World of the Rockhound; 1

Iraq. Would be. The second largest craft hobby in America today is said to be Iraq counting with all of its branches of interest some of which are Jim cutting making jewelry and the collection of Jim Stone as rocks minerals and fossils. This universal hobby has grown to astonishing proportions in the last 25 years and shows signs of even more rapid growth as the need develops for more people to pursue more leisure time activities due to the fact that they're working fewer hours have more days off and get more vacation time. Rocks and minerals as specimens of extreme importance to the rock come on. Most people do not realize the important rule rocks and

minerals play in everyday living. Through write used in toothpaste and clothing. This series of programs is designed to give an overall picture of the rockhound offer encouragement to the newcomer in this hobby and present information of general interest to everyone. All of this will be examined as we explore the world of the rock around. This program will present a preview of the entire series. The narrator is Len felt. About a hundred years ago Barry Cornwell wrote a poem called The Haunted stream. And in it he said he that can draw a charm from rocks our woods are weeds are things that seem all mute and does it is wise that describes a rock around. He certainly does draw a charm from Iraq. What is the charm in Iraq. In an old grey stone

that really doesn't look like much of anything. Something like this that seems so mute speaks loudly to more than three and a half million people in the United States alone. Three and a half million willing victims to this lure of Iraq in one way or another. Many of these people like to collect rocks and minerals of all kinds. Some of them concentrate on gemstones and others collect fossils. A few of them collect artifacts or grains of sand or even old bottles. They not only collect they swap they classify and catalogue their specimens and they help others to identify these earth materials. Those who love to create originate different kinds of art forms from rocks and minerals and gemstones. They paint pictures write books or compose music because of some inspiration which seems to spring up from way down deep within the earth. The average rock band is an amateur. Most of these people do this because they enjoy getting out of doors. They like the

challenge of searching for something and they're proud of what they find. But some of them have turned their hobby into a retirement business. Like Mr. Mayhew Jones who retired from the insurance business and who now owns a gem shop which is stocked with items from all over the world. We had this case we have a phrase now that we have double polish from raw material we've bought all of the world our stone here from Africa Australia India and Brazil Mexico and the United States and Canada. We get them in live shows and breaking the Solomon part assuming more machines similar to a concrete mixer. It takes from five to eight weeks to accomplish the pricing action. Some accounts are professional geologists like Mr. Bradley Hershey who is chief geologist for mineral resources for the state of Tennessee one of the functions of his

department is to prepare geologic maps for the state. Variations yeah I'll be right back you know I heard it was doctored you are truthful. First place this. We've. Been. Studying different. Types of geology since that. The weather. Quite a bit of this work is put out publications and maps. Of which this new geologic map Tennessee. That we have. It will be the latest and best deal I think maps in the United States. A great many who work professionally in this field became interested while they were in school like Mr. John S. White Jr. You see him specialist at the Smithsonian Institution. Yeah. I was a mineral collector and actually my interest died and three years on. An Earth Sciences program in the

green. And where we had my family mineral collection. And. My interest and I was in some cases this is both a profession and a hobby as it is with Mr. Edward Lu fair chief geologist in charge of research in geologic mapping for the state of Tennessee. He does lapidary work in his leisure time and while I am into a rock band and. Part time LIVE TODAY. Please read a guy probably prepared at the present time Rock County is more popular in certain areas of the United States than in others. In California for instance there are some 17000 members of organized rockhound clubs and it seems that nearly everyone is some kind of rock collector in California who wonders where they are always looking for a rock. Anywhere you go you see people on the highways you know slope you know and go out in the desert you see people with trailers you know take you know

home and break in a minute and you buy a lot of. Not a roadside stand and have been trying to. Route and specimens and. Manner of it and you think they'll write it in a row. I don't know it don't automatically make you want to be a rocket that was mystically Satterfield who recently moved from California to Tennessee. He had difficulty in finding rock hounds in the middle Tennessee area. According to recent surveys rock hounding in the Pacific area does have a larger number of followers than in any other section of the country and the east south central part of the nation has the smallest number. But new clubs are springing up every day and as the word spreads memberships increase and more people become interested and I didn't know they had rock and I'm sure. I thought something about a rock and people were going like I was crazy. I didn't I don't love it and tried to find out about Brad

stone cutter blade and think to play with my fam. And Brian and when it had one of them when you're reading about Iran and you. I would think people around you know that. Rock counting was and what a rock and I'm like and was a rock collection well. It would be. More than me to get in. There and I think. People are going to have entered. So the world revolving around the rock hound is constantly growing. It encompasses a multitude of subjects and a great many of these will be explored in future programs of this series. The first to be considered is who are the rock hounds. What kind of a person draws charm from a rock. Most of these people pursue this

activity as a hobby during their working hours they are employed in every conceivable occupation. They're doctors lawyers business executives secretaries teachers artists housewives and of course a great many of them are students. A drawing is wide according to a recent survey. Nearly half of them are over 50 years of age. One fourth of them are under 20. In the process of drawing charm from Iraq these people collectively spend millions of dollars each year in camping equipment and automobiles and they spend many more millions of dollars on their hobby equipment. In California the average rockhound family travels approximately 5000 miles a year going on organized field trips and private rocketing excursions. The favorite types of camping accommodations are truck camper combinations with trailers as second choice. And for these cars trucks and trailers there's even a rockhound bumper

sticker which can be purchased in answer to advertisement in national hobby magazines. But not all who go on field trips like to camp out. About half of them prefer roughing it in the daytime and enjoying the luxury of a hotel or motel at the end of the day. In this home nearly every rock around has a separate area or some kind of hobby room where he can display his collection or work with his materials and a great many of these people admit that they had to have their houses made larger in order to make room for more rocks. Travel is by no means limited to the United States. Exciting trips are made available by travel bureaus trips such as and African gems of our which is organized to guide the rockhound on a tour of East Africa and Rhodesia and on through the diamond mines of South Africa gem and mineral tours to other countries like Brazil and Australia are also

offered. Some rock hounds in speaking of themselves will jokingly say they have rocks in their heads but they know it isn't so. They have good reasons for pursuing this widespread hobby. In the second program of the series we will present some of these people expressing themselves as to why this is their chosen leisure time activity and recalling some unusual experiences they've had in connection with it. Another program will be based on equipment. Beginning with essential tools for a field trip and progressing to homemade lapidary equipment. Then on to the complicated machinery required for jam cutting and polishing. In addition to equipment geologic maps will be discussed along with government bulletins and publications also laws and restrictions which every practicing rock around should know will be reviewed in the portion of the series devoted to rocks and minerals.

There's an account of a field trip in search of agate located in a farmers being field. This program gives an insight into the mechanics of an informal type field trip plus interesting information about agot which is found in the middle Tennessee area as well as in many other parts of the United States and other countries as well. When you get your do that do you know when you're going to have your life you know that. And it may be. Where you think you may think well you know if you lay down you. Got already broke already. That was Mr. Velma curveball as you talk with condors visiting his farm where agate was recently discovered in the Bain field. Another type of field trip is illustrated later in the series of broadcast by an account of a geological tour of the

Marion Kentucky area where fluorite which is also known as Forest bar is found Mr. John as Ted's chief geologist for the pencil chemical company who conducted the tour began by pointing out faults in the structure of the land. Now this I know your people are rock bottom and this is not really a rock hounds trip it's a geologist trip but you see the things that I have to show you today. I believe that you will have a chance to understand why things are where you find them a little better now. This whole area and they are from Illinois Kentucky for Sparky. Is probably the most highly crowded area in the world. These are where the actual displacement. Of the earth's surface and others that rubbed one side has gone down the other side has come up and that movement confidence eye opening and the nearly political opening in the earth's surface. Which is known as a frog. Now these perhaps can

tell you or is a blanket kind commonly called the mathematical work that is always that come up as gases and I deposit it at the right conditions of temperature and pressure within within the color. Now this particular problem here which I'm going to explain to you in a minute is how to memorize with think I know that because other people have core drill it right underneath it. Now if you were not just over here to our left the brown rock might brown rock has bedding plane flying and at an angle like this. If you look over here are really rock you will be a better place. Allowing almost all of that of the people who are called in this area this side on the left has flipped Well when it flipped a grab bag and I would word there were horrors all the want and I would like indomie because the manga like after it collects a few specimens of minerals. The beginning rockhound may want to learn more about the crystals and Crystal and in minerals crystallography is a very difficult subject considered to be one of the most complicated

phases of mineralogy in this series we have attempted to make this subject more understandable to the layman. A portion of the series will be devoted to fossils with rocks like trial by cephalopod in backing a pod being introduced. These are familiar words to the fossil collector even the beginner but he may not realize that fossils are still being found that had no names at all. According to Mr Ernest Johns you name some of them yourself. Well again I would be reading too many of them I mean the names. You do the best you can and you still feel lucky to get half a million right. And if you know that well I'd say the best and hey five I'm actual fossils in the world have actually been won and found I believe in so that's if you got the part of those Hey if I'd have never then never have been found and named you don't you can't name the less you name yourself.

You take a different varieties of dogs. Well then maybe there's another one some soma to pick in the US but if you have wanted to I don't know maybe you could call it a dog would you got WANT TO different from anybody else's maybe what what maybe you can place a name on it yet it's a new variety and this is the way they are that. You might call it a trollop bite but it's a new type of trial a bite and you can come close to the name on it but you can get it down to the exact name because it's still a little different from a traveling museum called the Yellow Submarine is a new artistic and dramatic concept of education presenting this very old subject of fossils and the great sea which covered much of the United States millions of years ago. Going to the submarine in another program will describe what some of these plants and animals looked like when they were alive and well discuss what their surroundings were like as they now appear in this new kind of museum which was developed by the Children's Museum Nashville Tennessee and made possible through Project 10 under Title Three of the Elementary and

Secondary Education Act. The rockhound who enjoys lapidary work will find that the segment of the series about Jam cutting is especially valuable. It contains information from nationally known experts in this field who have the F G F degree which stands for fellow Jemma logical association of Great Britain the lapidary section also contains information from amateurs. Some of these amateurs are active workers in the craft hobby shops for servicemen at bases here and overseas. Air Force Staff Sergeant Lynn Traven is one of these men. He enjoys rock counting is a family affair but he specializes in jam cutting family the family enjoyed six children my wife and. We all enjoy looking for rocket. You're quite an active summer every weekend every day. First that's part of it that the other part is the

most fun in finding your stone after you find it kind of give and take them into a beautiful jam and then I used to give them away for gifts or sell them or somebody interested in a particular stone I'll go and get a part but that after the stones credit it to me it's no good anymore that I would find it been gotten out of town. Chief Master Sergeant Robert McGowan is a relative newcomer to the hobby and he and his children are enjoying it. He became involved in record a whack at the hobby shop at Stewart Air Force Base and is now assisting with the management of it. I have four children. You know that they're twins and they're 14 and younger 7 now they've taken some interest in the hobby in cutting down and not passing but it's a new hobby in the family I've only been at it less than five months and I just became rather involved more on request perhaps than than I would have been normally but I really

enjoy it and I'm not much on the rock around me at the end of it yet for hunting this down but I do enjoy cutting them and influence what I can do expecting fasting work. I would say that I haven't had a nervous group in my primary field of interest law and you don't know it quite widely separated this series of programs covers the three major phases of rock around the rocks and minerals fossils and Lapidary work among other subjects. The very important matter of display is considered first as nature's own display which is often rather subtle at times one isn't even aware of all the mineral beauty until some kind of artificial light is used to bring it out. Mr. Clay you Satterfield has seen all of this by using a black light right now you have a right right and you think you know it to look at a map.

You're going to run here. Nature's display is subtle and often astounding the rock icons themselves have developed ingenious methods of showing their collections methods which reveal a loving care and great imagination. These people have been most willing to pass along their ideas and to make suggestions for the benefit of listeners who may be wondering what to do with rocks stuck away in a drawer somewhere. Or with a pile of rocks in the basement. There are numerous other rocks and minerals not in a collection which we look at every day. Lotteries won pots and pans and pins and needles or others paper clips hammers Teflon. These are only a few of the minerals all around us. A comparison of these implements today with prehistoric are ancient tools and equipment will be the subject of another portion of the series. Other programs will explore the creative world of the rock around. Presenting

individuals who have used their experiences in this hobby as a springboard to other hobbies such as photography photographing minerals through microscopes and getting unbelievable pictures truly minerals magnified which is one of the travelling displays of the Smithsonian Institution. In art rock hounds find all kinds of opportunities for creative expression. One example of this is Mrs D D E church. I watching to an artist of wide reputation who has taken colorful and exotic minerals cut them and used them in design making table tops. Some of them eight feet long and also making raw hangings in various of various sizes and shapes. I think about eight years ago I started and I fumbled into it. Really. But I've been doing the rounds doing the oils large oils. But for the last six years at any

rate I've been working exclusively with. Rocks that don't work. She does not consider these pieces to be mosaics. No it's not creating a mosaic. I have been spending most that X but it isn't because as you know in mosaic. The. Method of doing it is to build up. If you build up into your design Now this is just the other way I've taken the stone which Nature did you notice on some a beautiful pattern right within the stone and tried to make back the focal point of interest and go down from it. So it's done with a very different mechanically. It's very much like a mosaic but artistically it's quite the opposite. One of Mrs. church's works was selected to be displayed in the United Nations building because it was considered to be such a fine example of minerals from all over the world living peacefully

together. Another example of creativity is the book Rosie the rock hound like Rosie in the story Frances Brandon the author felt that she had a unique experience when she found a cephalopod fossil as large as a love of French bread. And therefore she has a great personal attachment for it. The thing about you with only one never found thing I don't know if this one of your discovery. Oh you were the same reason I went with oh that's not bothering you. No I want to thank you for proving that rock people but to me it's a beautiful thing. The fact that these animals are no longer here with us. MK You would think that was Mrs Francis Brandon who now teaches at the Mississippi State College for Women and who formerly taught in elementary grades where she encouraged her students to seek understanding in the earth sciences. Sam's girl children like Rick Taylor age 12 start collecting rock specimens at a very early age and they expect to make a lasting hobby of it.

It's not just a passing fancy. I'd like to keep my collection open to get around to it when I got really into it so I could get on. Whenever I see it I'm not right. Plan on the grander thing or somebody has got it backwards. Track and batter try to have a collection. Pick it up or for granted. I get home credit put in my collection and it could be pretty big. This was rock record. Many a book I decided to make geology his future career at a very early age. But he soon discovers that interest alone isn't enough. Much study and preparation is required to qualify for entrance into educational institutions offering degrees in this field. We will discuss these requirements as well as some scholarships and awards in the segment of the series pertaining to education.

One of the most often asked questions particularly asked by children is what happens to rocks and minerals after they leave the ground. In several programs of the series the uses of various minerals will be discussed as well as the locations where these can be found. In addition to some facts about them and some fantasies concerning them rock and mineral shows attract many people. It's a known fact that during a recent 12 month period 4000000 500000 people paid admission ranging from 15 cents to a dollar and a half in order to attend 800 shows throughout the United States. This is where the results of all the raw counts efforts are shown to best advantage and judged. Therefore it is only fitting that in one program we observe various types of shows. Talk to some of the people at a recent national Gem and Mineral Show. And look at

the behind the scenes activity which makes these events possible. Working with the various earth materials seeing them on display searching for them and extracting them from the ground gives rise to many questions. Questions like what type of rock is this one or that one. Is it igneous sedimentary or metamorphic. Will we ever run out of rocks in the earth. Is the Earth really four billion five hundred million years old. How much of what we know is based on superstition and myth and how much on fact. And finally where did all of this come from and how did it get here. Scientists and theologians both have their explanations which are sometimes conflicting and challenging to each other. In the final program of the series we will present several of these men expressing their opinions.

This discussion may give satisfactory answers to some but may only serve to arouse new questions in the minds of others. In any event one must agree with Barry Cornwall when he wrote he that can draw a charm from a rock is wise. At the conclusion of this series we will have an overall view of the world of Iraq where people have their hobbies and their professions. This has been the first in a series of programs exploring the world. This series is produced by the service of the public library of Nashville and Davidson County and Nashville Tennessee. Next week

discuss the fascinating aspects of this hobby and a program entitled The charm. This is Charles Mitchell. This is in the national educational radio network.