January 2018 – President’s Message

Presidents Message

A Note from the President’s Desk . . .

We had 30 members and their families attend our holiday dinner this year. This was the largest turnout we have had in several years. It was so nice to visit with everyone and to enjoy the good food everyone brought.

Thank you for reelecting me to the Presidency and to the other Board members that are continuing to serve another term on the Board. I also want to welcome our newbie Roger Danneman (Director) to the Board.

I have been passing out show fliers and club fliers at various functions: Kitsap Holiday Dinner and craft shows Mike and I have done this season. While at Kitsap Club dinner I found out at their November rock show they enrolled 60+ new memberships. I sure hope we do as well at our show.

Everyone that is interested in volunteering to help at our Cascade Rock and Gem Show, now is the time to talk to Mark and commit to a spot. We need a PR person (you can do this from home via email and phone) and someone to work with the Boy Scouts, Girls Scouts and Campfire in order to get them to attend and use our event to earn their badges (other than possibly initial contact, this can be coordinated from home via email and phone). We have a huge project ahead of us and we need all hands-on-deck in order to accomplish it. We can not leave the burden to put our show together to 8 or 10 members. Don’t procrastinate call or email Mark now!

Our auction at the holiday dinner was a success. We made a deposit to our checking account of $855. In case you have ever wondered where our money goes. Our rock auction income plus membership fees go towards the monthly meeting room rental, our annual dues to the Northwest Federation, American Federation, WA Mineral Council and misc expenses throughout the year. Thanks to Rich and Mark’s hard work we have been able to get rid of our storage unit as of the end of this past December. The storage unit was a huge drain on our annual budget. With the income from our Gem Show in 2018 and no storage unit fees we should once again be in very good physical shape. After 2018 rock show, I am hoping we can once again resume an annual scholarship award to a couple of deserving college students studying geology and related sciences.

Kat Koch

CMS President

Updated: March 22, 2018 — 9:39 pm

Presidents Message

  • Digging It!  Thanks to everyone who came to the club camp out at Teanaway campground near Cle Elum last month. After a brief spell of rain the first night, we were blessed with sun, clear skies, and rockhounding the rest of the weekend. And a big thanks to Roger Danneman for doing all of the trip organizing, and keeping us all warm and well fed during the weekend. This month I’ll be giving a talk at our club meeting about how to use Gaia for rockhounding. If you have specific questions, please bring them along or feel free to email …

Meeting Announcements

  • Noelle Barnes will present Using Gaia for Rockhounding, an overview of the features and tricks associated with the app Gaia and how you can use it for GPS, saving waypoints, navigation, photo tagging, trail recording and more. Show and Tell: Bring the rock(s) that have the best “story” – and tell everyone how you found them and where!

  • Club board member Paul Ahnberg will talk to us about the impact of wildfires on our lives – from protecting your home to staying safe while out rockhounding – and what we can do today to help mitigate our risk. Paul will combine his knowledge gained from learning at both the WSU Green School (Master Gardener) and WSU Climate Steward programs. Show and Tell: Bring something you found, from a place that you know has since been impacted by floods or wildfires – or was impacted shortly before you arrived. Tell your story!

  • December’s date and time is coming soon. We will update this page as soon as we know more.

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