CompuServe Messages

Hi, Lanny– That capability to find placenames of unknown locality can be quite significant to a mineral collector – I know from books that fluorescent talc, tremolite, anthophyllite, and tirodite are mined in "Balmat, NY" and "Talcville, NY", but cannot find their precise locations in my world atlas. Is it near that Vermont talc belt mentioned here recently, I wonder? I suspect DeLorme would give me an immediate answer without my having to order a map or keep a great pile of state maps ("Oops, I must have taken out the NY map and left it somewhere"), allowing me to order a topo map further in advance of a trip thereabouts (with a wide collection of topos on CD, I could be ready map-wise for a trip in minutes instead of days or weeks). And when I have a placename without even a state on a specimen, a comprehensive E-map collection would be so much easier to search. When I went to seek ferrierite with Rod a couple of months ago, we went to the new site and collected, and then tried to find the old site in the dark – the construction was making trouble for Rod's memory, so I checked him by cranking up my laptop and finding an old message from this forum in which he gave directions to Nathan. Had it been paper, I would have left it in OK; this trip was semi-improvised. We still did not find it, but at least we had a better chance. With CDs and ever-larger hard disks, I should be able to bring whole file cabinets of info with me anywhere I might go. Don't you ever wish you had thought to bring a certain map with you somewhere? E-maps allow you to bring a ton of maps with one decision. If I remember my laptop, I have remembered to bring every E-document I have, more or less. But if I have it only on paper, I must think of each individual piece of paper I might need, relying on my fallible foresight in choosing them. –Doug