The Ventura Gem & Mineral Society, Inc. (VGMS)
Meeting Programs 1997 Archive.
Table of Contents.
February.
JANUARY 22ND PROGRAM BROUGHT CALIFORNIA HISTORY TO OUR DOOR.
Jim Van Schaack from Tarzana shared some slides of photos and great old maps of the early, early days of California. He also shared with us the experiences our ancestors had in settling this state and their fight for land and gold.
The photos of the towns and cities back in the late 1800's and today does indicate some change!! Those were rough but fascinating days.
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March.
CRYSTALS IN THE SIERRAS IS FEBRUARY 26TH, 1997 PROGRAM.
Donald B. Ricky, who is a professional writer and painter of authentic replicas of Chumash Pictographs on Sandstone, gave us a wonderful program on "Crystals Grow Wild in the High Sierra's".
Don, his family and friends have been collecting in the Dinkey Lakes Area for the past 15 years. He had many specimens to share with us that were beautiful. They consisted of Smokey Quartz, Epidote, Black Tourmaline and Feldspar. Don also donated some pieces for our raffle.
The best time to go to this area is between June 15 and August 15. It is 8,000 to 10,000 feet so you can still run into some snow at times. It was fascinating to see where they would find the pockets of crystals, one good sign to look for is an orange brown ring in the rock formation.
Inez Shakman had on display the wonderful treasurers she purchased at the Quartzsite show for our Federation show Donation Award prizes. They were beautiful and I'm buying lots of tickets!! We will have a list of the prizes with descriptions available shortly. She also brought in the "large" can, which Art Holloway welded shut (no hanky panky here), that the donation award stubs are being placed in! She did the hard work decorating it; now we have to all sell tickets like mad to fill it up!!
David Mautz had a display of some of his new fossils. Thanks Dave for sharing them with us and also for the wonderful door prizes! Along with these, Bonnie Demianiw had some very tasty pastries which we all enjoyed!
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April.
MARCH PROGRAM DISPLAYED CREATIVITY USING ROCKS AND GEMS.
Susan Cowlishaw, Program Chairperson, introduced Norman Cloys. Norman and his wife Pat are 1956 Charter Members of the Centinel Valley Gem & Mineral Club in Southern California.
Norman has sliced petrified wood, obsidian, agate and geodes into 1/16 in. slabs and made them into slides. He used these transparent slides to put on a 35 minute show. There were some very interesting shapes, designs and color in this material. It was a challenge to pick out pictures from the various designs, some just leaped out at us!
In addition to Norman's slides, Marie and Wayne Ehlers had a very good display set up demonstrating a lot of items that can be made from rocks and gems. Dave Mautz also had a most interesting display of fossils.
Richard Bromser.
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May.
WE LEARNED WIRE WRAPPING JEWELRY AT APRIL 23RD MEETING!
Susan Cowlishaw introduced Clare Gagnon who proceeded to teach us about wire wrapping. A name was drawn, measurements taken and he made a beautiful jasper gold wire wrapped ring for the lucky person whose number was drawn. I nearly fainted as it happened to be mine!!! Needless to say I was ecstatic! He made everything look so easy and many members and guests expressed an interest in learning. He has offered to teach a class of five members of the club and then have them come back and hold classes for the rest of the membership. There were five quick volunteers!! So, in the future months we will be learning and sharing the information with everyone.
Mr. Gagnon will have a booth at our June show so plan on stopping by to see him ply his skills. He also had on display many beautiful pieces of his work.
Besides the demonstration we had displays of the howlite and other minerals that were found on the April 19th field trip. It was a very successful one and what a big, beautiful piece of howlite they had.
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June.
INFORMATIVE "GEMSTONES AND FAKES" TOPIC AT MAY 28TH MEETING.
Did you ever wonder if you'd been "taken", i.e. sold something as one thing when it really was not (Tidy Bowl Turquoise!)? It's good to realize you can already recognize some fakes. It is scary to learn what specialized equipment, testing, and/or training is necessary to spot other fakes. Mike Havstad, a professional photographer currently on staff with both the Gem Institute of America as well as the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, gave a presentation at the last VGMS meeting which was informative. His slides were real eye openers. For those of you who were unable to attend, you missed a well-planned and well-presented lecture and slide show. Ask a fellow VGMS member to tell you more.
Contributed by Kathryn Davis.
(Editor's note: I've heard nothing but great comments about the program, unfortunately we were on vacation. I always miss the good things!)
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July.
JUNE 25TH MEETING FOUND MANY SIGHS OF RELIEF "ATS" (After the Show).
This was a great meeting to go over the Show and the stories "good and bad" of the show. One common theme ran through the whole meeting and that was there were a lot of hard working people in our club and that we had good help from Conejo and Oxnard clubs. Everyone was in agreement that they did not want to do it again for awhile (if ever!). It brought the club together and it was great to hear the respect and appreciation for one another in the stories.
It sounded like the show was a success. I can only say sounded like, because, unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend! My mother-in-law of almost 40 years passed away and Jim and I had to leave to go to Iowa on Thursday. It was like getting all ready to go to an important Prom and coming down with the flu!! Our thoughts were with everyone back here working themselves to death and still enjoying it!
The wonderful news was that our club also won some awards!!
"Rockhound Rambling" won 2nd prize in the CFMS Large Bulletin group. THANKS to all of you for sharing your information and helping me get it together.
David Mautz won an award under the Natural Form - Seastar Competition. (I saw it at the meeting and it is WONDERFUL!)
Kathryn Davis was given a Plaque as "Show Chairperson" for the Gold Coast Treasure Trove Show. (A very hard earned plaque!)
VGMS was also given a Plaque as "Host Club" for the show.
I also learned (and turned green with envy!) that one of our members, Jay Baumler, won the first prize in the Donation Awards. It was a beautiful Gold California Coin.
Congratulations to all of you and thanks to everyone for their hard work to make it a Wonderful Show.
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August.
A BIT OF SAN BUENAVENTURA HISTORY AT JULY 23RD PROGRAM.
Anna Paquette was "with us" for our July 23rd meeting and gave a wonderful talk about her family's history in moving to San Buenaventura along with the history of the growth of the town itself. Anna was portrayed by her granddaughter, Suzanne Paquette Lawrence, who was in costume of the era. She talked about the rains of 1862, where it rained for 60 straight days. Needless to say it was flooded! This was followed by 2 years of severe drought.
Suzanne is the chairman of Docent Education for the Ventura County Museum of History & Art. She kept everyone spellbound - you could hear a pin drop!
In addition to the wonderful program, we had displays of the finds from the July 19th field trip to Topanga Canyon Road. Red and Nancy Jioras had cut some of the turritellas they found and polished one side. It was fascinating to see the colors within. There were about 10 on the field trip and everyone found great material.
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September.
GEM BEADS & COPPER ENAMELING PRESENTED AT AUGUST 27TH MEETING.
We were honored with a wonderful slide presentation on Gem Beads and Copper Enameling that was put together by Bruno Benson and narrated by Leah Marcus. I misled you in the August bulletin as I said it was going to be narrated by Myrle Kirk, sorry about that!
The slides demonstrated the procedure on how to do these and the steps taken to accomplish it. It definitely answered some of those "How did they do that" questions in my mind! It was fascinating to see how the different colors were done in both the gem beads and the enameling process.
In addition to the wonderful slides we had displays on hand. Dave Mautz shared some more of his fossil collection with us which is always fascinating. Marie Ehlers brought some of her winning fair entries, a clock made of shells and a wonderful bouquet made of desert roses. They were very unique. Red and Nancy Jioras brought some of their finds from along the local beach and fairly close by areas. Some were polished a bit to set them off and let us know what they could be like in cabs or other crafts. John McCabe also brought some samples of the material that they will be gathering on the field trip on the 13th.
If you weren't there, you missed some good slides and displays and most of all the fellowship with good old rock-hounds - the ones you can talk to about all the things you do and they don't think you are crazy!!!
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October/November.
SILENT AUCTION - NOT SO SILENT AT SEPTEMBER 24TH MEETING!
We had some wonderful material at our Silent Auction, with just one problem! The time was too short and someone kept coming and writing their name under mine! We did well on the auction and had quite a bit of really good material left, so we are going to do a rerun in November. Actually we are supposed to have two a year and so we are hurrying!
It was fun listening to the comments and "bickering" going on around the table! We have a "mean" group as there were some heavy threats! We are a brave group, however, so the threats didn't seem to curb our bidding again!!
Not only did we have some excellent material from our more seasoned members, but we had some good stuff from the Jalama Beach field trip. John McCabe had already sliced some of it and that piece of paper was well used!! Fortunately I persevered!
It really was a fun time by all and of course Dave Mautz had some good door prizes and Bonnie Demianiw had great refreshments! Be sure and make it out for the next one!
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December.
PROGRAM REVIEW October, November and December.
We have had three meetings since last we published!! Am I behind or what!
In October we learned about the Northwest Coast Indian Culture with J. Steve and Anita Shearer. You could tell just how much they ENJOYED their hobby.What a wonderful collection of Indian artifacts - baskets, totems of all sorts, tools, masks and many other interesting items. They have traveled over 300,000 miles collecting history and information. Steve grew up in the Chipawas in Minnesota and has been at it almost ever since.
The November Program found us back at the "Silent Auction" arena again and a lot of "fellowshipping" going on! We also elected officers and got an up-date on our March 98 show. It was a fun meeting. We had a chance to chat with other members, which unfortunately, many times that is the only time we see them!
December brought our Christmas Party and what a great one it was. It was catered by A-1 Catering who did an excellent job. The food was good and hot and We Didn't Have To Cook! Dave Champion did a wonderful job of installing the new officers. He really makes it interesting and fun and enjoys it himself! The high lite of the evening was the entertainment! Kay Hara's group "Les Cless-eeks" gave a wonderful performance of Christmas carols and songs. They put such energy into them and you can tell they have a great time doing it, which makes one enjoy it even more! We also played Bingo with everyone going away with a gift, which was fun. Eleanor Rising, bless her heart, came in the early day and set up her wonderful table decorations for everyone's enjoyment. She did this when she was in pain with a severe case of shingles. She is such a trouper, we missed her and we THANK her for going the extra mile and her concern for everyone else!
If you missed any of these meetings, you missed out on a lot of fun and education. We hope you will be at the next one.
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NEW SLATE OF OFFICERS TO BEGIN 1998.
Our new slate of Officers was installed at the December meeting by Dave Champion. He does a great job of installing.
Our new leaders are as follows:
- President - John McCabe,
- 1st Vice President (Programs) - Kathryn Davis,
- 2nd Vice President (Field Trips) - Greg Davis,
- 3rd Vice President (Show Chair) - Richard (Red) Jioras,
- Treasurer - Richard Bromser,
- Recording Secretary - Carlon Strobel,
- Membership Secretary - Sharon Cunningham,
- Federation Director - Florence Meisenheimer,
- Bulletin Editor - Shirley Layton,
- Parliamentarian - Art Holloway/Wayne Ehlers.
1998 Committee Chairpersons are:
- Publicity - Nancy Jioras,
- Hostess - Bonnie Demianiw,
- Ways & Means - David Mautz,
- Hospitality - Sharlyne Holloway,
- Sunshine - Eleanor Rising,
- Educational Cases - Bruno Benson,
- VGMS Scholarship - Susan Cowlishaw,
- Historian - Inez Shakman,
- Librarian - Any 1998 Committee Chairperson.
I would like to thank my nominating committee for doing a fantastic job, as well as all the members who so willingly agreed to step into the positions. We all appreciate the extra efforts you will be giving and want you to keep in mind that we have a wonderful club and we are all behind each and every one of you.
We would also like to THANK each and every one of the outgoing officers for all their hard work during the past year. We accomplished a lot under your guidance and had a lot of fun as well. As you breathe a large sigh of relief, pat yourselves on the back as well! Thank you for being there.
Shirley Layton,
Nominating Committee Chair.
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