President’s Message – January 2024

Presidents Message

From the Top of the Rock Pile .   .   .   .   .   .

I thank our membership for electing me as Club President for another two years. I am so looking forward to what 2024 holds for our club.

We have a great group of members who have volunteered for the Board and various 2024 Gem Show positions. I want to extend a personal thank you to each of you.

After a long search, we have filled two essential volunteer positions. Alex Williams has volunteered to handle our YouTube channel. We will once again have new content posted to our channel. Jim Cerenzie is very active in searching out and preserving our club history. If you have any history, please get in touch with Jim to see if he has a record of it.

Our young Tumblers Club is active. Hopefully, more of our Young Tumblers will decide to participate in the club and earn Rockhounding Badges. If you are active in the badge program, the CMS will buy you a rockhounding vest for badges and field trips. I am still looking for a Mom or Dad to volunteer to help me with the program.

We have closed out 2023 with a membership of 145 families or 288 individuals — a recent milestone for our club. Welcome to our club, and I hope you renew your membership for 2024.

Thank you to Roger Danneman for his excellent job leading our field trips every month. Our field trips are one of our most attended club events.

Our monthly meeting attendance continues to grow back to the pre-pandemic levels. Since we have a growing membership, I hope more of our members decide to attend our monthly meeting. The larger our meeting attendance is each month, the easier it is to book quality speakers.

I look forward to seeing everyone at our January meeting.

Kat Koch, President

Updated: January 5, 2024 — 7:44 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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