Westport Library Creative Writing Group
Apr
19
4:00 PM16:00

Westport Library Creative Writing Group

  • 6 Harris Lane Westport, NY, 12993 United States (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Join us every third Thursday of the month for the Westport Library Creative Writing Group, where we will discuss our authors and short stories, as well as share original works created by group members.

Please bring works by your favorite author/authors to share, and/or original works that you are comfortable sharing with other attendees. 

It is encouraged that original works should take between one to fifteen minutes per reading.

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Westport Library Poetry Group
Apr
5
4:00 PM16:00

Westport Library Poetry Group

  • 6 Harris Lane Westport, NY, 12993 United States (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Join us every first Thursday of the month for the Westport Library Poetry Club, where we will discuss our favorite poems and poets, as well as share original works created by club members.

Please bring works by your favorite poet/poets to share, and/or original works that you are comfortable sharing with other attendees. 

 

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Fossils of the Champlain Valley
Mar
22
6:30 PM18:30

Fossils of the Champlain Valley

Join us 6:30pm, Thursday, March 22nd, for an exciting presentation on the fossils of the Champlain Valley.

This presentation will be given by Ann Budd. Ann is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA. Ann moved to Whallonsburg after she retired. Ann received her Ph.D. in 1978 from the Department of Earth & Planetary Science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and was a professor at the University of Iowa for more than 30 years. Ann is a paleontologist and her expertise is in reef corals and their evolution over the past 60 million years.

Here is a brief summary of Ann’s talk:

The rocks along the shores of Lake Champlain are unique because they contain fossils of the oldest coral reefs. These fossils provide a rare glimpse into what life was like on the earliest coral reefs, with implications for the modern-day coral reef crisis. They are middle Ordovician in age (approximately 460 million years old), and formed in a shallow marine environment that occurred along the edge of the Adirondacks. To the east was open ocean, which was deepening as a chain of volcanoes developed and eventually formed the Green Mountains of Vermont. The climate of the region was subtropical, and the fossils consist of sponges, bryozoans, brachiopods, crinoids, gastropod snails (for example, Maclurites magnus), bivalves, trilobites, and orthocone cephalopods.

            Ann will begin by summarizing the geology of the region (its age, paleogeography, environment, and climate) and the general biology of each of the main fossil groups. Ann will then discuss the ecological communities these organisms formed and compare them with modern-day coral reefs, which are currently threatened by climate change, overfishing, pollution, among other things. Please feel free to bring any fossils you have collected for identification.

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