Passions
Group Events, Host (198x-19xx)
Independent Scholars Roundtable
Wandering - a Hiking and Singing Society
Between the Species, Editor (1972-1996)
Most important journal of its kind. Published papers from meetings of the Society for the Study of Ethics and Animals, meeting concurrently with the American Philosophical Association. Also poetry, fiction and art. Co-edited with Prof. Steve Sapontzis, Hayward State University.
Between the Species is available at: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/
A Walk to Rome, Activist
16 days June-July 1990: Germany Black Forest border with Switzerland, over St. Gotthard Pass in the Alps, to the Italian border, and thence by train to Milan and Assisi, finally to Rome to post theses at the entrance of St. Peters. Theses were also posted in Strasbourg, France at the church of the famous clock of Descartes, and at Martin Luther’s church in Wittenburg, Germany.
Preceded by a Conference on Animal Rights and the Souls of Animals in Ober Wolfach.
Schweitzer Center, Conference Organizer
Animals, Ethics, and Social Policy Conference (1990)
Urban Wildlife Conference
The Humane Community: Animal Liberation, the Protection of Nature, and the Renewal of Public Life (1978)
Vegetarianism, Organizer
Thanksgiving/Native American/Soul Food Dinners (19xx-19xx)
Projects
Thinking About Thundereggs - An Annotated Bibliography
Submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the Master of Science Degree in Geology, California State University East Bay (2013). His thesis was on the petrography and chemistry on a particular suite of thundereggs. John received his graduate degree after 7 years of part-time studies and spent another 7 years completing this labor of love, his legacy, in mid November 2020.
By John’s 80th birthday in February 2015, the bibliography included 1,077 entries from Rockhound and Scientific Literatures dated 1750-2017.
Rockhounding
As a young boy living in Lake City, Minnesota, John collected Lake Superior Agates along the shores of lake Pepin and of the Mississippi, and in gravel pits between Red Wing and Winona. Living in Berkeley, he resumed life as a collector in the early 1990s, with a focus on thundereggs. John visited most localities in the U.S., and began collecting thundereggs from Germany in 1998 at the annual show in Freiberg. In 2005 he toured nearly all localities in Poland and Germany, with the result that his collection includes specimens from 50+ German localities alone. Other excursions for thundereggs have included trips to New Mexico, Arizona, Oregon and Washington. His personal collection now includes specimens of more than 90 localities.
Past president North Bay Field Trips, a consortium of ~15 rock clubs in Northern California
Past Field Trips North Director, California Federation of Mineral Societies
Active with Northern California Geological Society and Peninsula Geographical Society; organizations of professional geologists in the San Francisco Bay region
As a member of numerous gem and mineral clubs, John lectured widely on Thundereggs in the Bay Area and beyond.
Lectures:
“Thundereggs: Distribution, Geologic Setting, and Formation” (2002); First John Sinkankas Quartz Symposium, American Gemological Institute, Carlsbad, California
“The Formation of Thundereggs” (2003); Peninsula Geological Society, Stanford and Northern California Geological Society Meeting in Orinda (2004)
“Thinking About Thundereggs: An Historical Sketch of Inquiry into their Nature and Origin” and “Thundereggs: Distribution and Geologic Setting” (2005); Symposium on Agate and Cryptocrystalline Quartz, Colorado School of Mines
“Two Hosts or One? (Welded Tuffs or Domes and Flows: The Host Rocks of Thundereggs)” (2008); The Wonderfool World of Agates, University of Wisconsin, Fox Valley
Seminar “Thunderegg Agates East of the Mississippi” and Show Presentation “A Thunderegg Excursion Abroad” (2012); A Celebration Agates, Hopkins, Minnesota
Seminar: Tour a half dozen thunderegg occurrences east of the Mississippi, with photos, maps and discussion. Sidebar will provide difference between thunderegg agates and amygdaloidal agates.
Show Presentation: Pictorial your of thunderegg occurrences outside the U.S. - Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, France, Germany, Poland, Turkey, Iran, Ethiopia, China, Russia, Romania and elsewhere. All photos from John’s personal collection of more than 90 localities.