Many years ago I wrote The Motley View, a column of occasional pieces for the Newsletter of the long-extinct, but recently revived, Berkeley Geoengineering Alumni Association (BGAA) hosted by the GeoEngineer.org website.
Why Motley View? I wrote the first article, so I got to name the column. I thought the word Motley was appropriate for several reasons:
Motley is an assemblage of various fabrics and colors, as described by Jacques, a character in Act II, Scene VI of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”: “… I met a fool i’ the forest, a motley fool…”. Motley thus describes a clown, a harlequin, a tricky buffoon dressed in the patchwork garb of the Court Jester, a role I have played a few times in my life and career. I admire Fools. Anyway- Motley: the column was intended to be a patchwork quilt of opinions, advice, and harangues with professional and practitioner hues, based on my experiences and those of other contributors. There never were any other contributors, so I was A Fool Alone.
Motley describes the complexity of geopractice, which encompasses geotechnical engineering, geological engineering, engineering geophysics, geoenvironmental engineering and many other geo-whatevers. (Note to myself: we need some guidance on when and where we stick the prefix “geo”).
Motley aptly describes the heterogeneous appearance of chaotic melanges, fault rocks, weathered rocks and other complex geological mixtures: such messes are bimrocks, my professional specialty
Motley is my professional career, a patchwork of experiences gained during over 50 years of mineral exploration prospecting, geological engineering, geotechnical engineering, and world travel.
Motley (mixture) is Medley (mixture) – not a bad name for someone writing a Motley column, is it??
The articles that I wrote for the Motley View Column are reissued as posts on this website:
- The Vitality of Good Contacts
- On Seeking Dirty Work and the Value of Shoveling S–T*
- On the Rewards of Being Fired and Other Career Road Blocks
- On Geonudity and Some Benefits of Your GeoEngineering Graduate Education
Note: March 28 2023: this post originally appeared as a separate page on this website.