The 1368th. Meeting of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences was held on Tuesday, April 11, 2006 at 4.30 p.m. in the Konover Auditorium in the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut. Approximately 50 people attended the lecture and 22 members and their guests stayed for dinner. The President, Ernest Kohorn welcomed the audience and thanked Professor Bruce Stave, the Vice President for the Academy for the University of Connecticut, for hosting the event. He announced the election of one new member, Sue.L.Cohen, School Psychologist.

Professor Stave introduced the speaker, Robert Thorson, Professor of Geological Science at the University of Connecticut and columnist for The Hartford Courant. The title of Dr. Thorson's talk was "Time Travel With Stone Walls". Dr.Thorson said that the stone walls that abound in parks and woodlands can be used as prehistoric clocks and calendars to keep track of time. Firstly, many of the stones contain minerals that can be used as radiometric clocks, yielding numerical ages in millions of years. Secondly, and this is more abstract, one learns about the mid-crustal place of origin in which the rocks formed and then one imagines the time it must have taken to straddle the ancient condition and the modern one. Thirdly, if one looks at the wall as part of a landscape one can then imagine the earth's constituents arriving in sequence according to the things we see: rock, air, water, life. Fourthly one can look at the condition of the weathering or disrepair and finally the wall can be seen as a scale model of geological deep time. One can "feel the time" by looking at the wall. Dr. Thorson then described the historical and practical reasons for the building of the stone walls. Primarily they were intended to keep livestock within property boundaries, then they were used as boundary markers and today they are stolen for financial gain! New England has the most stonewalls although they can be found throughout the country, particularly where rocks abound. Initially Professor Thorson said that he had been reluctant to give this talk because he was concerned there might not be enough material. His talk certainly belied that concern. The audience was certainly grateful that he shared the information with them and not one of them will be able to pass a stone wall by without examining it!