Geo-CVD (Geosicences Congressional Visits Day) is happening over the next two days, First of all, Geo-CVD is a great opportunity for geoscientists to meet with their legislators in Washington, D.C.  Here is information on it from AGI, the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, and the Seismological Society of America. Participants are spending their first afternoon at a workshop honing their communication skills. They learn how Congress works, how to conduct congressional visits, and about relevant legislation, federal agencies, and programs. By the end of the workshop, participants are given time to craft and practice their message one-on-one with geoscience policy staff.

The September 1983 issue of Geotimes (now EARTH Magazine) featured a cover with an image celebrating when the Smithsonian Institution put its collection of fossils from the Burgess Shale on display for the first time at the National Museum of Natural History. The caption reads as follows: "This year for the first time, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History has put on display specimens from its unequaled collection of fossils from the Burgess Shale (British Columbia). At the entrance to Dinosaur Hall, a diorama, shown in part of the cover of this issue, recreates the muddy bottom where those creatures lived at the base of an algal reef. A clutch of arthropods (Canadaspis perfecta) crawls up the slope on the right where mud has slumped from the terrace, the fatal weakness that will bury—and preserve—an entire population of Middle Cambrian shallow marine fauna. Sponges cling to the reef face. (photo by Chip Clark, the Smithsonian Institution)"

I was scrolling through twitter today when I saw that Dark Horse Comics (they're kind of a big deal) had teamed up with the Oregon Office of Emergency Managment (they're also big deal) to release the free comic book "Without Warning!" a comic book aimed at teaching earthquake preparedness. It's not every day that the geosciences get a comic book from such an esteemed publisher! The book follows the story Angie, a teen in coastal Oregon, who experiences a large magnitude earthquake and tsunami. She navigates through a day in a disaster zone, and takes some of the information she's absorbed over the years, as well as an emergency preparedness kit (initially intended for use in a zombie apocalypse).

For today's #TBT I found the old Geotimes (now EARTH Magazine) cover I picked coincided with the XXIst International Geological Congress, from the 1960 July/August issue. The meeting was held in Copenhagen, and to celebrate this, the Geotimes staff picked an illustration of Niels Stensen, often called by the Latinized form of his name: Nicolaus Steno, (1638-1686). He was born in Copenhagen and is credited for three major concepts in stratigraphy: 1) The Law of Superposition, 2) The Principal of Original Horizontality, and 3) the principal of Lateral Continuity among many other contributions to the geological sciences.