By Paul J. Hubley, P.Geo. Part I – Introduction I write this from the floors of ancient seas, drinking connate groundwater filtered through Ordovician limestones of the Iapetus Ocean mixed with proglacial Champlain Sea water. In all things and over vast expanses of time we are connected. – Paul Hubley, inspired by a passage in Geo-Logic (Frodeman 2003). Part II – Bilbo Baggins, Foucault, and Donald Rumsfeld  “It’s a dangerous business Frodo, going out your front door, you step onto the road and if you don’t keep your feet there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to” – Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit. J.R.R.Tolkien. Bilbo Baggins was speaking from his hard-earned wisdom, entitling his book “There And Back Again, A Hobbit’s Tale”. On the surface it is an episodic tale involving the mysteries of earth and perhaps an early awareness of risk management. But really it’s about relationships. From the title we can relate something of the adventure to our own lives – these days we fill time with our “to’ing” and “fro’ing”, physically and emotionally – going here, coming back, going there, and coming back, often with subtle changes, hopefully mainly positive changes. Stand in one place for long enough and you will observe the back and forth of your life and that of your environment. Losing wallets, finding wallets, losing pens, finding pencils, losing faith in one, restoring faith through another. Birds migrating south, birds migrating north, water heaping onto shore, water receding, daylight coming and going. Back and forth. Repeated. Someone unfortunate enough to experience a hurricane feels the strong winds from one direction followed by calm followed by strong winds from the other direction – back and forth, possibly without ever having the perspective of seeing its regional rotation. At particular scales, circularity may be invisible, linearity is unclear – life can appear as a pendulum.  But what appears to be a There and Back Again pendulum effect on a narrow perspective is typically “corrected” by geoscientists that have come to understand that processes occur on broad cycles, often repetitive, over many millennia and over vast areas. But here we’re going to ignore all of that and do the dangerous business of going out the front door for a moment, exploring the pendulum from another perspective.  “A pendulum is a tool that is used to connect to your higher self and ‘source’ by asking questions to help guide, clarify, and raise your awareness.” reiki healer Kelsey Patel After cleansing the pendulum and preparing questions relative to your life, Patel instructs us to (i) learn how the pendulum moves; (ii) start with what you know; and (iii) remain open (that’s a tough one for us..). In the mid 19th century it was already widely established in science circles that the Earth was round and rotating, but definitive proof was lacking. Jean Bernard Léon Foucault’s pendulum (Foucault’s Pendulum) provided a simple and visual connection between theory and demonstration that was repeatable by anyone. Its key contribution was the insight it provided to a vast audience, especially those from other entry points to the idea: non-scientist, child, believer and skeptic alike. For the first time this was demonstrable proof of theory that could now be seen and felt and readily repeated – it provided needed perspective to the public. These are now found in learning institutions throughout the world. Foucault’s Pendulum exploits the differential between the faster velocity of rotation near the equator and the slower velocity closer to the poles. One of these pendulums activated far enough from the equator will reveal a slow but easily measurable rotation (about 270 degrees over a day of operation in Paris, for example). This doesn’t work at the equator, as there is no speed differential.  Reiki healer Patel asks us to go with what we know. One thing I know is that I don’t know reiki healing. But when I read the following nugget I always feel better about struggling with the vastness of the unknown: Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones. Donald Rumsfeld Geoscientists know a lot about technical things and are particularly good at knowing known knowns – either within geoscience or connecting to other technical sciency and engineery things. Also, we are slowly and collectively developing an awareness that we (most of us, me included) don’t know as much about the people sciences (humanities and philosophy, etc.) but that we should – a growing awareness of the known unknowns, if you will.  Geo-Logic (Frodeman, 2003) attempts to connect geoscience to philosophy, which is about as unknown unknown as some of us with sciency backgrounds can get. He postulates that “Geologic” seeing is poetic vision constrained by the sobriety of science, a series of daring imaginative leaps disciplined by examination and measurement.  I don’t know about daring but let’s move slightly in that direction for a short time. Part III – Familial Geoscience If you look up this term in an online dictionary you find all sorts of things, like familiar geology, family as it relates to geologic formations, etc., but no Familial Geology or Familial Geoscience. I did not see a definition so I propose one here. How about this: Familial Geology is the relationality of members of a familiar group with the landscape – how relationships are fostered, change and develop related to specific geological processes, geological events or areas of geological significance, etc. There are probably plenty of modern examples of families that episodically go rock collecting together, strengthening bonds between each other