I've just finished reading David Williams' recently published book, Stories in Stone: Travels Through Urban Geology, a title following on from David's eponymous blog and website. It's a great read that satisfies the two primary criteria for non-fiction: informative and entertaining, and there will be more on the book later (see below). As I was reading it, I was struck by the echoes and relationships with my own book, and the archaic word intercalations for some reason struck me as appropriate. It's not archaic in the sense of being no longer in use, but its appearances tend to be rare and rarified - including in geology. I remember standing in front of outcrops and scribbling in my field notebook "blocky sandstones, 10-15 cms, occasional thin shale/siltstone intercalations." I could, in reality, just as well have written "interbeds," since all I was describing was regularly alternating layers of sandstone and shale; but "intercalations" lent gravitas to the description. It's an interesting word - the "inter" part is obvious, but it surprised me to discover that the "calation" is from the same Latin origin as "calendar," and, in turn, "call." The Latin verb intercalare meant to proclaim, and reflects the calling in of accounts on the first day of the month - calends - to be recorded in the calendar, or account book. Amongst other applications, the word has come to be used for inserting extra days into the calendar, as in "February has an intercalary day every four years." Various scientific disciplines have appropriated the word "intercalate" as an alternative for the more prosaic "insert" or "interleave" - molecules can be intercalated with each other, as can various biological items.
So, as I was reading David's book, the image came to me of the connections between Stories in Stone and Sand as interwoven, interleaved, intercalated. It's interesting to me that both of us regard story as critical, and David weaves fascinating stories around the variety of building stones that he has chosen (surely a difficult culling task). But furthermore, I suppose in part because I am attuned to any occurrence of the word "sand" - an obsession which, literally, is satisfied on a daily basis by even a cursory scan of the media, - I was conscious of the recurring role of sand in David's stories. Not just the obvious ones of sandstone as building material - the Brownstones of New York (which featured also in my book) - but in the sense that even the great limestone and marble building stones (including the Carrara), began life as sand banks of biogenic materials and ooliths in balmy tropical seas, that it's intercalated layers of storm-deposited sand that made the extraction of blocks of Florida's coquina stone easier, that, from ancient Egyptian to relatively recent times, sand has provided the abrasive for cutting even the toughest building stones, and that sand can be an unwelcome intruder, a spoiler of the finest quality slate. Geological tales - the discovery of dinosaur footprints by Pliny Moody in the Massachusetts sandstone that told the story of separating continents, James Hutton's revolutionary insights at Siccar Point - feature in both books: it just seems that there are some episodes, some stories, that provide unparalleled access to our understanding of our planet.
The stone stories of David's book will be further explored over the next few weeks by virtue of a blogging innovation - a virtual book tour. The schedule of events is listed at http://stories-in-stone.blogspot.com/2009/08/virtual-book-tour-of-stories-in-stone.html, starting with Brian and Clastic Detritus - http://clasticdetritus.com/2009/08/14/friday-field-foto-89-triassic-sandstones-in-brooklyn-ny/. I am very much looking forward to David's visit to Through the Sandglass at the end of this month.
[California turbidites used in the image at the head of this blog courtesy Earth Science World Image Bank http://www.earthscienceworld.org/images, Copyright © Marli Miller, University of Oregon]
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