OK, it has been six weeks since I arrived here, and it will another six weeks before I leave.  I have three major microscope projects.  These are the Cretaceous silicoflagellates from a section in northwest cntinental Canada, a second project that studies sediments from several islands in the Canadian Archipelago, and then if there is time a project from the deep sea of the Indian Ocean.   The scope work for the first two of these are now essentially done, and I am writing results, making figures, preparing plates and so forth.  After that there should be an overview paper on the biostratigraphy of northern Canada, and then hopefully time to study the Cretaceous section from the INdian Ocean.  Other projects keep turning up and I am dealing with dome of these and setting others aside for later.

  And yes, I do need to get more pictures posted.  I will try to get to that soon, plus more observations about this area and academic work in general.  I actually have a lot to say, but very little time to say it.

I have not been keeping up with this very well because there is so much to do and every minute seems precious.  Last night I finished the draft light micrscope plates for our second article, and am starting serious work on the text for that article; getting the pictures chosen seems a good place to start, as for one thing that ends the formal microscope work for now.  The next task is to write the article that explains the pretty pictures.

In listitng the figure captions for the plates I find that this article has ten new species.  TEN!  And the first article had five, so fifteen altogether.  I am not one to name new species willy-nilly and have been one to fault others for describing new species when the variability of known types could explain the observations; I have described two new species in my 25-year career as a scientist. 

The new species are not due to some new-species-happiness on my part but reflects the astonishing diversity of the assemblages that I am seeing.  I am in virgin territory, below where silicoflagelaltes have been previously studied, and am also in a restricted environment where evolution and environmental stresses get full play.  The objects of my interest are doing crazy things.

This sabbatical is also an interesting opportunity to play with the “big boys.”  I am a small-school professor, where teaching is the emphasis and research is not a requirement.  I am now amongst people who are likely good teachers, but don’t really teach a lot – publishing is the critereon for advancement.  And opportunities abound.  The guy I have been chatting with downstairs has been on deep-sea drilling cruises 8 times and has spent two seasons in Antarctica.  I would consider one opportunity to do either as an unlikely capstone to my career.  NSF connections roll off his tongue like sports statistics do for someone on ESPN.   I am very much the country mouse visiting the big cathedral.

Where I come from, there are no grad student or post-docs to chase the issues of my interest.  I do not have a staff of helpers and money to hire scientific illustrators and electron microscope technicians.  I in my world am inundated with community people wanting me to identify their rock or help with a merit badge.  Even keeping up with the scientific literature is a task, as the journals are not easily available and there is noone down the hall to ask me what I think about an article in the current issue of Science.  Here at UNL, I can snag almost any article off my computer and print it, since the university subscribes to service that allows that access.  Where I come from, an interlibrary takes a handwritten form that I have to deliver personally to the library, and then wait for weeks past the time when I could have used the article.

I am satisfied with my scientific life.  I like the teaching, the students, the people who think they found a meteorite in their back yard.  I doubt if I have the personality or skills to be administrating a huge grant, though I am increasingly looking to be a modest part of such things.  Maybe I will get that ocean cruise or Antarctic field time someday.  But if not, I have contributed more than many, including lots of people from the bigger schools.  I find I get a surprising amount of respect here at UNL, and at the scientific conferences that I am occasionally able to attend.  And that is all I ever wanted as a kid, which I still am.

I have to say that I have been welcomed very well into the environment here.  One Friday I was invited to attend the Geosciences Department Alumni dinner, and rom there was included in a wedding reception.  They have even made professional cards for me.  My office is everything that I could want, and much more space than I have at UMPI.  I am pretty much spending all my time on the scope or computer, but have had many interesting conversations when I am out and about. 

I am walking the three miles to and from where I am staying and the office, which has provided some opportunities to stop and chat with people.  After the football game yesterday I found a guy – Clark – hauling big bags of cans for recycling.  There is no bottle deposit law here, so he gets only the value of the aluminum – 40 cents a pound or about 2 cents per can.  He makes about $100 off the cans left at the tail-gate parties before the game.  That is a lot of cans. 

Football here is really big; I think I have gone some into that in a prevous blog.  They had a very messy game this weekend.  Nebraska was easily the better team but made eight turnovers against an inferior team that could do very little but made no mistakes.  There seems to be a pall over the whole city.  There must have been a dozen articles about the game in the morning paper.

My plans were to be updating this every day but it has been hard to find the time as there have been so many things to do.  My first article was finished the night before last, at least to the point where I could send it to my two colleagues (one here at U-Nebraska, the other in Poland) for their input.  Getting there required chasing down many references, tackling taxonomic issues, reading, writing, six plates, a figure, a table and hundreds of little details.  The article is likely still more than a month from being submitted.  There is still the portions to be done by my colleagues, plus the abstract and discussion still to be written, the addition of probably 2 plate of canning electron microscope (SEM) pictures and integrating those into the article, plus yet another hundred details.  Then that must be sent to a couple of pre-reviewers for their comments prior to submittal to the journal.

  In the meantime, I am starting work on paper-2.  This will detail the “crazy assemblage” of really weird silicoflagellates that we have found lower in the Cretaceous.  I must search many more slides with sparse specimens to see what else I can find there, put do some more photography of the productive interval that we discovered earlier.  The first slide yesterday morning was at the bottom of one of my geologic sections – maybe the oldest material in my study – and I was immediately surprised to find what may perhaps be yet another new species!  But specimens are pretty rare – I found 7 on the slide, 2 being of the potential new species – so I will have to look through more slides of that sample.

  I spent the rest of the day viewing the next four slides in that section, finding three more specimens – nothing unusual.  This also a part of science.  You get the WOW-moments, of which I have had many during this sabbatical, but there is also the slogging through less productive intervals, simply documents that there is indeed very little there.  The data is hard to come by, ten specimesn altogether in five slides yesterday.  But that too is valuable.  And the one productive slide, even though it had only seven specimens, provides what may turn out to be a key piece of knowledge about the early evolution of silicoflagellates.

I will try to get back on track with this blog and get some more pictures up in the next couple of days.

There is a neat local radio station, KZUM – “community radio.”  Basically a little of everything, something like NPR but all done by local - OK call them amateurs – done for the love of something (that is, after all, the epistemology of “amateur”).  The other day there was an hour dedicated to pipe organ music.  Another day it is an hour of native American drumming.  Unfortunately, the political hours are all extremely left-wing, which surely dilutes their influence in a fairly Red state. 

   The station is having management and funding problems.  This past week was their fundraising week, and apparently some of the hours are lucky to get one or two pledges – they keep thanking the same caller again and again but that was the only caller they had.  You have to wonder if KZUM at any one time has fifty people tuning in.  But still, it is a delightful alternative to what we usualyy have on the radio.  The eclectic nature of the offers reminds us of what else is out there.

  I am not really into pipe organs, but do like to listen to something different.   There are limits — I seem to like the older stuff, whatever that may be.  Maybe I am showing biases – surely I am! – but the rap and New Age seems to lack subtlety and “heart”.  I am no fan of classical music, but I can appreciate the skill that it takes to get all those elements in sinc, and the technical proficiency of each person in the group. 

   Rap has a beat that is likely simply repeated endlessly in an electrical loop as a background track without even live musicians playing throughout the musical number.  It represents more a comic or political diatribe than a piece of serious music.  And what is this thing with guitars!  Cannot somebody innovate with something different – imagine what a mandolin or fiddle or hammered dulcimer could contribute to rock and roll!  My students bombard me with this on our field trips, and of course they roll their eyes if I suggest some bluegrass or celtic or Mike Oldfield (“Tubular Bells”). 

   KZUM provides an awareness of what else is out there.  The problem of course is that our emphasis on popular culture means that hardly anybody but the few pencil necked geeks who are us – yes that is likely you if you reading this blog! – bothers to listen.  I hope they make it, I have sent in my $20, they have bluegrass hour tonight.

  I have not been getting in a blog every day as literally there is so much to do!  I am still trying to count two or three microscope slides each day, at about two hours each, while also doing the reading and writing as I build up posrtions of the initial article.  There are literally about twenty pieces of the article that I want to work on at once.  The day flies by, and I am working long days – typically coming in about 9AM and leaving about 9PM, with only brief lunch and dinner breaks, taking an evening off every third night, more or less (last night watching the Nebraska – Missouri football game on the TV, probably the first full football game I have seen in a bunch of years).

  Yesterday I took a half-day off to assist my colleague in doig an educational program for 84 (!) middle schooler from Lexington, NE, which is about 3 1/2 hours drive from here.  The kids were put into two groups, with Dave and some assistants showing them a geologic site where they could collect (mostly crinoid stem) fossils, while the other half took the tour of the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic Galleries at the Nebraska Museum of Natural History.  This is a great museum, with a long history.  Steve (another colleague) and I, with assistants, showed them the galleries and worked to show the context of time and environment in of the geologic site.  It worked very well. 

  Many of the kids were hispanic and I think likely had never been to a museum like this, and there is always the thought that such a visit can influence their lives.  Such a visit in second grade influenced mine, and the work that I have done with the Northern Maine Museum of Science is done with the hope to pass on that experience for others.  I think that is the justificiation of many of use who work to support museums of any kind.

  (Back to work)

  Included here is picture of what I consider one of the most beautiful of all silicoflagellates – and that is saying something – Corbisema geometrica.  This one was found this morning.  The geometrica group is quite diverse, now split into several species.  There is an almost round basal ring and three struts that rather than meet at a point support a plate.  My heart quickens a little every time I see one. 

  Am back to counting slides in the Horton River section of north Canada, while making taxonomic notes for the systematics section of the resulting paper.  I am in a sectio nwith few surprises, perhaps some 8 taxa altogether.  My main interest as I do my counts is developing a better understanding of this geometrica group.

  The Lincoln Nebraska Rotary #14 auction was interesting and much in contrast to the Presque Isle auction that have assisted in for the past nine years.  The auction here is pretty much a black coat and tie affair, with perhaps almost 1000 people paying for a dinner and seat at the old train station here in the city.  There were about a half-dozen tables of silent auction items and 29 live auction items.  Most of the live auction items with week long condos at some beachish resort, but there was also a baby grand piano, jewelry, a basketball setup and so forth.  The auctioneer was one of those types that speaks and a rapid fire manner to perhaps drive up the enthusiasm and price — I could never understand the price until the item was knocked down.  They raised $90,000 (last year they raised $140K).

  Now $90,000 is a lot of money, but I must say that this auction made me better appreciate what we do in Presque Isle.  The club here has 300+ members – three times the size of our club – and the average member probably makes several times the income of the members of our Maine Club.  We raise some $25-30K in our three-day TV auction, plus maybe that much more for our special project for the year.  Our auction earnings are a third those of this Lincoln club, for a third as many members.  But considering the significantly lower income of our area we do darn well.  We also have a much younger club – at the RotaryAuction here I saw very few people of an age that me.

  ON Saturday morning I visited the local farmers market, which is excellent.  This was also a good opportunity to better know the middle parts of the city.  I am on Saturdays and Sunday trying to get in one day of research, and a day of exploring.  It is the only time off that I have been taking so far from the microscope and writing (more microscope now, more writing later).  I did one microscope slide on Saturday and two on Sunday (with likely a third still to do), plus scanned others.  I am now out of the really interesting stuff for the present and back to counting some of the less productive slides that provide background and contexts.  On the two slides that I have examined today I have found perhaps ten, all fragmentary, specimens.

Right, I neglected to do a post yesterday!  I was so entranced by what I was seeing on the scope.  Back to my “crazy things” assemblage, but in a different sample at a different location that were I encountered them a week ago.  Weird things, at least one new species.  My colleague in Poland is taking SEM (scanning electron microscope) pictures that are to die for, though maybe a picture will have to wait for formal publication. 

Tonight I attend the local Rotary Club (#14) fundraising auction.  It will be much different than the auction we put on in Presque Isle.

The real bread-and-butter of science is DATA.  Much of my first two weeks here was getting up to speed on technology, literature, facilities, people and beginning work on the various computer files – texonomy systematics, range chart, pictures, etc.  I analysed nine slides in those two weeks as I gradually worked on my knowledge and species concepts.  The training wheels are now coming off and I am working to gather data. 

This means counting silicoflagellates.  Since silicos are not overly common I count all specimens in a microscope slide.  Yes, the slide is small, but my microscope field of view is much much smaller.  It takes about two hours to count a slide.  Yesterday I counted four slides – about 850 slecimens – working steadily from 9AM to 9PM.  Today as I write this it is 3:30 and I am half-way through my third slide, so hopefully four slides done today. 

The stratigraphic interval that I am presently counting is less interesting than some of the material lower in section that I viewed earlier.  I want to get some of the picture before I get back to the more interesting stuff, though I must say that what I am looking through has plenty of interest.  I am flagging some groups for more detailed study and taking many pictures, about 80 yesterday.  There are several potential new species or interesting environmental indicators.  The bulb-things that I illustrated in yesterday’s blog may be worthy of a separate article, as I am finding these bulbs in several taxa and associated with other evidence of environmental stress.  An idea for another paper comes up about every day; if only the papers could be written so quickly.

So, break finished, back to counting.  Thus far in this slide I have counted about a hundred specimens, with about ten species.  For some of these species I am counting various variants separately, and distinguishing between those that have 5 vs. 6 sides, small spines or no spines, and so forth, so maybe twenty separate categories in this slide.  The cast varies from slide to slide of course due to evolution and environmental change.  And of course, I need to figure out which is which…