Prez Says...

by Kenny Reynolds, MSDC President

Hello MSDC members and welcome to January 2024!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday with family and friends. Heather and I started December with a bang with both of us coming down with Covid which made December a very difficult month. We had to cancel our planned MSDC Holiday party at our home and we were both devastated! It seems like we lost the entire month of December being sick, but were fortunately able to recover just in time for our family to arrive and stay through Christmas.

We had 17 people over for Christmas dinner including four children who were very much into the rocks, minerals, and fossils throughout the house and of course everyone got a view of the fluorescent rocks in the basement! 

I must say that I wonder what goes through people's minds when I take them to the back of my basement and then turn off the lights and it's dark, pitch black for that brief second before I turn on the fluorescent lights and it's like voila....look at that!!!! I’ve included some pictures so you can get an idea. 

One of the youngest of the children attending our Christmas dinner and son of our good friends is five years old and very into rocks. My smart wife bought him a gemstone advent calendar from National Geographic, and I must say it was a hit! I would highly recommend it to any youngster starting into rocks and minerals. It was good quality and had a nice assortment of stones in a neat case with good explanations of what they were. I also included a picture of the gift. All the children ended up leaving with some minerals as gifts and all with big smiles on their faces!

Moving into January and a new year, I'm looking forward to a fantastic lineup up of presentations being arranged by our Vice President Cindy Schmidtlein. In the last two years, Cindy has been able to dazzle us with some very interesting programs and I'm sure this year will be the same!!

As for now, we will continue to have our monthly programs via Zoom. Hopefully we will hear something this year from the Smithsonian as to whether or not we will be able to return to our traditional meeting spot at the Natural History Museum.

For now, I am very grateful to be able to continue our club meetings via Zoom. Our membership numbers have increased, and we have been able to attract people that otherwise would not be able to attend our meetings due to distance from the museum in DC.

I am truly honored to be the president of a club with such a great group of members and have very high hopes for MSDC in 2024 and the future!!!

I'm looking forward to seeing everybody on January 3rd at 7:30 pm for our next meeting. Remember to check your email for the Zoom link or password. Hope to see you then.