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Tuesday, April 15, 2025 Program Meeting, 7 p.m.

Focuses on “An Unconventional Guide to Putting Together a Noncompetitive Exhibit Case” With Mary Pat Weber

This month’s program will be presented by retired geologist Mary Pat Weber, who has been collecting minerals and displaying them at area shows for the past 20 years. Mary Pat’s approach to building exhibit cases is that it should be fun, easy and interesting to the public.

Putting together a noncompetitive case for a local show that highlights your interests in the hobby does not have to be time consuming or expensive. Unburdened by the demands of competitive case rules and strict judging standards that emphasize what is wrong with an entry rather than its overall appeal to the public, Mary Pat is free to be creative and try new things. She prides herself on trying to put together a unique case for each show to give the public something different to look at.

We have all been to mineral shows where you see the same cases over and over every year.
Mary Pat will show us the materials and methods she uses to make her displays often from materials you probably already have. In the final analysis it is not the number of points or ribbons earned that make a good case but rather the number of nose prints of children left on the glass.

This program meeting is at 7:00 p.m. at Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007. Come to learn, make new friends; open to the public, free admission. 

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California State Dinosaur Subject of January 21st Program Meeting; 7:00 p.m.

Meet ‘Auggie’ aka Augustynolophus Morrisi

This duck-billed hadrosaur lived around areas of California some 66 million years ago in the Cretaceous period. Karol McQueary will be the speaker at our meeting to tell us the funny
story of how we got a California State Dinosaur. Karol McQueary is a retired teacher, principal, volunteer dinosaur bone preparator, and past president of the Southern California Paleontological Society. Although she has collected minerals for most of her life, her interest in fossils began when she retired from the Los Angeles Unified School District. She joined a fossil club and started volunteering at the Natural History Museum in their
Dino Lab, as well as in their Dino Hall. Karol still loves teaching, though, and looks for opportunities to share her love of science whenever she can. When the opportunity came up to help California get its own state dinosaur, Karol enlisted the aid of the kids in the Paleo Society as well as the students at her former school. Their efforts on behalf of our new state dinosaur, Augustynolophus morrisi, are the topic of her talk.

Additionally there will be a five minute talk about Common Sense Safety Around Lapidary Equipment and During Fieldtrips, provided by PLS member Sue Pang. At her job, she is a trained volunteer, Safety representative and will share some of her knowledge with us.

This program meeting takes place on Tuesday, January 21 at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007. 

Come join us! Admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. See you there!

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Author Renée Newman to Speak on Diversity of Gems

Tuesday, Nov. 19th at 7:00 p.m.

Renée will provide a PowerPoint presentation that will include gems from California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Nevada, and Idaho. It will focus on the most notable ones such as tourmaline, jade, benitoite, sunstone, opal, turquoise, chrysocolla, fire agate and Four Peaks amethyst, and the places where they are mined.

Members of the Pasadena Lapidary Society are fortunate to live near areas with a diversity of gems. For example, the distance from Pasadena to the Oceanview mine in San Diego County is only 105 miles. There you can dig for tourmalines, kunzites, morganites, and aquamarines, and take a jeep tour of Chief Mountain where you can see the currently active mines. Historically that area was important. From 1898 until 1911, it was the world’s largest producer of tourmaline and it is still producing high quality material. Renée’s presentation will also briefly discuss other mining areas in the Western states.

Renée Newman is the author of books that show readers how to visually evaluate the quality of gems. She has written multiple books on gems and jewelry. The books will be available for sale at the meeting for a discounted price. Bring cash or check. For more information about Renée and her books go to www.reneenewman.com. You can connect with her on Instagram @reneenewmangg and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ renee.newman.5648/

This program meeting takes place at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007, on Tuesday, November 19, 2024.

Come join us! Doors open at 6:30, admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. Buy a raffle ticket for a few bucks and try your luck at winning a cool rock specimen, slab, or otherwise. We hope to see you there!

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PLS Members’ Field Trip ‘Show and Tell’ Experiences Subject of Tuesday, October 15th Program Meeting, 7:00 pm

Location: Fireside Room at the Santa Anita Church

The Pasadena Lapidary Society October General Meeting will be held in the Fireside Room because our regular room is going to be used for election training. As PLS President David Lacy phrased: “the meeting will be very cozy”. It would be difficult to set up a slide show in the Fireside Room or outside depending on the weather, so we will not have an invited speaker in October. Instead, we will feature three of our club members — Sue Dekany, Curtis Kan and Daniel Nishimura — who will give ‘show and tell’ talks about recent
field trips to the Clear Creek, CA area, the Dead Camel Mountains, NV and McDermitt in OR/NV. Daniel’s upcoming speech is going to be about his adventure collecting Wonderstone in the Yellow Mountains near Fallon, NV.

This program meeting takes place on Tuesday, October 15, 2024, at 7:00 p.m. in the Fireside Room of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007.

Come join us! Doors open at 6:30, admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. We hope to see you there!

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Walt Wright Speaks on Petrified Wood for September Program Meeting

September 17, 2024 at 7:00 p.m.


Walt Wright is an expert botanist, ecologist, geologist, and paleobotanist from Brea, California. He has worked as a Naturalist for the U.S. Forest Service, and in education and research at the University of California, Riverside. He has written articles and given numerous classes, seminars, and lectures on how petrified wood is formed and identified. He has been collecting petrified wood since he was 10 years old, when his mother gave him a piece. To date, he has over 10,000 pieces in his collection.

This program meeting takes place on Tuesday, September 17, 2024, at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007.

Come join us! Doors open at 6:30, admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. We hope to see you there!

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Silicates Subject of August 20th Program Meeting

Our August 20th Program Meeting will feature a talk about Silicates, and the ways that simple tetrahedrons made of silicon and oxygen can form the multitude of silicate minerals (which, by the way make up the majority of Earth’s crust). This wlll be a chemist’s rumination on how much was missing from his “traditional” course on chemistry.

This program meeting starts at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007. Come to learn and make new friends; open to the public, free admission. 

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Celebrating a Milestone

Commendation from the City of Pasadena in recognition of PLS’ 75th Anniversary.

For Pasadena Lapidary Society’s July 2024 meeting, we celebrated our 75th Anniversary as a California non-profit corporation, having incorporated in 1949. Several past club presidents were in attendance, and current PLS president David Lacy presented a Commendation from the City of Pasadena in recognition of our anniversary.

A Silent Auction was held featuring a variety of mineral slabs, specimens, jewelry and lapidary related items, and members enjoyed an Ice Cream Social as part of the festivities.

A beautiful gem tree, made by PLS
member Ferdie Sanchez, was on display.
Leaves are tourmaline chips, trunk copper wire, and base is opalized petrified wood.

Display cases containing members’ jewelry creations and specimen collections were on display for attendees to check out, while a slide show provided a glimpse into the Club’s past and present activities: annual shows, field trips, workshops, and community outreach for STEM/STEAM students. What a great evening we had!

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Australasian Tektites Explored with Paolo Sanchez at Tuesday, June 18th Program Meeting, 7:00 p.m.

The Laos Impact Expedition: Australasian Tektites and the Hunt for their Lost Source

Paolo Sanchez in Laos

Tektites, glass blobs formed from melting terrestrial material from a high-energy meteor impact, are found all over the world. More often than not, tektites seen in the gem and mineral market come from Southeast Asia and are a part of the larger Australasian tektite strewn field, an area covering around ten percent of Earth’s surface. Despite their prominence and over a century of research done on these glasses, their source crater has remained elusive until 2019, where researchers proposed the site of a 790,000-year-old meteor impact buried under ancient lava flows and jungles of southwestern Laos. Here, PLS member Paolo Sanchez delves into a recent expedition that he and other geoscientists took to examine the geology of the potential crater, and what they found (including a lot of tektites, of course).

Tektite

In the ongoing observance of our 75th anniversary as Pasadena Lapidary Society, member Nancy Robb will provide a presentation on the history of Junior Members of PLS over the years.

This program meeting takes place at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007. 

Come join us! Admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. See you there!

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Tuesday, May 21 Program Meeting, 7:00

For our May Rock of the Month talk, PLS member Nancy Robb will provide a slide presentation on Pasadena Lapidary Society’s annual shows held from the 1940s to the 2000s, in a continuation of our 75th Anniversary observance.

This program meeting takes place at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007.

Admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. See you there!