January President’s Message

Happy 68th Anniversary CMS!

January 13th is the 68th anniversary of the first club meeting. The club was called “Sebac Mineralogical Society” and the meeting was held in the T-102 Building on Ellis Avenue. “Sebac” was an abbreviation of “Seattle Boeing Airplane Company”.

We will be serving an anniversary cake and refreshments at our January 12th meeting. So be sure to attend the meeting and celebrate. I feel we should be proud that our club is still going strong and growing on our 68th anniversary.

As I sit here writing and looking back on 2016, I feel it has been good year for our Club.

We have tried several new events to get better exposure for our club and new members. Mark Hohn also built us a new website which has dramatically increased traffic and inquiries about our club. End results is that we did increase our membership.

I want to thank several of our Board of Director Members for their long and dedicated service to our club. Bob & Jacqui Pattie, Rich Russell and Pete Williams have served on our Board, in some capacity, for many years since the 1970’s. We owe a lot of our clubs continuing success to them.

We also have several long time members (some also since the 1970’s) that have been very supportive and active members. They continue to volunteer on various projects when needed. A special thanks to Dick and Keith Morgan, Roger Pullen, Stan Loreen, Bob & Linda Wahlberg, Bev Williams, Mike Blanton, Tony Johnson and Diana Horsfall. If I have left someone out I am so very sorry, it’s an unintentional oversight.

Thank you to everyone that has volunteered at the Puyallup Fair and Gem Fair booths. It was a big committment on the part of our club and I sincerely appreciated your help.

In 2017 I will be again committing our club to doing the Puyallup Fair and the Gem Fairs. So again I will be looking for volunteers to help at our booths.

We are continuing to seek a location to put on a club Gem & Rock Show in 2018. I am also continuing to seek a indoor location for our lapidary shop. If you have any location ideas for the Board to check out please let me know.

Kat Koch, CMS President

Updated: January 14, 2017 — 12:01 pm

Presidents Message

  • Digging It!  Thanks to everyone who came out for our February club meeting – it was a fun one, with our own Roger Danneman presenting the highlights of our field trips to come for 2026. Several club members brought their impressive best finds from 2025 for show and tell. Speaking of field trips – our first field trip of the year is in the books, with a mildly snowy day at the Middle Fork of the Nooksack River up by Ol’ One Lane Bridge outside of Acme, Washington. The variety of rocks this year was excellent, thanks in part to …

Meeting Announcements

  • Maureen Carlisle, Former Docent at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, will take us through A Day on a Dig: “Over the years I’ve been asked about what it is like to be on a dino dig, so I’d like to answer some of these questions. I’ll cover some of the practical aspects of both archaeology and paleontology, as I have had the pleasure of being involved in both.” Show and Tell: bring a fossil or artifact that you’ve found or collected.

  • Come one, come all and play ROCK BINGO! With schools out for many local school districts, we invite members, guests, and especially families and kids to come and enjoy one of our most fun nights of the year. Everyone is guaranteed to win at this FREE event! All you have to do is bring three wrapped presents – presents can be rocks, gems, minerals, crystals, fossils, cabochons, slabs, jewelry, tumbled stones – anything you think might be a nice gift for a rock enthusiast. 

  • Our own Mike Blanton will bring his expertise to this club meeting program – he will share the tools, tips and tricks he has developed to drill holes in stones and minerals so you can do more with the rocks you find. Show and Tell: bring a rock you’d like to make into something else.

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