Madison Gem and Mineral Club

Madison Gem and Mineral Club General membership meeting

Oct 27, 2009

President Alan Vonderohe called the general membership meeting to order and wel-comed everyone. There were two guests present.

Alan announced that the November meeting will be a busy one with the election, shop talk, post-show discussion, etc. He hopes everyone will be able to attend. Also, if peo-ple have private property where they may put out a yard sign for the show, they are en-couraged to get one from those who have a supply. Burnie announced that he knows someone with a nice wood display case for sale. See him for details. Finally, Alan said the club is still looking for member email addresses.

Regarding the election, Scot Moss said the nominating committee had not been suc-cessful in finding a candidate for president. He again asked for someone to come for-ward.

Nevin Franke reported on show preparations. Karl Bethke said he would like to find someone to demonstrate cabochon making. Carlos Peralta asked for donations for door prizes. Bob Thornton asked for donations for grab bags and club sales. Scot had the signup sheets for various activities.

Regarding the grab bags, there will be a session to stuff them prior to next week's board meeting.

An important item on the agenda was the future of the shop. The board proposes that the basic lapidary course be sponsored by the Wisconsin Union minicourses. This has advantages in that the union would handle registration, payment of the instructor, insur-ance, etc. However, the deadline for getting everything set up for the winter courses is Nov 6. Thus, the club needs to make a decision on the future of the shop tonight as the current agreement with the Goodman Center only runs through the end of the year. Bob Thornton presented a financial analysis of projected costs and income for 2010 based on this year's experience and educated estimates. There would be some red ink, but not too much for the club to handle for a while. Metje Butler moved, seconded by Carlos, to extend the Goodman Center agreement through 2010. After discussion, the motion passed by a vote of 36 yes, 0 no.

The competition tonight is obsidian.

For show and tell, Nevin had a brochure from the Denver show on an interesting exhibit of fossils which had been replaced by minerals. Richard Burgess told us about his re-cent trip to Boston where he visited the exhibit of glass flowers at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. These are stunning, anatomically correct renditions of flowers made in Germany from 1887 to 1936. Someone else said it is the second most popular tourist attraction in the area. Finally, Alan showed off his latest polished slabs of agates and jaspers.

The program tonight was Fluorescent Minerals by club member Tyrel Rouse. He ex-plained that fluorescence is named after the mineral fluorite which commonly glows un-der ultraviolet (UV) light. He also explained the difference between long wave and short wave UV and between fluorescence and phosphorescence. Then he told us about some of the commonly fluorescent materials including calcite, thundereggs, agates, and uranium minerals. Finally, he took us to some collecting areas where fluorescent mate-rials are found including many sites in the west, but also in the midwest. He also had many specimens for us to view and a UV light for people to try out specimens they had brought in.

In the competition, first place went to Nancy Smith for a necklace of snowflake obsidian beads. Bill Jeske took second for a faceted obsidian