDeleteWow, some of those bony protuberances are long!
DeleteWhat if global warming causes glacial melting which eases the sand shortage making it easier to build concrete barriers against sea level rise caused by global warming?
ReplyDeleteWe certainly are messing up our planet. Silty us.
DeleteAt the risk of making work for you, the sun will be directly over the Kaaba in Mecca, either July 15 or July 16 at 9:27 GMT (3:27 in Colorado).
ReplyDeleteThis is historically important for mathematics, astronomy and geography: +/- 12 centuries ago Muslim mathematicians and astronomers were obsessed with understanding the shape and size of the planet as critical in determining the direction to Mecca from wherever one happened to be.
I will be posting more about this Thursday in Blainesville, but if you want a sneak peak (and possible fodder for the blog) I found this article very interesting.
Thanks, eco. Fascinating. I may know what inspired this over at Bville. Or maybe not.
DeleteIt was inspired by a check on distances between countries, which I think is an incorrect assumption by "Unknown".
DeleteMeasuring the distance on your arch nemesis Google Maps yields a very pretty arch between those locations. Hover over Point A, then right click and select "Measure Distance", then click Point B. You can move the start and end points for refinement. I then played with those points (lots of fun to watch the arch warp) to find the direction from here to Mecca, among other things. And that reminded me of the importance of religion to the Golden Age of Arab science.
Though not a teacher myself, I think digitally-addicted kids might have fun playing with this. I figured this out in elementary school by pulling a string tight on a globe. No excuse for why I'm doing it today, except I'll find any excuse to avoid working on my projects....
eco, that was my hunch about Unknown's post and yours here.
DeleteIt would be a fun thing to do with students. Thanks for the idea.
Ok, eco, back to work!
you could give them a bonus question: where could they go that would appear as a straight line on the Google Map? (note that even going from Denver to San Francisco has a slight curve on the map....
Deletea somewhat age-dependent question, but older students might want to learn more by reading about John Harrison in, say, Dava Sobel's book Longitude.
One of these hours I will go back to work....
I am sure they will be longing to do that ;-).
DeleteDid you get straight lines on your architectural plans today then?
Must be why Amazon declare July 15-16 Prime Day.
DeleteGood point, jan.
DeleteSpeaking of people with rocks in their head, or perhaps their heads in rocks.
ReplyDeleteAntelope Canyon rocks (but stop telling people!).
DeleteHave you been? I've only been to a few slot canyons (do hip people simply call them "slots"?), none nearly so spectacular. I hope the article discourages people from going to Antelope Canyon. Or maybe not, maybe it's best to concentrate the Instagrammers in one location.
Delete20 years ago I had a project in Escalante; but I had limited free time and I don't think my hosts were big-time slotters. Though they did take me to some cool arch rocks and pre-Columbian archaeological sites.
This site has a pretty good reference for slot canyons in the Colorado Plateau. I could see how people can become addicted.
I have been there. Absolutely exquisite. The power of the water cutting through the rock is palpable. I believe jan went to some slot canyons in Utah a few years ago. . .
DeleteIndeed, in Zion, and Grand Staircase Escalante. Cool.
DeleteI think the soft sandstone makes the best photogenics, readily shaped and polished to reveal the many layers. Slots in Death Valley (and many in Zion) are rougher around the edges, harder to make those abstract images.
DeleteYes, sandstone or snadstone (as seen in many RMAG publications) often has that wonderful quality.
DeleteAnd you expected us mere mortals to know what RMAG was? Not very gee-oh-logical, though it is an inexpensive club.
DeleteRocky Mountain Association of Geologists, btw (by the way) ;-).
DeleteI had figured that out - hence the G.O. Logical comment, and noting that $43 membership is a lot less than any architecture or building organizations around here....
DeleteNew post on "Who Nose? -- Nothing to Sniff at: Mammalian Brains and Distinguishing Odors" is now up.
ReplyDeleteJust stumbled across your blog by random chance. Hello from a fellow science nerd and Smithie! (Class of 1997)
ReplyDeleteHi Kim, what wonderful serendipity! So glad you stopped by. Hope you'll come by again soon.
Delete