Tucson Showplace -- Author's Event

On Tuesday, January 31st, the Gem Shop sponsored an Author's Event at the Tucson Showplace. I stopped by the day before to find out more about the logistics of the event. The first logistic was moving huge bins of heavy rocks out of the way. Here is the room the day before.

Late morning on the 31st I drove the 14 miles in from the Tucson Mountain Park. It is an easy drive that doesn't require dealing with the crazy highways and heavy traffic typical of Tucson. The six authors included Brad Cross (Mexican agates), Scott Wolter (Lake Superior agates), Roger Clark (South Dakota Fairburn agates), Johann Zentz (agate encyclopedias I, II, III), Hans Gamma (Oregon jaspers), and me. I felt very privileged to be included in such a fine group. We were each asked to speak around ten minutes and explain how it was that we were standing at the podium.  The Gem Shop did a great job marketing the event.  Over 100 people showed up for the talks, book signing, and cocktail reception.  Here is the poster they had printed.

The books were all lined up and ready to be sold.

Here is a picture of the six of us seated against the wall. This is the same room that had all the bins of rocks in it the day before.

Here are all six of us.  It is interesting that three of us are not professionally trained in geology.  Johann is a music instructor, Roger Clark is a retired lawyer, and I worked mostly in medical marketing. 

Gene Mueller, from the Gem Shop.  He did a great job introducing all of us.

Johann Zenz, who is from Austria. 

Roger Clark is from Wisconsin, but is an expert on South Dakota agates. 

Hans Gamma is from Switzerland, but now resides in Arizona.  He is an expert on Oregon jaspers.

Brad Cross is from Austin, Texas and is an expert in agates from Northern Mexico.

Scott Wolter was one of the first in this country to publish a book on a specific type of agate.  in 1986 he published a book on Lake Superior agates.  Lately he has been writing books on history, inspired by the finding of artifacts that date well before Columbus, but that were not produced by Native Americans.

In my talk I relayed stories about how the museum founder, Axel Niemi, inspired me to be a rockhound.  I also formally announced that I will be producing online rockhounding adventures.  Now that I am finally home, I plan on continuing the project begun last winter.  I am looking forward to making this vision happen.