It has been an exciting year. This past July, I, along with several other SLU faculty members, spent 3 weeks in the Peruvian Amazon. An Antarctic front happened to be passing through at the time so it wasn't unbearably hot. We were in Lima then Pucallpa, Tarapoto and Iquitos. The focus of the trip was geared toward my academic interests in cross-cultural perspectives of healing and we met with shamans and visited a fascinating drug-treatment facility which combines traditional indigenous healing techniques with modern counseling approaches. However, for me one of the most exciting parts of the trip was identifying a project which will allow me to "marry" my interests in geology and healing into what I think of as an "ethnogeological" study. Many shamans and others use special stones called Encantos (enchanted) for healing. As far as I can tell, they have never been the focus of any study, anthropological or otherwise and I'd like to ask questions about them which will utilize my geological/scientific background, e.g. are there preferred compositions to Encantos? If so, what and why? Can I identify the source both proximal and distal? (since most seem to be river stones) - this is important to establishing links between the Andes and the Amazon, and other related questions. If any of you have any contacts in Peru, geological or otherwise - I'd really appreciate it if you'd pass that information on; every little bit helps. I hope to return to Peru next summer. I am now in my second year of Spanish classes, but it's a steep learning curve! Being a student in this one class as well as a faculty member, I think, is giving me a valuable reminder of some of the stresses of student life. I still worry about exams. This doesn't stop me from giving them, though. 

I am itching to begin fieldwork on a brittle fracture study of this (North Country) region. I've got some of the students in structure concentrating on brittle fracture in the field project area as a start and I'd like to make this an ongoing project and hope some students might like to work on this for a senior thesis or project.

About 3 weeks ago, as of this writing, I spent a week on Baffin Island! I went with Cathy Tedford and Carole Mathey, director and assistant director of the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery, Todd Mattee '01 and photographer Alison Wright. With Cathy Tedford, I am co-directing next spring's SLUFOTA (St. Lawrence University Festival of the Arts) and we went to Iqualuit, Pangnirtung and Cape Dorset to purchase prints and carvings for the gallery, to meet with and identify artists, speakers and performers to bring here for the festival and to really get a sense of the Arctic and dispel our romantic misconceptions. It was quite beautiful in a stark sort of way - tundra and rocks and sea. If any of you ever saw the James Bond movie "A View to Death" or something like that, the opening ski scene was filmed in Pangnirtung. I was particularly interested in the Inuksuit - rocks which are piled up in specific shapes and patterns somewhat like cairns but these have a variety of meanings symbolized in their shapes from marking good caribou hunting spots to spiritual significance. We will have someone help us build some Inuksuit on campus next spring as part of SLUFOTA. There was a bit of snow and temperatures hovered around freezing when we were there but I managed to collect some samples of tundra which hopefully contain some mites for Mark. The towns were like mining/frontier towns - Cape Dorset and Pang have only about 1800 residents each, and are a little on the "rough" side. While dog teams are still used, skidoos are the preferred mode of transportation. Although not in any of the places I visited, gold, nickel and diamonds are exciting economic interests in the Arctic. There certainly weren't many tourists at this time of year and we really were an obvious minority. Those of you who know of my vegetarian preferences will be interested to hear that I did try raw and cooked caribou (raw meat contains more nutrients which are key to survival in the Arctic), seal soup and raw whale blubber. I also tried raw kelp. I'll stick with the kelp, thank you. 

I would love to return to the Arctic but I'm not anxious to do any flying there again and since roads do not link the towns there is little other choice. When we first landed in the Arctic in Iqualuit, we landed in a blizzard. I have never experienced turbulence like that. I truly wondered if I'd ever see John and Teya again. The plane that came in from Ottawa after ours slid off the runway and they did an emergency evacuation with the slides and everything. No one was hurt but most believe the pilot never should have tried to land in those conditions. What about our pilot? Our plane landed in the same conditions! On the flight from Pang to Iqualuit our small prop plane was approaching the runway (all the runways begin or end depending on your approach) in the sea, when I noticed a burning smell. Seconds later the plane filled with smoke and people in front of me started stamping the floor with their feet. Then, instead of landing, we started to head back out to sea. The pilot informed us that the smoke was from the landing gear motor burning out and he was having to lower the landing gear manually and had to do a fly by of the tower so they could visually confirm that the gear was down. We landed to a greeting of fire engines and an ambulance (confidence inspiring). But we landed safely. It was after landing that a fire extinguisher got loaded on the plane. A few days later our confidence was again shaken when we had to board the same plane for another leg of our journey - but without mishap!

Our daughter Teya had her 4th birthday just a week ago and she is growing like a weed and very articulate. We have lots of fun and she enjoys giving her dad a hard time about all the meetings he has to go to: Dept. Chairs, PSC (professional standards committee, i.e. tenure), science facilities planning and others. When he has time, John is enjoying riding the Honda motorcycle he got from me for his most recent birthday. We no longer have sheep (they were driving us crazy by escaping all the time) so we gave them away to people who promised not to eat them. We have only one Bernese Mt. Dog now - Decke. Deegan is with us in spirit. We still have the big black cat, Tosca, and a new black kitten, Mu Shu who is Teya's good buddy but the kitten is convinced she is, indeed, the fiesty little dragon she is named for. Well, time to pick up the child at pre-school! Hope you all are well and that you'll keep in touch and visit whenever you can. Hopefully next year we can make it to G.S.A. - after taking off time to go to the Arctic, I can't afford to be away any more this semester. Take care. Cheers,

As I write this, or better as I record this, I am traveling Route 17 in Canada next to the Ottawa River eastward, after taking Lance to begin his freshman year at Macalester College in St. Paul Minnesota. That makes this that bittersweet trip that most parents take after they have left their offspring in the big world for their first semester on their own. Of course, they've really been on their own for at least the last four years, probably longer than that, depending upon the high school situation they found themselves in. Lance seems to be no exception to that. He's confident, he's pleased to be starting college, he finished a wonderful year - his senior year in Canton - as a National Merit finalist, and with four AP courses to his credit and a full year of calculus at St. Lawrence, where he managed a 4.0 both semester. As you can imagine, I'm very proud of his accomplishments and he should be too. He applied to three colleges, Swarthmore, Oberlin, and Macalester - all three of them small liberal arts colleges with good academic programs. He was accepted at Oberlin, wait-listed at Swarthmore, and accepted at Macalester. After looking at Oberlin and Macalester pretty carefully, he chose Macalester. So I find myself on the way back from a thousand mile drive having all those thoughts that parents have about whether I've left him in the right hands, whether the faculty is going to do their job well whether the University really cares about its students. Is my tuition money going to the right place? All of the sorts of things that some alumni are becoming familiar with now, and that all of your parents were familiar with when they dropped you at St. Lawrence. 

I'm still confident that the Geology program at St. Lawrence has done well by its students. Obviously, whether we can continue to do so will depend upon lots of conditions that are both in and out of our hands as faculty. Your intense support has always been important and certainly will continue to be an important factor in the degree of our success in the future. 

To speak of parents and college, I'm beginning to have that past midlife experience that faculty have of having their early students return with their own offspring to look over St. Lawrence and let the youngsters evaluate the program and the campus and decide if they'd like to go to school here. Recently, Loren '73 and Janet '74 Bailey visited Canton with their daughter, Erin. I missed them by a day, which I deeply regret. I hope they had a good time and found the campus to their liking. The changes are astounding and continue to unfold as Dan Sullivan's program for the University is put in place. Others who visited included Mike Ward '72 and his son and daughter, Scott and Lauren. Lauren is a junior in high school and made a swing through campus to see what her father's alma mater really looks like. We also had a surprise visit from Dale Chayes '73 and his wife, Kim Kastens and their two children as they were taking a vacation in the north country, actually an unheard of process for Dale. I'm glad to see that he is able to spend some time on land instead of being out on shipboard all the time. I imagine his family is glad of that too. It was good to see them. I think that Dale was pleased to see the amount of activity on campus. He did comment that he was waiting to see what the new science complex looked like before he would agree that the financial expenditures are in the right place. 

Along that line, planning for the new science complex is well underway, with considerations now being made for space needs and spacial arrangement. I think this Fall members of the science departments will be visiting other campuses looking at recent science complexes that colleges have constructed. Particularly those are of interest that allow for interaction among the sciences, interdisciplinary studies and interdisciplinary faculty activities, which happens to be the way the science complex at Macalester was designed - the Olin Rice complex. At a time when Columbia University has just decided that the earth sciences should be a core program of the university because of their focal point in the environment and the importance of their position in understanding the past and suggesting the future, it's hoped that geology at St. Lawrence will receive the same support as a new building is being planned. Space is expensive and one wonders what the priorities will be. I imagine that Dr. Bursnall will have some thoughts on that in his comments for the newsletter. This will be a future-defining time for Geology at SLU.

I guess I should make a few remarks about last year and the Spring semester in particular, then fill you in on what went on this Summer. In the Spring, I taught Micropaleontology, Stratigraphy and Senior Thesis. My thesis student was Booth Platt, who studied oribatid mites as paleoclimate proxies from the Hiscock Site in Byron, New York. Some of you may remember that Doug Jennings '93 and I have studied the mites in a preliminary fashion from the Hiscock site in the early '90s and he reported on those in his thesis. I had reported the prospect for mite study at a symposium that was held in Buffalo prior to that. Booth's study takes that work further in the paleoecological analysis. We will describe it at a symposium that will be held next year as the 20th anniversary of the Hiscock site. Either Booth and his work, or the micropaleo course, caught the interest of Andrew Solod, who was then a junior, and he has decided to study the oribatid mite faunas across the Younger Dryas in some cores from Glovers Pond as his senior thesis this year. In order to accomplish that, Andrew and I went to Glovers Pond in July where we met Scott Carpenter and his Ph.D. student, Heather Quevedo from University of Iowa. They were taking some cores for her Ph.D. work, which continues our collaboration on some of the earlier pre-Younger Dryas carbon and oxygen isotope conditions in the sediments at Glovers Pond. Andrew and I have two new cores that we are processing presently for his study. 

Other Recent Visitors and Callers to JME

We continue to hear from you in good numbers. Bonnie has included some of your news. I share other news below:

Peter deMonocal '82 at Columbia's LDEO continues to publish interesting paleoclimate studies relating climate change to the demise of civilizations among other things.

Don Rodbell's '83 Science paper described efforts to track the history of El Niño in the southern hemisphere as well as discussing the Younger Dryas cold event.

Peter Connett '94 is married and doing beautiful stained glass work at his studio in Binghamton.

David '95 and Marlene Egan are happy after their wedding this summer in which Dr. E. participated as a groomsman; a great event.

Glenn Kays '96 and wife Lori are now in Bismarck, N.D. where Lori works at the State Water Commission and Glenn consults for a company in Grand Forks.

Joe Perse '98 is now job hunting after MS work at Ohio State University.

Bethany Shepherd '96 was also married to Matt Powers this summer. Her web site is terraven@hotmail.com.

Peter Cox '91, as I write, is preparing to be married in early November. Have a good one Pete and Susan.

Pete and Erik Kent '97 both work at RETECH, Inc. Erik finished a masters at SUNY Binghamton where he spurred Doug Jennings '93 on to complete his thesis as well. Doug now works for Corning.

Heather Franco '97 has put aside her Ph.D. program at Dartmouth to enter teaching at a high school in New Hampshire. We wish her great success.

Moe Jones '97 is working with a consulting firm after completion of her MS at UNC Wilmington. I think she is waiting for Tim Woodcock '99 to finish his MS also at UNC where he is studying predation on echinoids. I never hear from them anymore!

Phyllis Hargrave '78 again sent a beautiful and informative Montana calendar for Christmas 1999. Thanks, Phyl. We hope the fires did not damage any of your favorite spots this year.

Bob Pickard '93 has settled in to office work in Atlanta for what used to be Dames & Moore.

Also have talked with Brandt Temple '94, John Wyckoff '85, Andy Fetterman '94, Dean '74 and Duane Eppler '71, Margy Walsh '74 and Roy Christofferson '76 in recent months.

Trent Hubbard '94 is on the last phases of his Ph.D. dissertation at UND after a summer at glacial school in Alaska. 

Jonathon Wingerath '85 was recently featured in The Torch, an in-house publication of the Smithsonian Institution. Jon is a museum specialist in the Paleobiology Department at NMNH. Mark visited with him briefly when Jon visted SLU for a concert event

Booth Platt '00 is lost in Tahoe(?) but he must be getting ready to give our joint paper next Fall directly following the SLUGAC 4.

Mark had a breakfast visit with Tom Hudson '81 during the Cincinnati Field Trip in September. Tom had some magnificent 3-D slides of the Grand Canyon. Good to see him and them!

Mark spoke with David Waugh '99 from Kent, Ohio, where he is in year two of his MS. We are planning to present his BS thesis in a pair of papers in Ireland next Fall. Meanwhile David is working on crab taphonomy. Bonnie Muller '99, also at Kent, is involved in statistical analysis of ostracode distributions. I hope both Dave & Bonnie are challenged by their studies.

Mark had a great visit with Derrick Pitts '78 when he was in Canton for the Spring meeting of the SLU Trustees. Derrick is doing some fine things at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and at SLU!

David Griffing '83 says "Hello" from Charlotte, S.C. where he is teaching.

Mark will look for alums attending GSA-Reno in November. He knows that Ken Johnson, Dave Waugh, Dean Eppler and Dave Griffing at least plan to be there. It is time to get this letter out. More next time. Please keep in touch and send us your news.

We have not scheduled a formal alumni get together this year at GSA, in fact JME had not planned to attend until John Bursnall discovered he could not be there. I expect to be at the general alumni reception on Monday night at which time we may be able to repair to more comfortable quarters. See you then. 

On October 13-14 Dean and Duane Eppler visited St. Lawrence to begin planning for a fourth Geology Alumni Conference! Yes, by 2001 it will have been three years since SLUGAC 3 and twelve years since a small group of alums began the Conference and started the R.O. and Vera Bloomer Lecture. 

One year from this date - October 11, 12 & 13, 2001 - we will convene St. Lawrence Geology Alumni Conference 4. All geology alumni are encouraged to attend. Please put this date on your calendar NOW. 

Those who have already indicated they will attend include: Andrew Fetterman, Duane Eppler, Dean Eppler, David Griffing, Roy Christofferson, and Sarah Zimmerman McElfresh.

More news - see our Web Page under St. Lawrence University .

Action is picking up around the sciences at St. Lawrence. New programs and new facilities are on the horizon. Time is here for you to help. To keep our national visibility and ranking in the top 5 we have to find support from donors such as we have never had before. 

Soon we will need: 

A Geology Junior/Senior Fellowship Fund @ $250,000 to $500,000 of endowment.

New Geology Building Fund @ $15 to $20 million (or some large part thereof!). 

Two endowed faculty chairs in some aspect of Geology @ $1.75 million each. 

A Capital Equipment endowment of $1 million or more to help with both upkeep of existing items and purchase of new equipment.

Endowment for minority students, full-expense scholarships in Geology, at least two per year @ $1.5 million. 

Your thoughtful gift support for everything else we do! Thanks, so much.

If you know a company or foundation that is interested in supporting the education of good geologists, or if you want to discuss any of these projects with me please call JME at (315)229-5198 (office) or home (315)379-9235. 

Hi folks, 

It's that time again (!) - what turns out to be our annual, rather than biannual newsletter. This is my third year as chair and I'm beginning to settle in - I think. Some good things are happening: 

· For the past two years we've seen increasing numbers of incoming students who have come to St. Lawrence to major in geology. Last spring, for example, I signed up five new majors - all first year students. We are therefore anticipating a moderate increase in our numbers.

· We're moving ahead with planning for a new science complex. Building could start within the next couple of years if we can get the financial backing necessary for such a large undertaking - if you're at all familiar with any of the new science complexes cropping up on campuses all over the country you'll know how expensive they can be.

· Our curriculum planning efforts are in their final stages. We anticipate introducing an integrated lecture/field dominated lab format for Geol 103 (The Dynamic Earth) a year from now. Our trials with field labs over the past two years have convinced us that this is the way to go - but, of course, there are some inherent problems associated with such a venture: staffing and local climate are clear examples. Next spring Geol 104 (The Evolving Earth) will not be offered for science distribution credit and Geol 103 will be a prerequisite. Other major changes for the future are: a senior project for all; some half-credit support courses such as Optical Mineralogy (in recent years squeezed into the petrology courses) and Interpretation of Geological Maps; and, major two-week long field trips built into the curriculum. 

· We have a new flume - testing is imminent! The old recirculating oval has done good service but boundary reflections to flow were a problem. Michael and Steve Kohn, along with lots of expertise from Matt VanBrocklin, have produced a straight flow system that should better mimic nature (watch this space for the results).

· Room 143-144 in which all of you spent many, many hours has been revitalized. The Geology ring is still there (in fact I can see being transferred brick by brick into our eventual (we hope) new facility, but we have a new computer control desk and have taken out the sink/gas unit. There's a new ceiling and lights and Matt has built a projector base for our new heavy-weight slide projector (no more of those poor image producing Kodaks! - sorry Kodak, you do make great film, though). 

I've just put in our capital budget for next year and it's the largest for many years (if not ever): completion of the computer graphics/GIS lab; a much needed research microscope for Mark and his students; additional teaching scopes ('binocs' for those of you who have endured my 'bloody eye' monologue). And more new paint together with, would you believe, new drapes(!). We'll have to wait to see if we're going to get any of this.

There will be another Alumni Conference next fall (2001). Early in October so please mark your calendars.

A very important change is that we are unfortunately going to lose Jim Willemin at the end of this year. Jim has done an enormous amount for us in the past six years - creating really useful and innovative introductory course labs (he is presenting at GSA on one of these), initiating new courses such as Global Climate and Hydrology, and as being one of the 'night people' answering student questions in Brown Hall. He will be missed and we wish him well for the future. We are advertising for his replacement and from the copy below you can see that we are using the opportunity to expand our horizons.

All the best,

Our mailing lists are difficult to keep up as you all move around quite a lot! We have many "Missing alumni" whom we would like to locate. Enclosed is a list of those we can't locate. Please drop us a note or an email with addresses of anyone on the list whose address you can give us. We would greatly appreciate it!

Thomas Bjerstedt 

1940 Anne R. Frank 

1950 John Bruce Fisher 

1954 Philip B. Fletcher 

1956 Beryl Atkinson 

1957 Leland A. Fournier 

1958 J. Gorham Arend 

1959 David F. Bragan John S. Comstock 

1961 Peter Lessing 

1964 Frank C. Capozza Eric S. Golde 

1965 Richard W. Zeiss 

1967 John L. Kosicki 

1968 Michael J. Quinn 

1969 Peter Milne 

1970 Frederick A. Early 

1971 Carl T. Anderson Kenneth Feathers Alan F. Grant Robert Mahoney Robert P. McNeil 

1972 Frederick B. Bowles Steven P. Chwiecko Carolyn M. Coolidge Terrance L. May 

1973 David C. Knaack Kevin Sylvester 

1974 Gilbert N. Camp Jr. Timothy Harvey Paul C. Naegely 

1975 Richard E. Beaumont Lewis G. Hinman III John J. Rusconi 

1976 Peter M. Besio Brian S. Brock Wendy L. Carey Gary D. Schmitz Elizabeth Wilkinson Richard P. Worden 

1977 Edward L. Blankman Jr. Robert M. Bruce Russell C. Evatt James B. Hickey Daniel B. Johnson J. William Kenny 

1978 Debra L. Kensinger Chapin F. Koch Richard D. Leidig Andrew H. Macdonald William C. Manuel Joseph H. Pool Debra Reiners Dean N. Stahl Douglas R. Tietbohl Susan G. Tubb William Webster 

1979 Timothy Barns Dean W. McLellan Susan Moisiadis Michael J. Niezabytoski Reo R. Rice Jill Setian 

1980 Christopher L. Chandler Ilene Corbo Charles H. McLaughlin Thomas W. Porter Ann Smyth Paul R. Suitch 

1981 Stephen Alden Kerry Bahrenburg Jonathan Mandeville Niki Marks Allison McManus Peter M. Pinkard Heidi Sampson Linda Spencer Jeffrey C. Wright 

1982 Susan Adair Paul Bolmer Don Brown Braddock K. Linsley Moira Maloney Jeanne M. Mueller Sandra D. Parks Dorothy J. Poland 

1983 Luke Bloedel Kathy Boyer Christopher Bushing Timothy Flagler Karl Fleischmann Jeffrey M. Latham Priscilla Menzies Eric Peterson 

1984 Christopher S. Adams Steven M. Carr Bradford Divine Eugene M. Geddes III Christiane Gorycki Richard F. McCartney Scott Mueller Jennifer Novak Leslie A. Parks Ricky Rafter Edward I. Wasniewski 

1985 Robert Adams Meredith G. Gardner Miles M. Montelius Theodore Sickley Sandy Taft 

1986 Diana G. Duncan Leif Lorentzen 

1987 Suzanne Sargent Allison Smith 

1988 Michael J. Harris Lynette A. Mokry 

1989 Peter D. Condon Kevin D. Feeney Yves Nicholas Garson Rula Kassicieh Joseph W. Mastromarchi Robert S. Nigolian Andrew J. Perry 

1990 Jody L. Creaser 

1992 Scott Green Matthew Marquis Robert Zapletal 

1993 Jennifer Bird Meghan Saunders 

1994 Myron Getman Johnny J. Sherwood Charles A. Taus 

1995 Aaron L. Bogucki Robert Scott Goldkamp Gillian T. Gregg 

1996 Lynn LaMontagne 

1997 Paul J. Sanchirico 

1998 Ryan Ackley Friends Kathy Agusta Vicky Church John A. Rayburn Carol Treadwell