Women on Wednesday Interview

Reproduced below is my interview with the Pubslush blog Women on Wednesday feature. Pubslush is an interesting and potentially useful crowdfunding concept that also contributes to increasing literacy (focused on children) with giving partners (for example, Flying Kites in Kenya). They are a hybrid corporation (that is, they have both profit and non-profit status.) I am not affiliated with Pubslush and have no experience with their publishing arms and therefore cannot say anything about them, either good or bad, but they included an interview with me on their website and I'm grateful for that. My advice is, if you are interested in such a venture and want to be a part of their team, look at the terms carefully, and then ask them for more details before entering into any binding agreement - which you do even if you submit to them.

Here's the link to the interview, and again, my appreciation to Genevieve Little of Pubslush for including me.

Project Heracles: On the Road

will clean windows for pizza

I had always suspected there were fairies (die Feen) in Germany, but I didn't expect to meet one at an Autobahn rest stop on the drive from Cologne to Tiryns, Greece for this year's geophysical measurements. This charming Fee was short on cash and wanted to wash our windshield for lunch money.

After a short piece of road and an even shorter piece of Austria, we crossed the Brenner Pass into Italy. The sun shone as we descended to the Po Valley. I tried to calculate how many of the vineyards we passed were there only to support my annual wine intake, but thought better of it.

approaching the Brenner Pass

Early evening, we arrived in Forli, a sleepy university town just south of Bologna, where we had a scrumptious dinner at a cozy Trattoria. I had homemade ravioli in a cream sauce with green asparagus accompanied by a crisp white wine (only a small portion of vineyard) and one too many Limoncellos.

Our ferry trip next morning from Ancona to Patras proceeded with nary a problem. Rain clouds chased us from the harbor but then gave up and hugged the coastline.We sat on deck all afternoon and again the next day until we docked. The frolicking dolphins showed up during the few minutes I went back to the cabin to freshen up (and disappeared before I returned). I finished reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, our Worlds of Wonder Book Club selection for June. I also read Double Double, a memoir cowritten by one of my favorite mystery authors, Martha Grimes with her son Ken.

 After debarking in Patras, the drive to Tiryns was by turns laborious and grueling due to the perpetual (and seemingly perpetually halted) road construction for most of the way.

Anthemion Guest House, our regular 'field hotel' located on the outskirts of Napflion was there to welcome us, along with its friendly and accommodating proprietor, Sofia. It felt like a home away from home. We met the students for dinner (at Scuola in Napflion) and anticipated the first day of field work.

HERACLES: Archeoseismology in Tiryns, Greece, Year 2

T-3 days and counting to take-off. Okay, geophysical field work is not as exciting as going into space, granted, but for a solid earth geophysicist, the earth's surface - and near surface - is not only The Final Frontier, it's the only frontier. Planetary, oceanic and atmospheric geophysicists - your frontier (and mileage) may vary.

The pile of things we have to load into our departmental VW Caddy is growing by the minute. Literally. Saturday we will hit the road, driving first from Bensberg, Germany to Ancona, Italy (it's where the calf bulges out on Italy's boot). Getting on the car ferry. Then after debarking from Patras, Greece, driving the rest of the way to Tiryns where we hope to arrive on Sunday evening (and immediately descend on Scuola, our favorite Italian restaurant - even if it is in Greece, they have the best Caesar salad I've ever had in Europe).

Last year we had a monster Mercedes van from the Sonderforschungsbereich 'Our Way to Europe' of the Uni Cologne. It even had the motto, 'Our Way to Europe' painted on the side. Given the shaky nature of European relations at the time, we covered it up with our magnetic, Erdbebenstation Bensberg sign, hoping that wouldn't incite the Greek natives to come at us with pitchforks and torches quite as much. This year we're leaner and meaner since we're not taking the seismic refraction equipment with us. The passive seismic stations are still in Greece from last year where they've been recording local events for the past nine months, powered by battery and solar panels.

Our work this year will mainly be concentrated in Midea (we hope - we still haven't gotten the permission to work there - ah, Greek bureaucracy!), another fortified palace ruin on its own hill about 7 km northeast of Tiryns. (updated: we got the permission today - T-2 days. Do they read blogs there?)

The excitement (and the terror) of this year's field work is that we have purchased a differential GPS instrument that we'll be using for the first time in Tiryns/Midea and we'll be 'test driving' our new (also leaner and meaner) 3D laser scanner. Most field geophysicists are uniquely suited to these kind of experiments that I call, 'let's take a bunch of new equipment we've never tested before and go out in the field.' That's not because we're so smart, it's because we're flexible. We have to be. When you have cables and electronic devices and sensitive instruments, combined with weather extremes, precipitation and the unknown variables that always come into play during a measurement, something always goes wrong.

But it pays to be philosophical (translate: stock up on ouzo and Retsina and Mythos).

This is a big reason to look forward to the end of the working day at Tiryns.

 Our measurement plans this year include gravity measurements - this time with an ambitious plan to extend a profile from Tiryns to Midea - passive seismic (H/V), Transient electromagnetics (with a Greek colleague), and the laser scanning.

Dida from Tiryns

Käse from Anthemion House

Barbara from Midea

Our Greek colleagues from the animal world will be waiting for us as well. (Note to self: don't forget the dog and cat treats).






I'll be posting on our progress (with pictures) on the journey to Tiryns (it will be my first time to cross the Italian Alps) and, time permitting, on the measurements.