Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
Conservation workers have pulled about 10,000 coins from the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. Altogether, they weighed roughly 45 pounds.
The coins had been wedged, and sometimes even hammered, into tiny gaps between the ancient basalt columns as little good-luck or love tokens.
It may have looked harmless, just loose change tucked into the rocks. But over time, that pocket change started acting more like a slow-motion wrecking ball, damaging one of the world’s most famous geological landmarks.
Getting the coins out was no quick job. Some came loose with pliers, but a single stubborn one could take more than 20 minutes to remove....
If you don't know about Giant's Causeway, in myth or lore it was made by Finn McCool a Giant, however it was actually the result of volcanic rock and geology. Here is what part of it looks like.
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| Giant's Causeway Stock Photo. |
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A 2023 geological assessment found that the coins were harming the site both physically and visually. Damp air and salt spray sped up corrosion. As mixed-metal coins rusted, their layers separated and expanded, pressing against the basalt until nearby rock began to flake or crumble.
Think of a coin as a tiny wedge that slowly gets thicker while trapped in a crack. The pressure may be gradual, but it does not stay small. Copper, nickel, and iron compounds also ran down the dark columns in rust-colored streaks, changing the appearance of the natural stone....
Here is the link for the rest of the article.
10,000 coins are being removed from the Giant’s Causeway after ancient rocks were damaged by a ritual performed by tourists---
About the Author.
Six-thirty this morning I heard a message arrive on my cell phone. I didn't get up to check it. Somehow I knew what it was.
I wasn't surprised at all to find out another relative passed sway. It was a very familiar pattern. After a seemingly long-drawn-out decline, hospice starts medicating to make the patient comfortable. They make them comfortable and eventually they quit breathing. I've seen it multiple times. It seems it always happens early in the morning right after a hospice visit but before the family arrives. Just observing.
Thinking I was sure I knew what happened, before I got up I stayed in bad a little longer and thought about life. It seems like I've lived several lives - each one in a different world.
In the beginning, if I might borrow the first phrase in the Bible, it was a fresh green world. Everything was new, and everyone was young - even the old people were young. My parents and grandparents were young. And everyone was there.
That life lasted a good long time. Not much changed. Yes, the kids grew and once a year changed rooms in school. Even when that world was covered by a cozy blanket of snow, the green world remained fresh, waiting for its time to reappear. We exchanged baseballs and football and bicycles or snowball, sleds and skates. And Santa capped it off.
The world changed so slowly and in such a predictable way, that we barely noticed the changes. The kids and parents that were there at the beginning were still there at the end. The sun rose over the hill at one end of the valley and set over the trees on the opposite hill - everyday.
That was one world I lived in.
The next world for me stood out was a small world. It went by quickly, but it was very consequential.
I arrived at that world after taking my first airplane ride. The plane landed in a flatter world. The center of it was a group of brick buildings that defined the university campus. I spent time at another college campus before that, but that one wasn't distinctly new to me. While there, one foot remained planted firmly plin the fresh green valley.
The new flat world was populated by a lot of different people. I ate breakfast with an engineering student from Indian that cut his breakfast toast in neat squares with his fork and knife before eating each piece without ever touching it with his fingers. I played soccer with guys from Thailand and Africa and ping pong with a law student from some city. I seldom ventured out of that world, except to walk downtown on rare occasion or over to a nearby bowling alley. I worked on my thesis through the night and went to bed before sunrise.
The most significant trip I made from the center of that world was to Fort Knox. I rode there on a bus with a bunch of other guys I didn't know. I followed the long-colored lines on the floor from one examination room to another. I did good on the hearing test, but when they looked at my feet, they wrote something down. I walked a long distance back to campus after failing the physical for some reason I never learned, but it kept me from being shipped off to Viet Nam.
Thanks to the night time work shifts, I didn't stay in that world very long before I graduated. Before leaving that world, I saw a job notice on a bulletin board after successfully defending my thesis. I quickly secured the posted job, which was conveniently located near my green valley, so I went back home, but now things were different. The other kids were no longer there.
Again, I kept one foot in the green valley, but in my new life I was college instructor. I won't go into that world very much, except to say, WOW. I was a 23-year-old college faculty member during the at the dawn of the 70s.. Big changes! Just like my other world's, I didn't stay there forever and there were others to take its place.
I'll skip many of those other worlds because it's probably on interesting to me and I've already gone on long enough., and now I live in a world where everyone is old. All the people I knew from back in the beginning are gone. I know a very few that were once connected to that world, but they've moved on to other worlds too.
As I tell this, it might seem as if everything in my world got old, but that isn't true. My other lives still live. All the memories are still there along with the feelings. I can see those worlds as they were. I wear them like layers of clothes.
I can see each world as it was. Each life still lives in me, along with my friends and family. Those lives didn't disappear. They were just layered one over the other - the first being closer to the heart of me forms the core of who I am, but each one adds on to that.
I'm sure there were bad things in all those worlds, but nothing I could blame anybody for, other than myself. I nothing bad really sticks out to me. Maybe I should, but I generally see the good of it. I learned a lot along the way. And I wouldn't give up any of it or have it any other way, except when I wasn't what I should have been.
The advantage of being old is being able to look back through so many different worlds and lives and learning from each one. I can look back at those lives various lives through many different eyes.
I'm closer to the hill where the sun sets than where it rises. In fact, I'm close enough to the top of that hill that I can see the other side of that hill faintly. On the other side, I don't see anything that looks like streets of gold. In fact, they look like winding unpaved roads leading to another green valley. And further down the road, if I squint, I think I can see little homes and maybe hear children at play. It is starting to look a lot like... where I started in the beginning.
Thank you, God!
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| Source: NHC.noaa.gov. |
There is now a tropical depression five in the Gulf. It looks like tropical storm conditions will be hitting Texas.