IMCA Insights – May 2008
Tucson Bound
by Maria Haas

It was always still mighty cold where I lived in Michigan when the Tucson show rolled around each year so flying to Tucson to add Arizona weather and good friends to my passion for meteorites and rocks was something I always really looked forward to. Instead of traveling my usual 2,000 miles in early February to bathe in rocks, this year I only had to travel 211 because late last year I moved from my home state of Michigan to the Southwest I have grown to love over the years. Moving across the country was not as pleasant for my furniture as it was for my stony friends, my cat, and me.

Tucson does its best to be a friendly and welcoming place and for the most part it succeeds. This year we were all welcomed with a slew of closed freeway exits, which added to the already challenging rush from chondrite to achondrite. I used to tell my family and friends back in Michigan that I wasn’t coming home until I saw each and every rock and hunted every strewn field. In my attempts to do so my yearly Tucson vacation slowly stretched from a long weekend to a week to ten days to two weeks. I still haven’t seen them all but this is my home now and I can take my time.

Oh, give me a home where the meteorites show
Where the Martians and the pallasites lay
Where laughter is loud and deals are abound
And the skies are not cloudy all day

For meteorite groupies like myself, our travel plans to Tucson include the social weekend, which now includes the IMCA dinner, The Meteorite Mayhem and Birthday Bash, and the Blood Auction. The Lang auction changed to a later date this year. The social events are a grand chance to reconnect with those we don’t see other times of the year, meet new meteorite people, see newly discovered meteorites, and make special deals.

This year Anne Black and I hosted the Second Annual IMCA Dinner at La Fuente Mexican Restaurant. We had a nice turn out and there are plenty of smiling faces in the pictures so I think it was a success.

IMCA Tucson Show Dinner 1

Bob Coty, Jeff & Malin Krosschell, Zann Ovitt and Adam Hupe

Adam provided us a vacation into the Lunar highlands with his new NWA 5000, an 11.5 kilo feldspathic breccia. We’ve all seen the pictures but they do not do this beauty justice. It is truly breathtaking in person. Adam watched the Lunar eclipse in late February through an ablation hole in an end cut of this incredible stone. Wouldn’t we all have loved to do that!

IMCA Tucson Show Dinner 2

Mike Bandli, Eduardo Jawerbaum, Lauren (Steve’s daughter) and
Steve Arnold, Anne Black (standing), Greg Hupe,
Bob Coty, Jeff & Malin Krosschell

The flower arrangements on the tables were door prizes and a little oriented Sikhote Alin was tucked into each. The winners were Don Edwards, Adam Hupe, Anne Black and Carol Falls (Bob’s wife).

IMCA Tucson Show Dinner 3

Don Edwards, Mike Bandli, Eduardo Jawerbaum, Lauren &
Steve Arnold, Anne Black (standing)

It’s always nice to see Don Edwards at the show each year. Don arranged to purchase/pick up several items from Anne Black, Andi Gren and Erich Haiderer (all IMCA members) and also added a piece of NWA 5000 to his collection.

A note to dealers from Don: “It would be great to get more of the meteorite dealers together at the Inn Suites. I decided not to do as much driving this year so skipped seeing some dealers that I would have seen otherwise.”

IMCA Tucson Show Dinner 4

IMCA Vice-President, Anne Black

Anne (Impactika) shared room 230 of the Inn Suites with Geoff Notkin (Aerolite). Even though they had a hugely impressive display of meteorites there, I am hereby nominating their room this year as the “fun room”. There were always laughing meteorite people mulling about in the hallway upstairs and the courtyard below their room. We send our condolences to Anne, whose father took ill during the show and passed away shortly after.

IMCA Tucson Show Dinner 5

Lane & Theresa Moss, Carol & Dr. Art Ehlmann

At this year’s show Dr. Art Ehlmann celebrated the birth of his The Oscar E. Monnig Meteorite Collection Catalog, published by our very own Geoff Notkin of Stanegate Press. If you don’t already have your copy, send an email to Geoff. It’s not really a conventional catalog but instead it is Oscar Monnig’s passion, nurtured and fed by Dr. Ehlmann with the help of many very special meteorite guardians. Speaking of very special meteorite guardians…

Lane and Theresa Moss also traveled to Tucson from Texas. Theresa is the Director of the Monnig Gallery.

IMCA Tucson Show Dinner 6

Clockwise from left - Fredrick "Fritz" Stephan, Larry Lebofsky,
Larry Atkins, Mark Bowling's forehead, Bill Jensen, Mike, Jensen,
Anne Black (standing), Maria Haas, Doug Dawn

Larry Atkins will tell you came to the show to buy meteorites and socialize but he really came to Arizona from Michigan to hunt with his metal detector. I know this because I hunt with him. After the show this year Larry, Mark Bowling, Floyd “Griff” Griffith and I headed northwest from Tucson. We didn’t hunt Holbrook because it was flooded but we went to Franconia, Gold Basin and Red Dry Lake. A lot of us are wearing the “skunked” hat after a hunt but Larry hardly ever returns without something. Larry was successful at Franconia and Red Dry Lake and Mark Bowling found his first walnut-sized Gold Basin. I left northwest Arizona with good memories, a few pieces of chalcedony, and pneumonia.

The person you don’t see in the pictures is Floyd “Griff” Griffith of Parker, Colorado because he was kind enough to be the photographer for the evening. Griff traveled through 200 miles of heavy snow and wind to experience his second Tucson show during his third year of collecting. Griff has a fresh crust habit and was not disappointed by the Mali/Erg Chech that was available. Under the moonlight and a small lamp in the Franconia strewn field, Griff unwrapped for us the crusted beauties he picked up at the show.

Griff says, “It is so nice to meet the folks I read about on the list [Meteorite Central Mailing List] and in Meteorite Magazine. I know for me, there is no place I can go that has more knowledge on this subject.”

I guess that says it all.

Maria Haas
Treasurer to the Stars
 

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