Thursday December 1: Annual Holiday Party & Potluck 6:30 pm in our regular meeting room at Northridge United Methodist Church
Sunday December 11: Chatsworth Kiwanis Holiday Parade & Festival See article
Thursday December 15: Board Meeting At the Dearborn’s home
Sunday December 18: Hanukkah Begins It’s gonna be eight crazy nights!!
Sunday December 25: Christmas Day Santa is Coming!
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December General Meeting: Our Annual Holiday Party - Members Only
“It’s A Pearl Party Potluck”. We will be presenting a video, “Pearls - The Documentary” as well as a complimentary “Del Air Wish Pearl Kit” to all paid members where you can harvest your own pearl from an actual oyster and make a beautiful pendant. We have made up a total of 50 kits. We will also be holding elections for our 2023 Board of Directors. We hope to see you all there for our year end party and potluck.
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The Rockhound Dennis Miller Show
Dennis will fill us in on December’s birthstones; Tanzanite, Zircon and Turquoise. He will also bring in a new stepping stone he created. Dennis asks all members to bring in something for Show & Tell each month to share with our members and guests.
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News From the CFMS - www.cfmsinc.org
THERE WILL BE A 2023 SHOW!!
After speaking with several societies in their area and finding no takers, the Executive Committee reluctantly decided that CFMS needed to hold a no-host show for 2023. As all are aware we were unable to have our traditional show in 3 of the previous 5 years–in 2018 although a club in northern California graciously invited us to hold a Directors Meeting at their show, as a Federation we were not part of their show except for the Endowment Fund table. COVID prevented us from having a show hosted or otherwise in 2020 or 2021. You can plan to be in Lodi June 23-25, 2023. The show committee is hard at work finalizing all the various forms so these can be posted to the CFMS website as soon as possible. The event will be held at the Grape Festival and Harvest Fair in Lodi, CA. This is the same site of a successful no-host show in 2015. First Vice President/President elect Bob Rush will be Show Chairman with Jim Barton acting as his assistant Show Chair. Unlike a hosted show, a no-host show doesn’t have a pool of club members to handle all the tasks involved. We are asking those in the nearby area to let Bob or Jim know how you can help. Volunteers will be needed to help with set up, security, admissions, demonstrations, etc. Most importantly all the clubs will have the opportunity to meet members of the public who could possibly become your future members. Bob plans to put the tables promoting membership at the front of the dealers building so these are the first thing visitors see when they enter the building. Be watching the newsletter for details and information as it evolves. The basic framework for 2023 was begun in 2021 so the committee is basically picking up where it left off when we had to cancel last time due to the uncertainties surrounding the pandemic. Here’s to yet another successful no-host show!
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The Art of Being the Meaningful Historian By: Jennifer Haley, AFMS Historian - Oct 2022 AFMS Newsletter
As Historians, you have a meaningful job and are a great value to your organization. You are the keepers of all things memorable and significant. You are the storytellers of the past, for today, and the storytellers for the future generations of historians who will be thumbing through your files to celebrate the joys of the earth sciences, and the practice of lapidary arts and crafts. Think of your file boxes as gift boxes given to you, and the gift boxes you are creating to give to the future of our hobby someday. I thought this might be a good time to begin talking to you about the many ways you can take care of your society and federation historian files. Over the many years there have been society, federation and AFMS historians. Lots of boxes and even metal cabinets have been passed from one historian to another over generations of time. This accumulation of so much history can produce a sense of anxiety and a quandary of wondering how to manage not only the space to hold the material, but how to protect it and how to find what you are looking for. Some have asked if it’s even valuable enough to hold onto so much accumulated material. Especially for federations and the AFMS, transporting all the files from a retiring historian to someone new can pose a problem due to the vast traveling distances within their territory. There aren’t any hard-set rules of how to go about this, unless your society or federation states them. You or your society may have piles of file boxes that haven’t been looked at in ages. You might be wondering what condition they are in at this point and thinking, what on earth should be done with them. I am here to offer some good pointers and some creative ideas to help you out. There are so many treasures in those boxes when you are able to find them. Maybe not 100% that you might find personally interesting, but gems in the figurative sense and literally to inspire your members today. As historians, you are usually the backup for storing copies of your organization’s business meeting minutes and reports. You also have the special job of keeping copies of your organization’s newsletters, photos and news clippings of the year’s events and sometimes storing mementos. You are the person members will say at some time or another, “thank you so much for keeping the good memories and for remembering us.” There are different aspects of being a historian. There are various choices available to you about how you can take care of your files, along with ideas to make finding things in the future easier for you . Some organizations are digitizing their files, but if that’s not your cup of tea right now, that’s alright too. Stick with me over the next few months, and in between other historian articles for the AFMS, we’ll go through those boxes together.
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A Field Trip Teaser…Save the Date!
Our wildly popular annual Fossil Whale Bone field trip to Refugio Beach in Santa Barbara has found its date: Saturday January 28, 2023. Full details in the January bulletin.
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On Sunday December 11, 2022, the Del Air Rockhounds will once again have a booth at the Chatsworth Kiwanis Holiday Parade and Festival.. Set-up begins at 9:30 am and the event runs from 12:00 noon until 5:00 pm. Two of our core members, Shellie Van Winkle and Bernadette Friedman are out of town on this day and will not be able to work this event. So…even more than ever…we need club members to step-up and volunteer to help out at this event. We will have three 10 x 10 pop ups featuring the Spin-a-Wheel, grab bags, our jewelry, fossil and specimen boutique, touch and feel table, fossil reproductions, free educational game and more. Our booth will be on Canoga Ave just south of Devonshire St. in Chatsworth. Show your Del Air spirit and volunteer to help out. Please let Maxine Dearborn, Chris Ward or Bob Knox know of your intent to help out.
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