Welcome to the 2008-2009 Corpus Christi Geological Society’s New Year.

It is an honor and a challenge to be completing the 50th year of my career as a geologist in the Oil & Gas Exploration business, all of which has been spent in Corpus Christi, serving as your President and working with such a talented group of explorationists.

We have a great slate of officers, outstanding committee chairs, a very dedicated and motivated membership and great momentum at a time when our industry is again in one of its most difficult periodic cycles. Thankfully, after losing a whole generation of petroleum related personnel in the 1985 crash, enough of us have survived to keep the tradition of excellence that is a hallmark of our Society.

After a long hiatus from active participation in society matters, I was very impressed with all the enthusiasm, talent and effectiveness I observed from the membership during my term as Co-Chair of the GCAGS Convention last year. Gloria, you, Brent and all the volunteers pulled off a meeting that is the envy of all the other GCAGS member societies. And we made money too. I am now convinced that we are blessed with one of the greatest cadres of geoscientists that I have worked with during my career, and that we will more than do our share in solving the problems of energy independence for our country.

Speaking of momentum, our maps in schools has taken off like Spindletop under the incredible enthusiasm and creativity of Former President, Owen Hopkins. Not only has it been embraced by every society in GCAGS and now AAPG is considering sizeable financial support, but it is going international with prospects in both Mexico and Canada. Just look at Owen’s reports in this issue of the Bulletin. Owen is also ram roding our “Bones in Schools” and the effort to have a major geological exhibit in each of our 6 major libraries. This comes at a time when we desperately need talented geoscientists to replace the huge number of geologists and geophysicists with hundreds of years of experience who will be retiring in the next five to ten years. Thankfully we have Owen to inspire us and keep these projects moving. I hope we can maintain all of our other activities going at or improving the pace of the past few years.

One of the more interesting developments that I have observed over the past few years is the nature of the articles appearing in our bulletin, such as “Why I Became a Geologist”, “The Roar Heard Around the World” by Bernard Dietz published by Ray Govett and Owen’s “Lessons I Learned” plus all of the very informative technical papers. I want to continue these types of articles, so if you want to tell us about how you became a geologist, an exciting discovery or just a good story from your experiences in South Texas or elsewhere, please contact our editors and have them work with you. In fact I have a few stories of my own that I intend to share this year.

Vice President, Rick Paige, has already lined up some very interesting speakers for this year and John Ralph of CBGS will fill the rest. I may even do a program on how I became interested in wild sheep hunting.

So get ready for another great year by joining us on September 17th at the Natural History Museum for the kick off of our 2008-2009 programs.

Daniel Pedrotti
CCGS President