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Clojure eXchange 2016, Thursday, 1st - Friday, 2nd December at CodeNode, London. skillsmatter.com/conferences/7430-clojure-exchange-2016 Images copyright www.edtelling.com
Khris Royal & Dark Matter
LEAF Festival - October 2012
Black Mountain, North Carolina
© Copyright David J. Simchock
I have no idea what this is, just that it's really cool looking and I don't intend to touch it. eldritch horror, perhaps?
Agile Testing & BDD eXchange 10th-11th November 2016, Code Node, London. skillsmatter.com/conferences/7428-agile-testing-and-bdd-e.... Images copyright www.edtelling.com
Super Duper Super7 pal Le Merde is coming back to Super7 for his fourth solo art show, Whatsa Matter. Le Merde has blown us away year after year, and we expect this time to be no exception. Whatsa Matter? Oh, my brain just exploded.
Satruday, May 15th, 7pm Pacific
Super7 Store, 1628 Post St, SF / CA
"Why Accountability Matters" -- a discussion with Texas Commissioner of Education Robert Scott at The Texas Tribune Festival on Sept. 25, 2011.
µCon 2016: The Microservices Conference. skillsmatter.com/conferences/7412-con-2016-the-microservi.... Images copyright www.edtelling.com
UMass Boston hosted the 6th Annual Media Matters Writing Conference for middle and high school students, sponsored by the university and the Boston Globe, on Nov. 4-5.
Progressive F# Tutorials 2016. Monday, 5th - Tuesday, 6th December at CodeNode, London. skillsmatter.com/conferences/7431-progressive-f-sharp-tut.... Images copyright www.edtelling.com
Clojure eXchange 2018. Code Node, London. skillsmatter.com/conferences/10459-clojure-exchange-2018. Images Copyright www.tellingphotography.com
Khris Royal & Dark Matter
LEAF Festival - October 2012
Black Mountain, North Carolina
© Copyright David J. Simchock
Progressive F# Tutorials 2016. Monday, 5th - Tuesday, 6th December at CodeNode, London. skillsmatter.com/conferences/7431-progressive-f-sharp-tut.... Images copyright www.edtelling.com
All photos taken with consent at different protests around Los Angeles, CA.
To learn more and support the Black Lives Matter movement visit blacklivesmatter.carrd.co/
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor" -Desmond Tutu
Taken from the motel/campground facility located on the east side of Route 118 and just south of Indian Head Road. It was then the Big Bend Motor Inn but is now the Big Bend Station.
Facing north-northwestward.
Welcome to the Chihuahuan-Desert hamlet of Study Butte. Some take it to be part of Terlingua; some consider it a separate town. And still others consider it both.
From what I understand, the US Census Bureau deems it a distinct community of its own. But the US Postal Service demarcates everything from distant Lajitas through the Terlingua ghost town to Study Butte as Terlingua, with a single zip code. And, to confuse the matter even more, the Terlingua, Texas post office building is located here in Study Butte. And all the businesses situated in Study Butte, following suit, say they're located in Terlingua, which is 5 mi / 8 km to the southwest. Geez Louise. Talk about a geographically dysfunctional region.
Still, it's not commercially dysfunctional, and as usual in America that's all that really matters. Because it’s on the main drag into Big Bend National Park, the lodging facilities and restaurants at this crossroads of Route 170 and 118 cater to a large number of transient turistas who, like me, didn't have the foresight to book several thousand years in advance to get a room in the park's Chisos Mountains Lodge.
And indeed this was my base of operations for the Big Bend segment of the Trans-Pecos tour I led back in 2002. My group was of sufficient seniority to opt for motel accommodations, but because we were visiting during Spring Break, there were also a lot of college students present who were camping in tents and RVs. From what I saw, those kids did very little studying at Study Butte.
Apropos of that, the place is actually pronounced STEW-dee (not the usual STUH-dee) BYOOT (or BEUT, as in beauty). The offbeat rendering of the first word derives from Will Study, the developer of a mine that operated here until 1972.
And concerning the second word. Buttes, not to be confused with or pronounced like human posteriors, are flat-topped and steep-sided hills. As a general rule, they’re less than 1 mi / 1.6 km wide. If they’re larger than that, they’re called mesas instead. Buttes and mesas are iconic parts of the American West, and are often the most interesting things to be seen in cowboy movies.
The Study Butte settlement lies at the eastern edge of the Terlingua Quicksilver District, formerly a zone of great economic importance due to the large-scale mining of cinnabar and other mercury ores that can be found in its bedrock. Of the secondary minerals found in this region, my favorite is terlinguaite. But I can’t imagine a metal I’d ever be less eager to dig for. Mine workers in the district suffered horrendous effects of mercury poisoning, up to and including premature death.
In a later post I will feature the town's namesake landform. But the prominent hill pictured in this shot is not Study Butte. Nor is it any other butte. Its summit is much too sharp, irregular, and jagged. In fact, it’s Bee Mountain, though it shouldn't be confused with the peak of the same moniker located in the national park, about 10.7 mi / 17.2 km to the southeast of here.
The town of Study Butte is underlain by claystone and sandstone of the Upper Cretaceous Pen Formation. However, Bee Mountain and the other hills in the area are composed of younger, Eocene igneous units of varying composition that were originally bodies of magma injected into the host sedimentary rock. This magma cooled and formed such intrusions as:
- stocks, large, bloblike masses;
- sills, flat-lying sheets that squeezed their way between sedimentary strata;
- dikes, also shaped like sheets or walls but more vertically oriented; and
- laccoliths, which resemble sills but are convex upward in the center and therefore lens-shaped,
Eventually, some of these intrusions were exposed by erosion. Made of rock harder and more resistant than the Pen beds, they became the high points of the local topography.
According to the third source cited below, Bee Mountain is specifically made of sodic trachyte. This rock type is rather light-colored and contains a lot of sodium feldspar.
The very narrow and spinelike projections visible on this side of the hill remind me of a swarm of dikes, though my references do not mention that. Also, the fracture patterns in the trachyte suggest columnar jointing, a feature of cooling lavas and magma bodies emplaced close to the surface.
There’s even some interesting geology in the parking lot. See the flagstones that have been set on edge to mark the edge of the pavement? I’d guess they were taken from the flaggy limestone beds of the Boquillas Formation. Also Late Cretaceous in age, it underlies the Pen. It’s exposed at the surface a little to the west of here, over Terlingua-way. I reckon that last phrase sounded like gen-yoo-wine cowboy talk.
Main Sources for This Essay
- Fallin, J. A. Tony. Hydrogeology of the Terlingua Area, Texas. Report 323. Austin, TX: Texas Water Development Board, 1990.
- MacLeod, William. Big Bend Vistas: Journeys through Big Bend National Park. 3rd ed. Fort Worth, TX: TCU Press, 2017.
- Pausé. Paul H. and R. Gay Spears, eds. Geology of the Big Bend Area and Solitario Dome, Texas. Field Trip Guidebook. Publication 86-82. N.p.: West Texas Geological Society, 1986.
- United States Geological Survey. Texas Geology Web Map Viewer. Accessed December 10, 2025. www.usgs.gov/tools/texas-geology-web-map-viewer,
To see the other photos and descriptions in this series, visit my Exploring Brewster County album.
FullStack eXchange 27-28th July 2022, Leonardo Royal Hotel, 10 Godliman St, London. Images Copyright www.tellingphotography.com
Clojure eXchange 2016, Thursday, 1st - Friday, 2nd December at CodeNode, London. skillsmatter.com/conferences/7430-clojure-exchange-2016 Images copyright www.edtelling.com
Clojure eXchange 2016, Thursday, 1st - Friday, 2nd December at CodeNode, London. skillsmatter.com/conferences/7430-clojure-exchange-2016 Images copyright www.edtelling.com
Clojure eXchange 2016, Thursday, 1st - Friday, 2nd December at CodeNode, London. skillsmatter.com/conferences/7430-clojure-exchange-2016 Images copyright www.edtelling.com
FullStack eXchange 27-28th July 2022, Leonardo Royal Hotel, 10 Godliman St, London. Images Copyright www.tellingphotography.com