Miss Maggie is Maggie Antoinette Suzanne Grau Medley (Gredley); our dog. Maggie is almost 14 now; a puppy disguised as an elderly dog. But nowadays she wears her disguise more and more. Right now she appears very elderly, very asleep, with her nose very inches from the rollers of my office chair. She loves to be close to the action.
We met Maggie in a manner most curious. Continue reading
“I’m OK, I know what I am doing. I picked up enough geology to get by…” (Kipahulu lava flow, Hawaii, 1987; photo: A. Klein)
About the time that this issue of the Motley View will be published [April 2008] the 2008 class of UC Berkeley GeoEngineers will be finishing the Spring Term, soon to graduate. They will work through the night to complete the CE270L report for Prof. Seed, attend the Distinguished Lectures, party at the Banquet, listen to the speeches, and then get a Rock. Having been there, done that, I warmly congratulate this year’s GeoEngineering Graduates on completing their grueling adventures. But having got this far, what have you learned? What are the benefits you won from the considerable cost of spending between 1 and 5 years or so in the GeoEnginering Graduate program? What prompted you to put up with the pain anyway? Continue reading
You are driving along your well-planned career track en route to the next success. You are being considerate of others, following the Rules of the Road, when suddenly an unexpected career road block forces you to detour. Career road blocks are like that – they spoil your career plan, the highway that you had designed to connect your Cal Geoengineering degree to your Successful Career. Once detoured, you are perhaps lost in a countryside you never knew existed and had no intention of ever visiting. You try hard to get back on track. You worry that you shall miss your next scheduled achievement. And you fret that your career is now ruined. Continue reading
*A dirty mind would read this as SILT
I started work in 1959, delivering groceries by bike in West London. By the time I left my teens, I had worked part-time as a sales clerk in grocery, food and book shops, and also had stints as a bookkeeper, a laundry man, a TV Special Effects technician. I later washed dishes on a cargo ship to travel to Canada and by age 25 had spent a few years as a prospector. None of these jobs would likely be considered “professional” by the standard of today’s graduate geoengineer. All of them required me to perform much dirty work; hard, often physically demanding work that sometimes felt demeaning, was often boring, and which too often left me tired, hot (or very cold), wet, and bruised. Continue reading
I used to write The Motley View, a column of occasional pieces for the Newsletter of the now dormant Berkeley Geoengineering Alumni Association (BGAA) hosted by the GeoEngineer website. Why Motley View? I wrote the first article, so I named the column. I no longer write for the defunct Newsletter but am loathe to retire a comely turn of phrase and so I now use it as the label for the Category of my posts which are provocative; impish; and, yes – foolish. (Don’t be fooled by my use of the word foolish – it is a reverent word for an honorable way of life. Continue reading
Good Contacts are Important in Geoengineering ( E Medley)
My career evolved because of my vital network of contacts. By “vital” I mean both life-sustaining and necessary. Over the 40-year random walk of my adult life, the suggestions, encouragements, ideas, insults, challenges, job leads and personal introductions from other people nudged me bit-by-bit from my first full-time job in 1966 (as a clerk for a UK food company) to my current position. That is what a “contact” is: someone who can prompt movement in our way of thinking or our careers. Continue reading
I was browsing through my LinkedIn profile to update details and noted that I am months behind on reviews of books I have read. I will post some old and new reviews on this site under the category Book Babbles…
The Ink Dark Moon edited by Jane Hirschfeld and Mariko Aratani is one the best books I have read in a long time. Here is what I wrote last year about the book for my LinkedIn review: Continue reading
Many years ago, we were walking along a miserable stretch of the Pennine Way. Once a cobbled Roman road it had become a rutted farm track; bounded by low, gray, wet rock walls. Clag was down to the ground - so some would say it was foggy. But we were in the mountains, and it was wet, chilling, gray clouds we were walking through. Continue reading
