My Blog

I visited this museum on February 8 as one of the highlights of my week-long visit to Tucson for the various mineral and fossil shows. I facilitated the transfer of a large collection of Bisbee copper minerals from the Kentucky Science Center to the Bisbee Mining & History Museum. The KSC collection dates from the early days of Bisbee mining; the museum folks indicate most specimens are from the Holbrook Mine, with several from the Czar Mine. Here are a few photos from the visit.

Alan Goldstein, Ed Jacoby, and Dave Eicher stand at the entrance to the museum.

Annie Larkin, the museum director, poses with a few of the KSC Bisbee minerals. Most are still waiting to be cleaned.

Annie Larkin, the museum director, and I stand with the KSC minerals in the two rows between us. The other minerals are from their collections.

An azurite specimen from Bisbee, about 3″ across, for the Tucson Show display.

A hammer coated with post-mine (obviously!) native copper deposited by groundwater. Native copper is not found in the deposits at Bisbee. Other specimens include azurite on malachite, turquoise, and another late-native copper.

A color-coded map of the copper mines around Bisbee. There are about 2,000 miles of tunnels! (Most are flooded.) The colors represent different mines. The last underground mine shut down in 1975.

Exhibit to give visitors an idea of the beauty of the caves inside the mountains. Nothing like around Kentucky!

Bisbee as seen from US 80 overlook. This town was built with brick to encourage permanence of miners and families with businesses to support everyone.

My mother-in-law, Martha Meyer, passed away on December 13 at 99. She was a woman who didn’t have a mean bone in her body. She lived in her second-floor condo until last December.

Photo above: Martha Meyer demolishing Emily’s pumpkin pie about two weeks before she passed.

I met her when I started dating Debbie in 1986. After her husband, Herb, passed away, she accompanied us on quite a few vacations from coast to coast. She contributed financially, allowing us to do more than would have been possible on our family’s budget.

Debbie introduced her to the public relations person at Asbury University, a religious college in Wilmore, KY. Martha’s great uncle loaned the university money to rebuild after the 1905 fire destroyed most of the campus. He was a mason and helped with the construction of the new buildings – all of which still stand over 100 years later (photo below). The university honored her as a matriarch and treated her like a queen. She had an “aw shucks” attitude, overwhelmed by the attention.

Photo above: Martha looking at scrapbook with Debbie and Asbury folks look on.

Photo above: “Grandpa” Askin’s (Martha’s great uncle) with a masonry trowel in hand, standing before an Asbury College building he helped build in about 1913.

I retired from the Falls of the Ohio State Park on the 32nd anniversary of my being hired. (That’s Nov. 8, 1993.) Over the last 31 years, I filled a niche that included education, collections (as in specimens and artifacts, not money), developed the volunteer program, writing, special events and programs, and more.

The Falls of the Ohio is one of those unique places on our planet. It’s a one-of-a-kind location where you can walk on a Devonian sea floor (I call it dry snorkeling) when the river is low. My self-taught interest in corals enabled me to identify most of the ~150 species documented in the Devonian around the Falls. That’s the greatest in diversity, equal only to the Eifel Valley in Germany, which is the same age.

This website explores the wondrous diversity on my “Fossils” pages. Now that I’ve got more free time, I will flesh out the contact with more species photographs. I will explore fossils in blogs and articles. And yes, I will add content in astronomy, writing, family history, and more. So welcome to what I hope to be an informative collection of resources across a spectrum of interests.

I’m standing at ‘chicken rock,’ a Devonian boulder only accessible a couple of days a year at the Falls of the Ohio.

Meet the Paleontologist and Paleontology Explorer were designed to introduce visitors to a wide variety of paleontology-themed programs beginning in 2015. I hope Dale Brown continues it until my replacement is hired. After that, who knows?

What can you do with those heavy, solid geodes? How about geode bowling? This activity was invented for the Indiana State Fair and adopted for Digging the Past. Rather than knock them all down, one just has to topple one driftwood pin to get a prize.

I met all sorts of interesting people over the last 40 years (almost 8 at the museum/science center in Louisville). Certainly, one of the most colorful was ‘Bluey’, the Indianapolis Colts mascot. On Christmas Day, 1993, I gave a tour of the new Interpretive Center to Diane Sawyer and her mother. Walter Cronkite visited on my day off… oh, well.

The DNR Division of Communications created a short video from a recent interview. It was a byproduct of a series of videos filmed to record my institutional knowledge from 31 years at the Falls of the Ohio State Park. (I was the second full-timer hired.) This is the first time a video has been created for a retiring employee; some people worked decades longer than I.

I want to spend less time dealing with traffic and the chain of command typical in government work, and more time doing what I want to do when I want to do it. I wrote a list of activities in six categories: geology, astronomy, home & garden, volunteering, traveling, and writing. They are in no particular order, and categories overlap. In fact, the list has some 50 different objectives to accomplish, but it’s not for the next year – it’s a “20-year plan!”

In the weeks that remain, my big focus will be on completing tasks that will make my absence less burdensome for the park manager and my eventual replacement. Yes, I will work with school groups – we’ve got them daily for the next two months. But thanks to volunteers and Nick Feltner, the seasonal naturalist, that load is shared.

In November, I’ll be set up at the Kyana Geological Society annual show in Crestwood, KY. Here is the flyer:

The date for my driveway sale is July 12 & 13, 2025**. Minerals from the collections of Steve Garza, David Horn, and Bob Robinson will be set on tables in my driveway and wherever else room is needed. I expect to have 100+ flats out. Everything is 50% retail, payable with cash, check, or credit card.

** Subject to postponement if there is a decent chance of rain. Cardboard boxes and water are a bad combination.

The show will run from 9 to 5 both days. Street parking is available since my driveway is full of tables. Details will be sent out by email: the address on my “Contact” page. It’s with or without the “1”. That’s better than messaging me on my Facebook page.

My 51st article for Astronomy magazine, “Take a Trip to the North Celestial Pole,” is forthcoming in the November 2025 issue. I just got the author’s copy. I’ve been writing for them since 1981. The backstory – the editor contacted me, wondering why I hadn’t signed the contract. I’m usually on top of it. It turns out they sent it to my old email address, which I can no longer access. So I reminded her of the email address I’ve been using for two years. (A different department in the magazine office deals with work orders.) Short story, shorter. I wrote this article over two evenings and submitted it. I’ve written an article in one sitting before, but that’s not my preference!

This is the last issue with my friend David J. Eicher at the helm as Editor-in-Chief. He retired recently, and I’m going to join him in “retirement land” in November.

I participated in the early June 18th annual Ben E. Clement Mineral Museum show in Marion, Kentucky. Attendance was among the best I can recall; it was almost crowded on Saturday for several hours, and Sunday morning was busy, too. The museum set a single-day record with admissions and gift shop sales. Rural museums always struggle to stay afloat, so the show plays a critical role in covering expenses during quiet seasons when tourism is low.

When I retire from the Falls of the Ohio State Park in early November, I will increase my volunteering for the Clement Museum. It’s challenging living 3 1/2 hours away, but I’ve got a place to stay, even with the passing of my long-time friend Bill Frazer earlier this year. This is one of America’s must-see mineral museums for anyone who likes minerals. The new Charlie Ruble collection room (finished weeks before the show) shows beautiful worldwide minerals, complementing the large collection of Illinois-Kentucky fluorspar district specimens. Newly acquired minerals from the Kentucky Science Center also add to the experience.

Panorama at the Clement Museum show in Fohs Hall, June 7, 2025.

Two vendors on the stage in Fohs Hall.

I planned to have the Garza-Horn-Robinson collection driveway sale the weekend after the Clement Show (while I had flats of specimens easily accessible), but Mother Nature nixed those plans. The sale is rescheduled for July 12 & 13.

In September 2024, I was interviewed for a podcast focusing on the Falls of the Ohio State Park. It is part of a series called IN the Parks, one that focuses on Indiana State Parks. The podcast runs 32 minutes. Enjoy!

Happy 2025! I plan to post more blogs and add content to this website. However, it will garner more attention after I retire in November. The start January, I am posting several photos and a newspaper article related to the Ohio River’s greatest flood in January 1937. These photos are part of the family history I’m scanning and sharing.

Cannelton Indiana at the height of the 1937 flood. My grandparents’ house is on the upper right edge. It has a sloped roof. It was above the crest.

Flooded houses closer to the river channel in January 1937.

A newspaper article in February 1937 – about my grandfather who accurately predicted the crest in Cannelton, Indiana.