January 15 Program Meeting, 6:30 pm

PLS member extraordinaire Janie Duncan will present ‘A Brief History of Beads’ at our first program meeting of 2019. Practically everyone knows what beads are but for those who’ve been hiding under or looking at rocks too long, a bead is a small, decorative object that is formed in a variety of shapes and sizes of a material such as stone, bone, shell, glass, plastic, wood or pearl and with a small hole for threading or stringing. Beads range in size from under 1 millimetre (0.039 in) to over 1 centimetre (0.39 in) in diameter.

PLS VP Mona Ross will present the Rock of the Month talk on Psilomelane. A group name for hard black manganese oxides including hollandite and romanechite, psilomelane consists of hydrous manganese oxide with variable amounts of barium and potassium. Psilomelane is erroneously, and uncommonly, known as black hematite, despite not being related to true hematite, which is an iron oxide.

Come to learn and make new friends; open to the public, free admission. Tuesday, January 15 at 6:30 p.m., in the Donald Wright Auditorium of the Pasadena Central Library at 285 E. Walnut St., Pasadena, 91101.