Professor reflects on career in lunar geology

By ANNIE BROWN news Writer

deep in the labyrinthine corridors of cushing hall, among engineering labs and dusty lockers, one can find the office of professor clive r neal. instead of the typical plain, weathered oak of the nearby doors, neal’s is covered in “doctor Who” posters and crayon-drawn pictures torn from coloring books.

Given the chance to look, visitors would notice science puns and graduation photos, license plates and a tiny Union Jack. not many visitors are offered that chance, however, because neal’s rescued english springer spaniel, harry, comes bounding and barking at the first scent of company. his eager yelps beckon guests into the warm lamplight of room 106d, where every available space of wall, desk, table, floor and filing cabinet is covered in books, samples and models.

“i used to have three filing cabinets in here,” neal said, gesturing to a small piece of open floor space. “my wife converted all of them into PdFs.” neal, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences, says his office in cushing hall is a far cry from where his geology passions began on the east coast of england, where instead of stacks of books and samples from apollo missions, a young neal was surrounded by vast fields, wide horizons and, of course, fossils.

“i knew i wanted to be a geologist when i was five years old. We didn’t have video games, so i was outside a lot,” he explained.

“i used to spend hours just walking across the fields, finding rocks. i’d find all sorts of fossils there; it’s in the right area, and the right geologic time period. i was just fascinated, trying to think how the landscape changed so much.” eventually receiving his b s in geology from the University of Leicester in 1982, neal decided to complete his Phd at the University of Leeds, which sent him to the solomon islands off the coast of australia.

For his postdoctoral work, neal spent four years with the University of Tennessee, a job that he “never applied for,” arriving in the U.s. by experience a new language and also learn a little bit about the culture.” chance. he never left.

“i came over to this country with two suitcases of clothes and a trunk full of books, all of which are still here,” neal said, indicating a handful of volumes among the hundreds on his shelves — testaments to a long career in geological research.

This career was furthered in 1990 with neal’s first position at notre dame. now, in addition to teaching the undergraduate course “Living and Working on the moon,” neal conducts research and helps devise policy involving various geological phenomena, among which the moon is paramount.

“i have two lives,” neal said. “First, i look at super-volcanoes and scientific ocean drilling. my other life is exploring the moon, either robotically or with humans. i’ve gotten more involved with nasa and now the national science Foundation, with more policy things than anything else. You have to pay attention to the big picture.”

The “big picture” is something that occupies neal’s mind often, since his work with lunar geology forces him to grapple with time periods greater than the average human life span.

“i’m going to live until 70, 80, 90, hopefully 100, who knows? but it’s nothing when you look at the big picture. nothing,” he said.

“The rocks i’m looking at from the moon are anywhere between three and 4.3 billion years old. The bible is right: we are a mist. a very poisonous mist sometimes.” neal said that to understand humanity’s impact on issues like climate change and space exploration, we must first understand how vast the timescale of the universe is. With growing concerns of climate change, the topic of manned missions to space has become more relevant, and with it a growing number of private companies interested in space exploration.

Just last month, the University of notre dame partnered with sierra space, a space research and exploration company. in his tenure leading nasa’s Lunar exploration analysis Group (LeaG), neal saw this growth firsthand.

“There’s so many companies devoted to space and so many companies for the moon,” he said.

“We started off with about seven or eight companies in 2017; it’s over 40 now.” neal eventually left the LeaG in favor of returning to teaching and researching full-time. When asked about retirement, he maintained that there is still work to be done.

“When i do my research, i do what excites me,” neal explained. “Why would i stop having fun? When i start working — when this becomes work — i’ll quit.” indeed, there seem to be no signs neal is slowing down. he has recently added “The ancient sun” to his bookshelves — which are already full. as harry noses through the models and samples within his reach, neal reflects on the career that has brought him to room 106d “i’m enjoying my journey,” he said. “it was all just serendipity, and it’s been fun. i’ve been lucky. very lucky.”

Contact Annie Brown at abrown38@nd.edu students of all chinese-speaking capabilities.

“We want it to just be a safe space for students who are interested in learning chinese and those who are currently learning chinese to kind of practice their abilities and get some exposure to conversational skills. so, it will be all peer led and we’re going to be doing biweekly language dinners where people can practice their chinese or if you don’t know any chinese, then we’ll teach you some words,” sherman said. “it’s just for fun and to sherman said that prospective members can expect a variety of cultural activities, including celebrations for the chinese holidays, kung fu lessons and a chinese spelling bee. sherman encouraged anyone who is interested to get involved with the chinese department, whether it be through class, the club or attending an open event like the Lunar new Year celebration.

Contact Kelsey Quint at kquint@nd.edu places, with the understanding that we’re not actually ever going to build them,” mellor said. “What they’re doing through this course is they’re making a very strong connection between the graphics that they produce and the built reality of the lines that they put on paper, and so it becomes more meaningful for them.” mellor said his class consists of individual design projects for the first half of the semester. a fter spring break, students work together in three or four groups to combine their ideas. each group presents a polished design using feedback from a panel of professional architects, from which habitat for humanity chose the design they will use when constructing the houses. in the first year of the agreement, habitat for humanity prioritized accessibility, choosing a two-bedroom house which had all living, dining, laundry, bathing and sleeping accommodations on one floor.

Last year, however, they chose a two-story design that, while not considered “fully accessible,” lended itself to “visitability.” a visitor who is in a wheelchair, mellor said, might not be able to climb the stairs but would still be able to enjoy a visit and even potentially stay in the house temporarily.

“i’ve had six completely designed houses,” mellor said about his classes. “They could all be built anywhere in south bend. They’re all good work. habitat, unfortunately, only can build one a year, so they have a hard choice to make.” as the collaboration aims at providing affordable housing, mellor said the designs must “try and control the things that we can control, that we know will have a positive effect on affordability.” most notably, this entails working to be as efficient as possible with the size of each house, keeping them as small as they can be while providing everything that is needed in a welldesigned but neighborly home.

“at the end of the day, what habitat is looking for from us is to be able to build houses that don’t look like low income affordability houses,” mellor said. “They don’t want you to be able to drive by and pick out, ‘that’s the habitat house on the block.’ They want it to blend in seamlessly with the rest of the surroundings so that any stigma that might be attached to somebody who lives in an affordable-rate house is eliminated, because you won’t be able to identify just by looking. a nd what we’re doing with them is we’re trying to help them identify those things that will help their houses blend in with the rest of the fabric.”

Contact Liam Price at lprice3@nd.edu problem in their relationship and ultimately led to their breakup after 10 years together. he writes that this legal battle, instability regarding a potential eviction and antidepressants that did not address his bipolar disorder all came together in a mental health episode that would bring him “delusions of grandeur” and apocalyptic thinking about the imminence of artificial general intelligence (aGi). and he began sending out millions of push notifications on the app. at the time, the hints about his manic state were not hard to find. in a Feb. 10, 2022 note on his website, he wrote that “for those too f***ing daft to understand why i’m talking about Zendaya nudes. it’s because i’m in pain and i want to draw attention to my cause as fast as possible so the pain will end and the best way to do that is to be provocative.” regardless, the coursicle notifications became something of a meme across social media and dining hall tables. The response to his erratic behaviors came in a wide spectrum. his alma mater blocked access to the coursicle app, while he received pieces of encouragement for some of his ideas from steve Wozniak, noam chomsky and the cTo of reddit. he received many messages and communications, and looking back, he recalled just how confusing the public response was.

“but there was still one more thing tying us together: coursicle. in order to get the most money for her stock, she removed me from the board and took full control of the company. after months of deliberation, enormous stress and tens of thousands in legal fees, the coursicle lawyers convinced her to restore my position and negotiated a price for her equity. Finally, i was free,” Puccio writes.

Puccio called the White house to warn them about aGi and became deeply paranoid over a trackpad malfunction on his computer, thinking that apple and Google were “battling over control” of his computer.

“i certainly do have some memory loss from that time because that happens when you have a manic episode to some extent, but from what i remember, a lot of it was it was mostly stream-of-consciousness stuff, any little thing that popped in my head. i was having conversations with hundreds of people online and any little thing we were talking about or some little joke someone thought was funny, i would send a notification out,” Puccio said.

“There was some lewd, provocative stuff in there,” Puccio said. but there were also some things he’s happy resonated with his audience.

“i think that some people, they picked out the good and these are sentiments that i absolutely have. i mean there is obviously—i think we can all agree—a massive wealth disparity that’s worsening. and tech companies are consolidating an enormous amount of power,” Puccio said.

“To the people who resonated with some of the stuff that i said, that’s good. sometimes you’ve got to take the bad with the good. and i’m glad that i was able to connect with some people,” he added. “That’s the one thing that i struggle with—i have no sense of what portion of people liked that messaging or part of it, versus just found all of it despicable.” a year after his episode and hospitalization, Puccio said that he’s “eager to explain what happened” for a number of reasons. mental health destigmatization is core to his effort. i am an incredibly candid person,” Puccio said. “This was something that was very defining. all of my mental health struggles have defined me in a lot of ways.” he said that he hopes this explanation promotes what he deemed as “mental health empathy,” leading people to view irrational behaviors in a more compassionate light.

“if i’m going to write about something i have to go all the way.

“i think that it helps people realize hopefully, the scope of what was going on because a lot of people i would imagine, they just see this guy as kind of an a**hole, he’s just sending notifications, some that are inappropriate, blah, blah. but to give them a sense for how irregular my thought was at the time, potentially contextualizing those messages and understanding them and empathizing with them more,” Puccio said.

Puccio also said he hopes that his episode will help others recognize something similar.

Puccio added society is moving in the right direction towards destigmatization as well as larger “acceptance of eccentricities,” but there is more progress to be made.

“hopefully, people realize that it’s not that someone is damaged or wrong or just completely irrational or whatever, it’s that they’re suffering from a disease. i certainly don’t think that we should view any mental health problems any differently than any physical disease, and i think that society has a long way to come for that. There’s still absolutely a stigma towards mental health problems,” he said.

The notifications were a temporary phenomenon that were ultimately swiped off from user’s lock screens, but there were other notes and essays that Puccio wrote in the throes of his manic episode. he’s decided not to delete them.

“another thing that i thought about a decent amount is i decided not to take down anything that i wrote at the time. and i think part of it is because for one, it was a combination of my unusual brain and the illness that produced that, and i’m not ashamed of that stuff. i hope that it would be enlightening to people to see what it is. i don’t like a lot of what i wrote and i certainly don’t agree with a lot of it now, but i still don’t think that it’s right to you know, completely shy away or hide,” he said. he concludes his essay with an appeal to look deeper.

Puccio’s essay invites people to talk with him.

“one thing i discovered in the psych ward was how gratifying it is to help someone who feels alone with their disorder. if you’d ever like to chat, you can text or email me,” he wrote.

“my hope is that sharing my story will encourage others to share theirs and that anyone who is ashamed of their affliction will feel a little less so. i believe empathy is built from exposure, and if we explain to others whatwe feel, when we feel it, and, if we’re fortunate enough to know: why we feel it. Then maybe they’ll understand. maybe they’ll see beyond our symptoms,” he writes. “maybe they’ll see us.”

Contact Isa Sheikh at isheikh@nd.edu

By WILLOUGHBY THOM scene e ditor

Where: The s chubas Tavern, c hicago, Illinois.

When: s aturday, Feb. 12, 2023.

What: The scene has reunited.

It has been almost two years since Felix r abito/ s aint d ismas, The Trenchies and The m eeks, pivotal members of n otre d ame’s music scene, have played a show together. o f course, life has scattered the members across the country post-graduation, so their triplebill reunion show was something that couldn’t have been missed.

The m eeks (the band formerly known as The s hifties) radiated sonic energy throughout the s chubas Tavern. s porting his iconic blue jumpsuit, m ichael “ d onny” d onovan (‘20), former s cene e ditor and W v FI s tation m anager, graced the stage with his natural wit and charming charisma. n ow based in b rooklyn, The m eeks have taken shape with the band consisting of John King wiggling the strings, Ava m ullen on the kit and Liam m c c arthy on the bass. c oining himself the b rooklyn-based yodeler, d onovan has perfected his sound, allowing him to articulate feelings of love, loss and yearning perfectly. The m eeks’ premiere album “ h ouseplants” is a dynamic debut, featuring songs for every occasion: from crying into your soup to avoiding overthinking. The setlist was perfectly balanced with toe-tapping songs to not-too-melancholic ballads, energizing your spirit with each note. d onovan and his crew were the perfect start to an evening filled with good friends and even better music. The m eeks are the next big thing.

Up next were The Trenchies, an up-andcoming c hicago-based quartet featuring c laire King (‘21) on the bass, Thomas Weiss (‘20) on the drums, Andrew Pridemore shredding lead guitar and Logan Ludwig as the frontman. d uring her time at n otre d ame, King was a part of the b asement b oxers, a staple of the house show circuit, and it was exciting to see her partake in her new musical endeavor. The Trenchies have a distinct sound, perfecting intricate instrumental arrangements with vocals reminiscent of the Talking h eads. Their set was electric from start to finish, featuring their first single “Life Preserver,” hinting at more to come. Keep your eye out for more music because it will be epic.

The headlining performance of the evening was by Felix r abito (‘20) and s aint d ismas which consist of Weiss (from the Trenchies), Josh m orgenlander (‘20) and Teddy Tietze. r abito and the boys always put on an incredible show full of passion and joy. r emembering the days when he’d be looking to borrow someone’s ukulele and recruiting friends to play the trumpet, it was heartwarming to see him on stage with his band and ripping the electric ukulele. Playing hits like “ b read” and “Kombucha b lues,” it was amazing to feel the energy in the room rise as everyone started to sing along. b etween r abito’s organic stage presence and undeniable talent, there is no question that he has become a star. The s chubas show was a way to not only play music but also bring together the community which has made his musical career a reality.

It was a night to remember, and an evening that brought the s cene back together.

Contact Willoughby at wthom@nd.edu

By ROSE ANDROWICH scene Writer

s omething recently occurred to me: I’ve never written about music before. I would’ve, could’ve, should’ve written about Taylor s wift’s rerelease of “ r ed.” When this realization dawned on me, I asked why. m aybe it’s because I have a strange taste in music (which has resulted in less-than-great conversations about my s potify playlists). b ut when I heard about W v FI’s free concert, I figured it was time for me to tackle a music review. b ut as I soaked up some sweet tunes on s aturday night, this assignment became more for me than just an article.

When the opener — Flo s tate — took the stage, the energy in the room was magnetic. The smooth vocals and the upbeat instruments caused some fans to crowd in front of the stage. Listening to their entire set was like being transported into another world, one where you hear things in a heightened sense. Their opening set the stage for m otel b reakfast to take the stage. Flo s tate on the stage was electric and their music is reminiscent of s urf Punk and FI d LA r . The band s urf Punk is best known for being hilarious and writing amusing songs. o ne of s urf Punk’s songs is even titled “ c an’t Get a Tan.” The energy of the crowd during their set further reflected the ties to s urf Punk. FI d LA r is in the punk genre of music. Flo s tate made their first Instagram post in 2021, and their debut single “Waiting” was released in o ctober 2021. After less than a day on the platform, “Waiting” had 349 streams. m otel b reakfast’s set proved to be a surprise. At first, hearing their sound seemed like country music and, given the previous genre it was initially surprising. Then, their sound changed to an upbeat tune. m any audience members jumped out of their seats to dance to the more upbeat music.

Watching m otel b reakfast, there were several things that caught my attention. First, I think the range of instruments they used furthered their set. o nce again, the vocals grabbed my attention, especially considering the variety of singers the band used throughout. There was a balance between focus on the vocals and the instrumentals. s ome instruments had solos which was an excellent way to highlight their range. m otel b reakfast also explained several stories behind the songs. o ne of them was inspired by a band member, Jim, and his encounter with his ex-girlfriend of two years. This highlighted the storytelling component that the band used in writing their music. b oth of the bands represented the power of music. When those musicians took the stage, it was like living in another world, one where you follow to beat, and you notice things you didn’t before. At the end of the night, I found myself drawn to not only their lyricism and their words. Instead, their sound and the intentionality behind what they were doing made this show so enjoyable to listen to.

In addition to some of their discography from recent years, they also debuted a new song and encouraged the audience to help them come up with a name. The song hadn’t been recorded by the band yet. A song titled “ s ee you soon, m eet you there” had softer tones. m otel b reakfast showcased a good range of their musical discography. This made the show enjoyable because it showed how the band was willing to try out different sounds. m otel b reakfast started in 2017. Interestingly enough, m otel b reakfast on their Twitter account referenced Paramore.

Contact Rose at randrowich01@saintmarys.edu