This is a guest post by Mike Bendzela.

"Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?" (Ecclesiastes)

I have a lasting impression of Geology Professor Craig Bond Hatfield, University of Toledo, circa 1980: a no-nonsense man in white shirt and skinny tie, flattop buzz cut, and tortoise-shell glasses. At the outset of each class, he would draw a map of North America's coastline as it currently looks in freehand on the blackboard, and then lecture us on the past coastlines and sedimentary basins of the continent. To have several hundred million years collapsed into a few weeks of Hatfield’s course in Historical Geology is about as close as I’ve come to a mystical experience.

"One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever."