Menomonie Roots

When I graduated from Menomonie High School in 1979, I had no inkling that I would one day have a career as a geologist studying tectonics, earthquakes and mountain building in remote places around the world.

In fact, I didn’t think of myself as a science type at all — though perhaps a seed was planted in my mind by Kay Barnard, who taught 8^th grade physical science. In her class, I recall making a ‘flip-book’ on index cards showing how the ancient continent of Pangaea had formed and then split apart. Other than that brief window into the wonders of the planet, I don’t remember geology being the focus of any other class.

The faculty members who had the most influence on me at MHS were Jean O’Neill and Elwyn Hendrickson, who taught English, and Margaret Hjeltness, who taught German (though she herself was Swedish). They shared their love of books and literature with so many students over the decades. In retrospect, I realize how hard their jobs were and value more than ever their adherence to high standards.

Community and Culture

In the 70s, Menomonie had a thriving counter-cultural community of artists and free-thinkers, and early exposure to creative and open-minded people was formative for me. Playing in the pit orchestra for productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas at the Mabel Tainter theatre remains a golden memory. The public library, which was also in the Mabel Tainter building, felt like the center of the cosmos.

My parents, James and Gloria Bjornerud, both worked at Stout. My mother was in administration (for many years, her office was in the old Stout Tower building) and my father was a faculty member in the ‘Materials and Processes’ department. An expert in all things related to wood, he taught classes in wood technology, design, and building construction. My parents often welcomed international students to our house in the woods close to the Red Cedar River near Downsville, giving my sister and me an early glimpse of the wider world.

 Discovery Events

I discovered geology in my first term in college, when I took an introductory course primarily to fulfill a lab science requirement. I soon found that it was a different kind science than I had previously been exposed to, requiring a kind of whole-brain thinking I hadn’t encountered before.  It applied scholarly habits one associates with the study of literature to the examination of rocks.Its particular form of inferential logic demanded a vivid but disciplined imagination: the capacity for visualization across great expanses of time and space. I graduated from the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor’s degree in geophysics and then went on to graduate study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Traveling the Globe

My dissertation research took me to the high arctic archipelago of Svalbard, north of mainland Norway, where I spent several summers mapping rocks that represent the northernmost extension of the Appalachian-Caledonian Mountain chain — formed during the assembly of the supercontinent Pangaea. This led to work in the Canadian arctic (Ellesmere Island) with the Geological Survey of Canada, a post-doctoral fellowship at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State, and faculty positions first at Miami of Ohio and then Lawrence University in Appleton, where I am a professor of geosciences and environmental studies.

My academic career has allowed my three sons and me to explore the world together; thanks to sabbaticals and international teaching opportunities, we’ve lived in Norway, London, New Zealand and Italy. With my students, I continue to study the complex geology of the Lake Superior region and I have worked with the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission to challenge mining projects that threatened the waters of Lake Superior.

Sharing with the World

In the last decade or so, I’ve also been writing about geology for non-specialist audiences. I’ve contributed articles to The New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times, and Wired, among other publications, and have published several books for popular audiences: Reading the Rocks, Timefulness, Geopedia, and, most recently, Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks, which is partly memoir, with each chapter focused on a particular rock type that I was either living on or studying at a certain stage in my life.  The first chapter is about growing up in Menomonie, on Cambrian-age sandstones – the rock used for the Mabel Tainter building.

Conclusions

Although my career in geology has taken me to far-flung places around the globe, the hilly landscape of the Menomonie area remains my point of reference, my home ground. I’m grateful to the people who made it such a culturally rich place to grow up.

Judy Foust is a retired longtime 7th Grade Reading Specialist at Menomonie Middle School. To submit info to her or to request an interview she may be contacted at [email protected].

Marcia at Cactus Rock near New London

Marcia with her dad James, sister Nita along with their dog and two cats.
(Taken in ‘78 or ‘79)