Plate Tectonics

Last night I went to a chapter meeting of the Master Naturalists where we heard a speaker talk about plate tectonics.  Well, she didn't speak about it exactly.  She handed out maps and we studied them in small groups.  My group map was a map of the age of the sea floor.  The newest sea floor pretty much corresponded with the black lines on this map that indicate the borders of the plates.  There were three other kinds of maps and we all studied the maps and then made guesses on which way the plates were converging and diverging.  We might assume that if one plate was being pushed to the east by another plate it would continue pushing to the east but it doesn't always work that way.  Plate tectonics is complicated and we had a fun evening discussing volcanoes and rifts and earthquakes.  As we speak the north American plate on which I sit is moving.  In 2013 this plate has moved about as much as my fingernails have grown in the past year.  After that we got off topic and started talking about frac sand, the cleanliness of the Saint Croix river, and how the Saint Croix has the biggest diversity of mussels of any river in the world.  The Saint Croix has 40 species of mussels. Zebra mussels are a problem because they don't actually clean the water like other mussels but pollution with their feces and pseudo-feces and can cause algae blooms.  People went on talking but my mind got stuck on pseudo-feces.  I never knew there was such a thing as pseudo-feces and what the hell would be the point of pseudo-feces?  My mind was blown I guess.  That is the thing about these master naturalist meetings.  They can be mind blowing.  And I enjoy having my mind blown once in a while.