THE GEOLOGY OF NEW

YORK CITY & THE WORLD: WHAT DOES IT TELL US

ABOUT OURSELVES?

BY JOHN STERN

I have loved geology ever since I first began to

study it in college. But I had no idea how

much this hard, physical science has to do

with our feeling, hoping, intimate selves.

While geology deals with the structure of the

world that is beneath our feet, it is one part of

the larger environment—the world itself and

everything that’s in it—that surrounds us and

affects us all the time. I have learned from

Aesthetic Realism, the education founded by

the great American philosopher, poet, and

critic Eli Siegel, that the way we see that all-

inclusive world affects how our lives will fare,

including how we see love, politics, economics,

our families, and other people.

The beauty of the landscapes we love, the

workings of the geological forces that create

them, and our own deepest hopes are all

explained in this definitive principle, stated by

Mr. Siegel:

All beauty is a making one of opposites,

and the making one of opposites is what

we are going after in ourselves.

Opposites such as surface and depth,

hardness and softness, warmth and coolness

are constantly at work, both in geology and in

each of us during the hours of a day.

What does geology include? Are our own

cherished selves geological in any way? Are

we ever separate from or unaffected by it?

Aesthetic Realism taught me to think about

these questions. Mr. Siegel explains:

We should remember that as we walk

on a lane, let alone a pavement, we are

just as geological as if we were in the

Tertiary Period. The earth, anywhere

you see it, is geology. What’s under the

sofa can be geology….

Geology is the study of the material of

this rotund and revolving globe. And it

does have material, from gold to mud.

The Grand Canyon is geology, but a lane

in Rockland County is also geology. And

the Palisades are, even if they have

remnants of past picnics; geology is still

there. 1

1. Geologically Speaking,

New York Stands for the World

To understand the complex geology of New

York City and its nearby areas, and the

nature of the landscapes it has produced, we

have to be aware of how geologic forces

operate on a global scale. These are powerful

and awe-inspiring. They include solid

continents that move, outpourings of melted

rock, crushing sheets of ice, the simultaneous

building up and wearing away of lofty

mountain chains—all taking place over

billions of years and each leaving its imprints

on what we see in and around New York City.

These include such features as the plains and

beaches of southern New Jersey, Brooklyn,

Queens, and the rest of Long Island (yellow

on the

map); ridges

and high

hills both

gentle and

rugged;

rivers,

including

wide salt

water arms

of the sea,

Aesthetic Realism Looks at New York City: Geology P a g e | 2 2

such as the lower Hudson River; the sheer

cliffs of the Palisades alongside that river

rising as high as 540 feet; fertile

farmlands; a magnificent harbor; extensive

wetlands; and an impressive waterfall in

Paterson, NJ.

How many adventures has any piece of that

land had over geologic time? Consider, for

example, the complicated history of

Manhattan Island:

[It] has been part of the seabed, and lain

for hundreds of millennia in the crust of

the earth, deformed by extreme heat and

pressure. Manhattan has had

volcanoes, spent a dissolute youth in the

tropics, known Africa and Europe on

intimate terms, and crashed…into North

America. Earthquakes, floods,

drownings, and rebirths: Manhattan has

known them all. Some of the rocks on

the island today are over a billion years

old. 2

All this variety arises from the complicated

geology underlying the region’s surfaces. As

The New York Times explains in “Making the

Rocks Speak”:

The stony basement of the metropolitan

area is one of the most complex in the

U.S...in terms of the dazzling variety of

rocks and their intricate [layered]

construction. 3

2. The Drama of Surface and Depth in the Earth

What forces have created and shaped the

landscapes of metropolitan New York? In the

early 1900s, meteorologist Alfred Wegener

theorized that the world’s continents were

once a single supercontinent and then had

drifted apart, but he couldn’t explain what

caused them to move. His hypothesis was at

first widely derided. However, favorable

evidence gradually accumulated over the

years, finally leading in the early 1960s to the

emerging science of plate tectonics, which

has profoundly revolutionized the way

geologists understand our planet. It explains

that extensive segments of earth’s crust, 30 or

more miles thick, called tectonic plates, are

constantly moving toward or away from each

other, mostly at about an inch or more a

year—roughly the rate at which our fingernails

grow.

What propels the plates? The principal force

is convection currents churning ever so slowly

within the white-hot, viscous magmas—melted

rocks—that lie far beneath the crust. These

magmas sometimes rise to the surface, often

spectacularly, through volcanoes.

Where plates collide, or one plate’s edge goes

under an adjoining plate, mountain ranges

such as the Alps, the Andes, and Himalayas

have been raised. Where plates pull apart,

oceans may form, sometimes with mountain

ridges growing far beneath the waters. For

example, the massive, 1500-mile-long

Himalayan chain is still being slowly pushed

up by the continuing northward collision of

the Indian plate with the Asian plate. This

action has, among other complexities,

compressed horizontal sedimentary rocks

originally formed on the sea floor upward into

Aesthetic Realism Looks at New York City: Geology P a g e | 3 3

some portions of the world’s highest peaks.

Indeed, Mt. Everest itself has fossils of marine

creatures near its summit, 29,000 feet in the

air! 4

It’s hard to read such descriptions of the

dynamism of our planet, and what goes on

under its surface—including the physical

contact of plate against plate—without feeling

something akin to ourselves. Who, after all,

hasn’t felt something like this in terms of

conflicting emotions inside themselves?

And then there is this fact from the science of

geology: Occasionally plate edges become

locked for decades or even centuries. Then,

when the strain can no longer be sustained,

there is a gigantic release, generating

immense energy that can cause earthquakes,

such as the one in 2004 that triggered a

tsunami that devastated lands bordering the

Indian Ocean.

Strain that can’t be borne any longer, and

then a sudden, dramatic release: don’t we

hear about this in the news again and again?

Doesn’t it remind us of people we’ve known,

perhaps even ourselves?

The operations of geology, then, are like what

happens in ourselves: a study in the opposites

of surface and depth, heat and coolness—only

they take place on an impersonal and global

scale. It is such intense forces busy at work

tens of miles beneath the soles of our feet that

create the continents and seas that we can see

on maps. As paleontologist Richard Fortey

explains in his comprehensive book Earth:

The face of the earth has its character

scoured upon it by the elements, but

they can only work on what has been

set upon the surface by forces operating

in the hidden depths. 5

For example, even as mountain chains are

being raised by the movements of the plates,

they are simultaneously being worn down by

the untiring actions of rains, rivers, winds,

and ice, and these cycles have been repeated

again and again and again over almost

inconceivable spans of time. Here the

opposites of surface and depth are busy

creating the astonishingly varied landscapes

across the globe, including throughout the

New York metropolitan region—where, at

times, there have been mountains as high as

the Alps or higher.

In the long history of our planet the plates

have combined over tens of millions of years,

forming a single supercontinent, at least three

times, and then separated again, over many

more millions. As such joinings and

separations took place, some areas now land

found themselves beneath the waters of

oceans, while some sea bottoms became dry

land. During the most recent of the

supercontinents, Pangaea, created about 300

million years ago, dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Their abundant fossilized footprints have been

found widely in the New York Region.

Increasing evidence for the former existence of

Pangaea is still being unearthed, including by

deep-rock excavations being made in New

York City for major projects: a new water

tunnel, the Second Avenue subway, the No. 7

subway extension, and tunnels linking the

Long Island Rail Road with Grand Central

Terminal.6 These excavations have even

uncovered the actual suture line where North

America had once joined with Africa,

Aesthetic Realism Looks at New York City: Geology P a g e | 4 4

placing what is now New York City adjoining

Morocco so many eons ago, as shown on this

map. 7 What startling secrets lie beneath the

sidewalks of New York!

Geology affects the man-made environment of

the city. The builders of subways and water

tunnels have to bore and blast through hard

rocks and cross zones of softer, crumbled rock

and sandy or clay soils. New York’s renowned

skyscrapers require foundations that are

anchored in bedrock, which often lies far

below the busy streets of the metropolis.

3. Surface and Depth in Ourselves

Surface and depth are a large way we share a

common structure with geology, because these

opposites have much to do with a universal

human question too: how much do we want

other people to know what we feel, including

those close to us? For example, I didn't like

the fact that I had emotions I didn't

understand churning inside me—somewhat

like what may be going on inside a volcano

that appears dormant. I wanted to appear

calm, unperturbed—to be, as much as

possible, like a quiet boulder in upstate New

York.

In a class early in my study of Aesthetic

Realism I mentioned a dream in which I was

rolling out maps and rolling them back up

again, which I often did in my work as an

urban and regional planner with the Tri-State

Regional Planning Commission. Eli Siegel

asked me:

Do you think you are like a rolled-up

map? A human being unfolds himself

like a map or he can roll himself up and

be concealed like a lost scroll. Do you

believe you would like to hide what you

are?

John Stern—Yes.

Learning that my daily use of maps stood for a

central question in my life—of relating what I

felt deep inside to what I showed other

people—was liberating. I saw there was

something I wanted more than being

concealed like a lost scroll, thinking I'd fooled

everybody. What I really wanted was to have

the depths of myself understood and

explained—and Eli Siegel made that gloriously

possible! For this I thank him with all my

heart.

4. Surface and Depth in the Geology of New

York—and the Grand Canyon

The drama in the effects of surface and depth

is on display throughout Manhattan’s Central

Park. Consider the numerous outcrops of

ancient rock there, called Manhattan schist. We can see that this grayish rock, perhaps

450 million years old, has undulating folds

visible on its exposed surfaces. These folds

were formed many miles deep within the

earth, as this rock was being profoundly

changed by almost inconceivable heat and

pressure, and invaded by thin veins of other

kinds of melted rock.

These outcrops also show regular grooves on

their uppermost surfaces, trending northwest

to southeast, where a mere 20,000 years ago

vast sheets of ice hundreds of feet thick

loosened and carried along soil and boulders

from upstate New York and New England. As

Aesthetic Realism Looks at New York City: Geology P a g e | 5 5

the ice slowly moved, those boulders gouged

the regular grooves you can see today.

Wonderful as New York City is geologically, it

is hardly alone in showing the beauty that can

be when surface and depth are seen together.

Perhaps the most majestic example of these

opposites visible at once is Arizona’s Grand

Canyon. From the Kaibab and Coconino

plateaus on top, we can look down past

colorful rock layer upon rock layer, to the

Colorado River cutting through the oldest

rocks a mile below, with all sorts of walls,

ledges, promontories, and fancifully named

shapes to be seen on the way down.

Does this magnificent, beautiful interplay of

surface and depth show us that we can look

into our own depths unafraid and know

ourselves with pleasure? Yes! As Mr. Siegel

writes in Self and World, in an unforgettable

sentence I love, because it is not only true, but

also mercifully kind: “No self can truly know

itself and be ashamed.” 8

5. Heat and Coolness Are in Geology and in Us

Hot and cold are opposites which, joined

together in geology, make our planet

habitable. For example, Simon Winchester in

Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded,

explains why those feared phenomena,

volcanoes, are essential to the well-being of

our planet:

The deep heat reservoir inside the earth

is not so hot as to cause ceaseless and

unbearable volcanic activity on the

surface. The amount of heat and

thermal decay within the earth happens

to be just perfect for allowing convection

currents to form..., and for the solid

continents that lie above them to slide

about according to the complicated and

beautiful mechanisms of plate tectonics.

Plate movement and convection and the

volcanic activity that is their constant

handmaid may not seem...to be in any

way benign, or to be good for the planet

as a whole. And yet they most certainly

are.

Why? Because

the water, carbon dioxide, and sulfur

that are so central to the making and

maintenance of organic life are all being

constantly recycled by the world's

volcanoes....It is not merely that

volcanoes bring fertile volcanic soils or

useful minerals to the surface; what is

more crucial is their role in the process of

bringing from the secret storehouses of

the inner earth the elements that allow

the outer earth, the biosphere and the

lithosphere, to be so vibrantly alive. 9

Often during Earth’s history, the outpourings

of volcanoes and other flows of melted rock

have brought valuable minerals up to the

surface in places across the globe. One such

location is only 45 miles from Times Square.

In writing about the extensive marble

formations around Franklin, NJ, David Harper

presents this amazing fact: “More different

minerals come from here than any other place

on earth”! 10

Aesthetic Realism Looks at New York City: Geology P a g e | 6 6

The relation of heat and coolness also has

everything to do with the weathers and

climates that hourly affect humanity: warm

and cold ocean currents, snows and rains,

monsoons, storms, droughts, deserts, polar

ice, the nature of vegetation, the kinds of

human shelter, the varieties of food crops.

Heat and coolness are obviously in play when

thick ice sheets of often continental size engulf

portions of the earth—as has occurred many

times. Long Island as we know it was shaped by

such ice, which carried embedded soil and rocks

from the north, such as this granite boulder in

Wildwood State Park on Long Island.

Materials like this were deposited at the edge

of the ice, forming the longitudinal ridges

called moraines which we can see crossing the

length of the island from Greenwood Cemetery

in Brooklyn to Montauk Point. The plains

extending southward of them were formed by

soil carried by melt water from the ice as it

receded.

Heat and coolness were prime opposites in

shaping the landscapes in nearby

northeastern New Jersey. For example, the

vertical columns of basalt, the Palisades, rise

dramatically along the west bank of the

Hudson River from Jersey City northward into

Rockland County, NY.

These cliffs were originally—about 150 million

years ago—melted rock rising from far below,

forcing itself between thick layers of

sandstone. Indeed, at the foot of the cliffs just

south of the George Washington Bridge,

along Henry Hudson Drive, you can see the

line separating the basalt above from the

upper zone of the sandstone that had been

baked where the then-white-hot rock had

come into contact with it so very long ago.

The landscapes of Essex, Union, and Somerset

counties and eastern Rockland, Bergen, and

Passaic are primarily sandstone, (dark green

on the map) often reddish, with invasions of

basalt (red) that form ridges such as the

Watchungs and Garrett Mountain in New

Jersey and Hook Mountain and High Tor in

New York. The brownstone dwellings so

numerous and sought after in Manhattan and

Brooklyn are clad in these sandstones,

quarried mainly in New Jersey.

There are other distinctive, highly complex,

and much altered landscapes in the New

York-New Jersey region. One is the ancient

Aesthetic Realism Looks at New York City: Geology P a g e | 7 7

and spectacular Highlands of the Hudson

(brown): Storm King, and Crows Nest, pictured

here, Mt. Beacon and Bear Mountain, which,

extending into northwestern New Jersey,

are the remnant roots of much higher

mountains of once. Another is the

complicated old rocky landscapes (purple) of

Manhattan and the Bronx, Westchester, and

Putnam counties in New York, and in nearby

Connecticut. There are too the largely

limestone agricultural plains of Dutchess and

Orange counties in New York (grey) and in

central New Jersey (light green and orange).

All these have been shaped by geology working

across the years.

6. I Learn about Heat and Coolness in Myself

Heat and coolness are another pair of

opposites which give evidence for the great

fact that the structure of external geology and

the structure of our dear, private selves are

not separate, if we want to see geology truly

and ourselves truly. As Eli Siegel explains:

“The world, art, and self explain each other:

each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.”

For example, Mr. Siegel writes:

Geology has these two things: it’s either

getting hotter or cooling down which is

just the way a man’s life is. We are

asked, “Why don’t you get excited?” and

“Why don’t you cool down, take it

easy?” 11

Warmth and coolness are always present in

how we see other people. Do we want to be

warm to another human being, hope to know

and strengthen that person? Or do we prefer

to be aloof, uncaring, even cruel? These are

emergent questions that affect everyone.

Like most people, I had no idea such

questions existed. Nevertheless, they did

affect me. As I, a confirmed bachelor, was

coming to know Faith Kestenbaum—now my

cherished wife for 46 years—I had new

feelings that were sweeping me. I couldn’t

wait to meet Faith for lunch and to talk, but I

often came late and also wanted to retreat into

my shell. I was in a dilemma: should I be

warm to Faith, or cool? I told myself that it

wasn’t my logical, scientific self that was

caring for her.

Eli Siegel saw how mightily mixed up I was.

In a class he kindly (and humorously)

encouraged me to see which self it was that

was stirred by Faith.

Eli Siegel—Look, many men have felt in

reacting to a woman it’s some shadowy

self that is a little more disorganized

than the customary one. It’s a favorite

way of damning womanhood. So if men

react to a woman, then it’s some spare

self—not fully existing. Do you follow

that?

John Stern—No. I don’t.

ES—What does the other self which is

not spare do? What does it react to?

Does it react to geological principles, in

which you’ve been so interested?

JS—But my whole self reacts to these.

ES—In other words your whole self

reacts to scientific things, while your

subsidiary, shadowy self reacts to

Kestenbaum....Would you say she is just

as much a fact as geology is? Is she as

much a fact as a certain rock formation

near Hudson Bay?

JS—Yes, she is.

ES—Do you think that scientific minds

should react equally to all facts, in terms

of method?

JS—Yes.

Aesthetic Realism Looks at New York City: Geology P a g e | 8 8

ES—A woman is a fact?...A fact consists

of two things: what it contains, and

what it can do. A woman is like that.

So Miss Kestenbaum is a fact?

JS—Yes, she is.

Mr. Siegel explained that science asks, what

do things have in common? Where are they

different? “Any time objects are compared in

science, all the objects are supposedly seen

better.” He said that I would not be happy

until I saw Faith Kestenbaum as standing

factually, entirely for the world.

I began to compare her with Earth itself.

Every person’s body is a oneness of hills and

valleys, high places and low, like countryside

in Pennsylvania or Norway. Every landscape

mingles hardness and softness in rocks, soils,

vegetation, buildings, and so does every man

and woman in his or her bones, muscles,

flesh, and attitudes. Earth is a composition of

mountains, plains, and oceans on its surface,

and of forces far below that make for these

features. When I looked into Faith’s eyes,

what I could see there, on the surface, showed

me what she felt inside. I was using interest

in Faith to care for the world more, and

interest in the world to care more for her.

Mr. Siegel composed this poem:

To J.S.: A True and Lasting Passion

He was in love

For the first time at forty,

The love of a scientist,

A true and lasting passion

7. Hardness and Softness in Rocks and in Us

Hardness and softness are clearly central in

geology. Some rocks are softer than others,

and these are worn away more easily. As

rains, rivers, and ice unceasingly sculpture

mountain ranges, they create the valleys and

chasms that may delight and even awe us.

Richard Fortey, writing about the Grand

Canyon and its elevated plateau, cites the

force and persistence of such erosion:

Streams are still seeking out

weaknesses in a hundred little valleys,

still eroding away what deep time has

constructed, essaying to lay low what

geological forces once made high. 12

Can the relation of hardness and softness in

rocks to these same opposites in ourselves be

of value in the classroom? I believe what

educator Barbara McClung tells about a class

she taught in earth science to third-graders at

a public school in Manhattan, using the

Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method, is a

model for how this subject should be taught in

schools everywhere.13 She describes how her

students carefully studied the three kinds of

rock—igneous (fire-made), sedimentary (water-

laid), and metamorphic (any substantial

alteration of the first two). They learned that

instances of each rock type are made in

different ways, and each shows a different

relation of hardness and softness. For

example, hard, dense granite and soft, air-

filled pumice are both igneous in origin.

She explained, “these opposites, hardness and

softness, trouble people of every age. They are

awry when a person is prejudiced: we harden

ourselves to the feelings of people and are too

soft on ourselves, assuming our own opinions

are correct—without wanting to know the

facts.”

As the semester continued, Ms. McClung

describes what happened:

As the children saw how hardness and

softness are joined beautifully in the

rocks, a hurtful hardness changed in

them: they no longer had the inert

stoniness [they had had at the beginning

of the semester]. They were excited, and

with great care they examined many

rocks, drew them, and described their

color and texture. They worked

respectfully and eagerly together.

8. Geology and Poetry

One of the aspects of Aesthetic Realism I have

come to cherish is the value it places on

relation: the way one thing has to do with

another, or with many things. For decades,

my way of looking at geology had been narrow,

concentrating on its facts and processes, eras

Aesthetic Realism Looks at New York City: Geology P a g e | 9 9

and epochs. I didn’t see how deeply all these

things are related to the depths, the inner

lives of the thinking, feeling men and women—

including myself—who dwell upon the Earth.

For example, is there any relation between

geology and poetry? Surprising as the

question is, the answer is Yes. Eli Siegel,

esteemed poet and critic, defined all the arts,

including poetry, as “the oneness of the

permanent opposites in reality as seen by an

individual.”14 The opposites, which permeate

every aspect of geology, are also, I learned,

made one in every good line of poetry—and

these are the very opposites we want to put

together in ourselves. Imagine my surprise

and pleasure when I heard Mr. Siegel lecture

on “Earth and Poetry: There Is This.” It

profoundly changed how I had seen geology.

He showed, for example, that the facts of this

science make for feelings, and the feelings

make the facts more meaningful. He spoke of

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s enduringly

popular poem “Kubla Khan,” to show how

Earth has affected people so deeply that great

poetry has come to be that joins the mind of

man and Earth.

I was thrilled hearing Mr. Siegel’s discussion

of “Kubla Khan,” in which Coleridge describes

a number of geological phenomena, and tells

of them in lines having poetic music. It begins

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

Mr. Siegel explained that the first line—“In

Xanadu did Kubla Khan”—has the depth of

rock and the gorgeousness of earth. But does

geology deal with only earth’s crust, or the

interior too? That question is implied in

“through caverns measureless to man/Down

to a sunless sea.”

Later, three lines call to mind the geysers of

Yellowstone and Iceland:

And from this chasm, with ceaseless

turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were

breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced:

And vividly geological too are:

And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once

and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

—lines that Mr. Siegel explained made the

heavy light: presenting geology as cheerful,

and giving it personality.

And there was what he called the most

geologic passage in Latin literature. It is in

Book 1 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, written

around the time of Christ. It tells the story of

the creation of the earth, and how shapeless

things took on shape. John Dryden’s

translation has these lines:

But earth, and air, and water, were in

one...

No certain form on any was imprest;

All were confus’d, and each disturb’d

the rest.

For hot and cold were in one body fixt;

And soft with hard, and light with heavy

mixt.

Mr. Siegel commented that the opposites of

separation and junction were there in the

newly created earth, but they weren’t yet one.

As he explained, “separation and junction are

big things in geology, and they are what

makes a poem too. Too much separation or

junction makes a land—or a poem—

imperfect.” Yes. A landscape with layered

and bent rocks tumbled closely every which

way, and a poem with its lines too congested—

both have too much junction to be entirely

pleasing to the human mind. Similarly not

pleasing is a far-spreading featureless plain,

and a poem having its lines too loose—both

display too much separation.

Aesthetic Realism Looks at New York City: Geology P a g e | 10 10

One can see in the

creation of New

York’s Central Park

how the relation of

separation and

junction in the raw

land was changed

from hodgepodge to

masterful

composition. Its

designers,

Frederick Law

Olmsted and

Calvert Vaux, began

with an

unattractive,

unpromising 843-

acre tract of random

outcrops of rock,

barren hills, fetid

swamps, and shantytowns. These disparate

elements were both too close to each other

(junction), while not visually related to one

another (separation).

Olmsted and Vaux, however, through their

imaginative, award-winning design, created a

masterpiece—what Eli Siegel called a “planned

wilderness.”

As one walks in the park, each section blends seamlessly

into the next, while each is also distinctively itself. The

result? A richly variegated yet unified landscape of streams,

waterfalls, lakes, woods, flowers, promenades, lawns, trees,

bridges, paths, and rocks of many sizes and shapes that has

a visitor feel at once restful and at ease, while also

energized, more alive.

Aesthetic Realism Looks at New York City: Geology P a g e | 11

It is an important advance in human

knowledge that the study of the opposites, as

Aesthetic Realism explains them, can have us

understand better not only the complexities of

the earth that is our home, but also our

individual, intimate, and sometimes puzzling

selves—and both with greater depth, width,

practicality, and pleasure.

As I conclude this paper about geology, I am

personally moved. It is a subject whose width,

depth, and power to surprise I love. I am

approaching my 90th birthday: that I could

write about geology in a way that joins science

and humanity—the beauty of its strict

impersonal facts, but also with an awareness

of how these facts relate to our striving, often

confused, yet hopeful, eager selves—is

something I owe to Eli Siegel. I thank him for

opening my eyes, heart, and mind to the

amazing richness of the world, including the

complexities in each and every person. In

Aesthetic Realism, he has bequeathed to

people everywhere the means of understanding ourselves and the wide world.

It is a philosophy that stands up in whatever

situation one may meet. It is true, and

unfailingly kind.

I also want to thank the Aesthetic Realism

Chairman of Education Ellen Reiss

profoundly for her untiring desire to know me.

In the nearly 40 years I have studied with her,

she has consistently encouraged my honest

expression, and made my mind both warmer

and more scientifically exact. Through what I

have seen these years studying in the classes

she teaches, it is my careful and proud

opinion that she is the foremost educator

living today.

1 The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known

(The Right of) (New York: Aesthetic Realism

Foundation, Number 1728, Oct. 1, 2008)

2 Sanderson, Eric W. Mannahatta: A Natural

History of New York City (New York: Harry N.

Abrams, 2009), p. 70

3 New York Times, July 25, 2002, p. B1

4 Geologica: Earth’s Dynamic Forces (Australia:

Millennium House, 2007), p. 256

5 Fortey, Richard Earth: An Intimate History (New

York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), p. 363

6 New York Times, Feb. 18, 2014, p. A16

7 New York Newsday, Apr. 19, 1994

8 Siegel, Eli Self and World (New York: Definition

Press, 1981), p. 98

9 Winchester, Simon Krakatoa: The Day the World

Exploded (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), p. 299

10 Harper, David P. Roadside Geology of New

Jersey (Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing

Co., 2013), p. 207

11 The Right of, Number 1891, December 31,

2014

12 Fortey, Richard, p. 340

13 The Right of, Number 1622, September 8,

2004

14 The Right of, Number 1699, August 22, 2007

Acknowledgement

I want to thank my friend, editor, and colleague Dr.

Edward Green for his kind, scholarly

encouragement, which has substantially enriched

this paper.

Copyright 2017

Photography by Faith Stern, John Stern, and the

Internet.