Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Not at bookstores. Yesterday I did a Zoom talk for the Museum of the San
Ramon Valley; they say the recording will be online next week.

I did an hour's podcast with a pair of geologists last month:

<https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-geology-of-oakland-andrew-alden-
author-of-deep-oakland/id1528861092>

I was on KPFA a few weeks back: <https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-
may-17-2023/>

And The Oaklandside visited the Hayward fault with me recently:

<https://oaklandside.org/2023/05/26/oakland-deep-geology-hayward-fault/>

Upcoming, I'll be addressing the local chapter of the Groundwater Resources
Association of California next week:
<https://www.grac.org/events/511/>

And the Northern California Geological Society -- my pals! -- a week later:
<https://www.ncgeolsoc.org>

And that's it until a thing at the Oakland Library in September.
  

    
I should add that <sumac>'s praise is especially welcome coming from a
fellow published author.
  

    
Former buildings in Piedmont: <https://piedmonthistorical.org/2015/06>

Blair Quarries (not the same as Blair's Quarry):
<https://oaklandgeology.com/2021/12/06/blair-quarries-not-the-same-as-
blairs-quarry/>
  

    
Thanks for that, Frako. One thing I did, speaking of how to present geology,
was to use my blog posts as places to learn more -- I listed a couple dozen
in the endnotes. It's so easy to go online to pursue an interesting point;
it's how I have come to read books, and I'm not alone. And in the e-edition
of DEEP OAKLAND, those links are all live. I tried to make the book as
contemporary as I knew how, even as my publisher, Heyday Books, is a
straight-up print house without an audiobook option.

In the endnotes I also said, straight out, that "I cite specific sources for
advanced material, leaving more basic topics to the usual reputable
websites." It doesn't serve the reader any more to point them to a physical
library to consult a printed book, precious though those are.
  

    
I agree with <sumac> about the beautiful writing! I'm still reading...
  

    
What was involved in becoming able to think in geological time?
("Nothing is permanent to a geologist.")

Was there a time when it clicked for you, or has it been more like
developing muscles?
  

    
It's not natural to think or live in geological time, and it isn't
something, as far as I can tell, that just clicks. It's definitely a
learning process, like developing muscles. I think it's more like developing
flexibility, stretching those mental tendons. I think we just learn how fast
things happen -- erosion, uplift, seismic displacement, plate movements,
organic evolution, diffusion and mixing -- and sit with that knowledge.
Without numbers, deep time is unfathomable. The history of geology shows
that. James Hutton, the Scottish thinker who most effectively spread the
idea of deep time, could only say that Earth's history appeared endless, and
when Lord Kelvin argued that the Earth could be no older than 50 million
years based on the physics of cooling solids, the geologists could only
demur that as far as they could tell too much history had gone on to fit in
that stretch.

Today geologists have an intricate framework of time that includes the
history of the planet, the history of life and the pace of geologic
processes. It's our language. Without it, we're in the same visionary,
mythic deep universe that preliterate humans lived in. I'm not sure anyone
really grasps deep time, but at least we can measure it and our minds can
operate in it.
  

    
The means we use to understand earth processes and earth history is
actualism. We look at things we see happening now* and we and we
look for the effects of the same or similar processes as they are
recorded in the rock record. Once we see what process causes an
effect we can begin to measure how fast the process works and use
this understanding to measure time.

When I was in grade school I learned that mountains are created by
some sort of uplift and they're worn down by erosion, and that the
Appalachian Mountains near where I grew up were low and rounded
because the range was old. Today I would talk about this as a
competition between the rate at which mountains are uplifted and the
rate at which they're eroded. The Appalachians are at a passive
continental margin where they aren't being uplifted any more, so the
rate of erosion wins the contest.

These rates are invisible until we understand the processes and
they're incomprehensible until we think in geologic time.
  

    
I point out in chapter 9 that until the 20th century, all geologists had to
work with were relative ages of rocks -- Cambrian, Devonian, Miocene and so
on -- based fundamentally on the history of life as recorded in fossils and
the vertical sequence of rocks that established the order of events. That
was something, but as of 1900 "deep time" was a blurry procession of ages
without dates that allowed us to order the sedimentary rocks with fossils,
but left all other rocks in a poorly determined place on the timeline.

Today we can confidently navigate deep time because since 1900 we've devised
several good methods to determine real dates, expressed in real years, which
enabled us to calibrate the fossil timeline and extend it all the way back
to very near Earth's beginning. Actualism is the principle underlying all of
that progress since the beginnings of geology in the 1600s. It holds, in a
nutshell, that we aren't allowed to call upon miracles to explain the past,
only causes we know for sure are natural. Actualism is an axiom, more than a
research methodology.
  

    
Actualism is what allows us to thread a path between
uniformitarianism and catastrophism. We can see evidence of
catastrophes in Earth's past against the backdrop of the results of
steady uniform processes. This includes catastrophes of types we've
never seen or at scales we've never seen, like the Chicxulub meteor
strike or the Lake Missoula floods.
  

    
All we did was expand the definition of "natural" as the evidence grew.
As Playfair wrote about Hutton's research, "we became sensible how much
further reason may sometimes go than imagination may venture to follow."
  

    
Thanks for that.

I word I now need to figure out how to use in daily life:
quaquaversal.
  

    
I tried to drop a cool word into every chapter, some more useful than
others.
  

    
You are famous on the Well for a couple things: one is your
collection of pavement markers, the other is for walking pretty much
everywhere. Do both of these hobbies tie back into geology?
  

    
I admire both those pastimes. I don't go for long walks nearly
enough, but whenever I go I note the sidewalk badges.

I was having lunch in Berkeley with a new friend and I learned her
grandfather had poured a lot of sidewalks. Her last name is Doty and
sure enough, I see him often!
  

    
<alden> I love your book because you so freely share your opinions
of the way Oakland has been developed and because it's so clear how
much you love being surrounded by Oakland and by its geology. And
because the book is so well written!
  

    
The sidewalk stamps thing (see https://oaklandunderfoot.com/) began when I
started accompanying my wife on her morning trek to work in Berkeley in an
attempt to get more exercise. I'd go partway with her, then return home by
alternate routes, and there were so many stamps! But the whole thing truly
originated in my youthful passion of coin collecting. It was about that time
when I finally dispersed my collection, and the blog arose as a way to
record sidewalk stamps the same way I used to collect coins: find and
document a stamp from each year that a maker was in business. That's how I
learned about classic masons like Ed Doty
(https://oaklandunderfoot.com/2017/07/14/sidewalk-maker-ed-doty/) and Frank
Salamid (https://oaklandunderfoot.com/2016/08/26/sidewalk-maker-frank-
salamid/) and J. H. Fitzmaurice
(https://oaklandunderfoot.com/2017/03/03/sidewalk-maker-j-h-fitzmaurice/).

I set out to survey the entire city of Oakland, every block, both sides.
That took almost ten years, and in the process I learned the city's terrain
in intimate detail, including the good outcrops and localities. I also got
really good at walking and using the buses and BART to get around, because I
enjoyed the experience more than driving. Finally, it got me into
researching Oakland's past. That familiarity with Ancestry.com and
Newspapers.com and the Internet Archive paid off even more than I dreamed
when the pandemic struck while I was writing DEEP OAKLAND.
  

    
We scheduled this discussion through June 19, today, so we're
technically at the end of the two week commitment was requested from
our guest. But it's fine to continue the discussion, the topic will
remain open.

This is also where we step in to thank <alden>, <mazz>, and all the
other participants for the great and informative conversation. 

Reminder that you can find the book _Deep Oakland_ in various
bookstores, including Bookshop.org
<https://bookshop.org/a/52607/9781597145961>. It's published by
HeyDay Books: <https://www.heydaybooks.com/catalog/deep-oakland/>.
  

    
Thank you!
  

    
Thanks, Andrew! As I said elsewell, I can't say enough good things
about your book. But I'm trying, I'm trying!
  

    
I'm always here to keep talking about my book. Thanks for your compliments,
and for paying attention to begin with.

I continue to take long walks for the pleasurable exercise, to revisit
Oakland's geological features, and to find more stuff underfoot. I plan to
keep it up -- and sunbathe by Lake Merritt -- for the rest of my life.
  

    
As entertaining and knowledgeable a discussion as this program gets.
Thanks, Andrew and Mary for making it happen.
  

    
Great interviews ... tho I haven't read the book, and don't know
Oakland much beyond Jack London Square.  Might buy it as a christmas
gift for a marine geologist I know (though she's segued back from
bay-area groundwater to to marine biology).
  

    
Great topic. Thanks to all involved.
  

    
so interesting! thanks, alden.