Winchester Academy hosts geologist, author
Marcia Bjornerud will present “Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World” at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 4, at the Waupaca Area Public Library.
Hosted by Winchester Academy, the program is free and open to the public.
Bjornerud contends people are navigating recklessly toward the future using conceptions of time as primitive as maps from the 12th century.
She says society is time illiterate.
Its lack of a sense of temporal proportion underlies many of the intractable environmental and social problems society has created for itself.
As a culture, contemporary people have no instinct for the durations of the great chapters in Earth’s past, the rates of change during previous intervals of environmental instability and the intrinsic time-scales of “natural capital” like groundwater systems.
A clear-eyed view of humanity’s place in time – a habit of mind Bjornerud calls “timefulness” might be a start to an honest discourse about how to address issues like climate change and economic disparity.
Bjornerud believes if more people understood humanity’s shared history and destiny as Earth dwellers, they might treat each other, and the planet, better.
Bjornerud is professor of geology and environmental studies at Lawrence University. She received a bachelor’s in geophysics from the University of Minnesota and her master’s and doctoral degrees in structural geology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
She is a fellow of the Geological Society of America and was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Norway.
She was named Outstanding Educator in 2011 and is the author of two books, “Reading the Rocks” and “Timefulness,” a finalist for the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science and Technology.
Winchester Academy expenses are funded through sponsors and tax-deductible donations.
Bjornerud’s program is sponsored by Carol Elvery and Bruce Inkmann.
For more information about Winchester Academy, visit winchesteracademywaupaca.org, follow it on Facebook or contact Executive Director Ann Buerger Linden at 715-258-2927 or [email protected].