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In Part One, we looked at the tale of the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens up to and shortly after this cataclysmic event. The Monday after the Sunday fireworks, fellow Geography Department graduate student Mike Farrell and I started looking up information about a mountain we had never heard of. I […]
Do you need to be a little bit crazy to be a volcanologist? I used to show a video to my Geography / Earth Science classes that featured a French couple named Katia and Maurice Krafft. As he talked about what it is like to work on an active volcano, Maurice described the chaotic environment […]
It has been a while since we did a quiz to shake up the old grey matter, and thanks to our friends at AARP magazine, we have another fun one to share. We tacked on a few questions with local appeal and (as we have done in the past), the answers begin near the […]
We begin this month’s observations with a term that was unfamiliar to me. Maybe it has just slipped my mind as it only takes place every 18.6 years, but the event is known as ‘lunistice’ (also called a ‘lunar standstill’). Lunistice is kind of like a ‘solstice’ only it involves the Moon and not the […]
When the St. Lawrence Seaway was constructed in the 1950s, it opened a whole new era of commerce stretching from the Atlantic coast all the way to Duluth, Minnesota. It also rolled out the red carpet for a host of invasive species. Some (like the sea lamprey) were already here by then while others […]
From the Vaults: First Heard In August of 2025, I was reading an interesting article by ‘Metal’ Tim Henderson. He was interviewing Dave Meniketti from the band Y&T when the subject of Ozzy Osbourne’s last performance with Black Sabbath came up. Meniketti told Henderson he missed the big show in Birmingham on July 5, […]
One of my favorite Steve Earl songs is Copperhead Road. If I had an ounce of song writing ability in me, I would put the Earl touch on a tune called Papin Road, but I don’t. Everytime I drive down that stretch of gravel road, Earl’s song pops into my head. That name no […]
In the late spring of 2025, we ordered the last pieces of our puzzle. The ‘puzzle’ was our four year quest to obtain a new frequency (91.5 FM) for WOAS-FM and the equipment we would need to go forward. Losing the old frequency had been quite a shocking surprise back in 2021. In the […]
“Don’t Make Promises You Can’t Keep,” was written by Tim Harden and it became one of Gary Puckett and the Union Gap’s many hits. Technically, it was the B-side of Woman Woman, but it was still a great song and ended up on their Greatest Hits LP. The title is also a line I […]
In the summer of 2025, we said ‘good bye’ to a Monarch. No, not the royal kind. I am talking about our trusty Monarch wood burning furnace. They discontinued making these amazing units some time ago, but we were blessed to have had such a reliable workhorse of a heating unit for 46 winters. Perhaps […]