Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to serve and represent the CCGS as this years President. As I compose my last President letter, the phrase “Parting is such a Sweet Sorrow” comes to mind.

I enjoyed my tour, and I would like to thank all those generous members who made my job easy. In particular I would like to thank Juan Cabasos and Randy Bissell who did a great job organizing our luncheon speakers, Sebastian Wiedmann for keeping up with our finances as treasure, Beth Priday for documenting our meetings as Secretary, Owen Hopkins and his help as past President and Academic Liaison dealing with all of the Maps in Schools and various other projects, Sara Venable and Layton Devine bringing in the money with the advertising, Bob Barnard for giving away the money in Scholarships, Dennis Moore with all of his behind the scenes activity as Councilor, Tony Moherek for his help as President of the CBGS and the help of the other CBGS officers, Ray Govett with the History Committee and Sara Miller as Technical Editor. Special gratitude to John Bockelman for all of his time and effort involved in our Arrangements, Dan Pedrotti as President elect, Marian Wiedmann as Editor and all of our Bar Sponsors and the other numerous people who helped.

Our Maps in schools program continues to grow nation wide, see our web site for statistics www.ccgeo.org. Since October 2006, the CCGS has presented 145 framed, laminated “USGS Geologic Map of the USA” along with a lecture, a rolled map for the teacher and a mineral for each student. These maps have been presented by 12 local members of the CCGS and Texas A&M Corpus Christi geology students. Twenty-two were presented to area teachers at our RocksInYourHead program at our GCAGS convention in October. Most presented to a grade at a school. Some have been presented at the local Education Service Center at a summer seminar for teachers. A few have been presented at our local Museum to school groups touring the facility last summer.

The CCGS Education Phase II was approved by the CCGS Executive Committee at a board meeting held on January 23, 2008. Part of the new program includes the funding to commission Dinah Bowman, local artist, to paint a 3.5 by 7 foot mural of a snapshot of the Nueces Bay Floodplain 13,000 years ago that would include 40-50 extinct and nonextinct species. A 14 by 7 foot enlargement on cleanable, scrubable wallpaper of the mural will be installed at the Northwest Branch Library in Corpus Christi, Texas. The board approved $30,000 for the mural and its installation. The mural will then be made into posters to be given to schools along with bone samples from the same time period that will be provided by Dr. Jon Baskin and Ronnie Thomas from Texas A&M Kingsville.

Hundreds of Pleistocene bones, collected at the gravel pit by TAMU- Kingsville, over the last 18 years will be given to the CCGS to distribute to local schools along with the Mammal poster.

Collaboration on this mural has been with Dr Ernie Lundelius, University of Texas and Dr. Jon Baskin, TAMU-Kingsville and Dr. Jim Garrison, TAMU-Corpus Christi. Species list (flora and fauna), paleogeography and archaeology will be approved by them.

The Mural is anticipated to be installed in the winter of 2008.

Our next and last luncheon for 2008, “Oil Patch Roundup” will be held on May 21, 2008 at the Solomn Ortiz Center, not at the Town Club. Our guest speaker will be Mr. Red McCombs who will put on a general talk about the “Oil Patch”. We are inviting the other Petroleum related societies, and we expect a big turn out. Special appreciation to Core Laboratories, our generous bar sponsor for this event. Please see the related flyer in the Bulletin.

Respectfully submitted,
Jeff Cobbs
CCGS President
jc@tlspc.com
361.883.2911