February 1st Business Meeting Report
by Andy Thompson, MSDC Secretary
President Kenny Reynolds welcomed and thanked the MSDC members and guests for joining our Zoom meeting and, for their service, gave a special thanks to the four club past presidents who were in attendance.
Geology in the News
He then called the business meeting to order and asked if anyone would share some recent geological news they wanted to share. Two items generated discussion with the first being the discovery of opal on Mars. Jim reported that NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover had found evidence of silicate and water, which, in effect, is opal.
Beth reported a second item, namely that scientists had recently detected a slowing down of the spinning of Earth’s inner core. That sparked commentary discussing possible endpoints such as the complete cessation of inner core spinning, a reversal, and 70-year spin cycles.
Old and New Business
No old business issues were raised for discussion, but Kenny happily reported that new leadership has arisen for our neighboring Northern Virginia Club in which our own Craig Moore had volunteered to serve as Vice President and Jason Zeibel accepted the position of President. Kenny also thanked Kathy Hrechka for her January meeting presentation on Arkansas diamonds.
Kenny honored Ken Rock who MSDC nominated as its 2022 Club Rockhound of the Year, as published recently in the EFMLS news and MSDC’s Mineral Minutes for January 2023.
Another bit of Geology in the News, he said, is the publication of The Northern Virginia Trap Rock Quarries: Geology, Mineralogy, Industry, and Collecting History published in July of 2022 and authored by a large team of FMVA writers, including Thomas Hale, this evening’s presenter. Information about purchasing the book may be found here.
Future MSDC Monthly Programs
Kenny then called on MSDC’s Vice President for Programs, Cindy Schmidtlein, to give us an overview of the topics for our club’s upcoming monthly programs. For March, we will have a short research proposal update by Irene Shuk and Dr. Ben Andrews will tell us about volcanism and pyroclastic flows. Cindy also provided us the lineup for the next four months, through June 2023. To find this information on line, go to our webpage: Home | Mineralogical Society of Washington, D.C. (mineralogicalsocietyofdc.org).
With no further issues to discuss, Kenny called for a motion to close the business portion of the evening which received unanimous approval. He then turned the meeting over to Cindy to introduce the evening’s program presenter.