[Rockhounds] NEEN site

[J. R. Hodel]

Hi all:

Well, no surprise, Julie has done a good job setting up a photo site we can use.  I joined yesterday, which was a pretty spring day.  Today the temperature is supposed to drop all day, and it's raining steadily, hard at times.  Tonight and Tuesday night it's supposed to snow!

This isn't part of my plan!  I was in Arizona, looking out for signs of spring to let me know when to head back home!  It got hot and dusty out west, and I heard tell that the frogs were starting to chorus and peep back home in the hills, so I believed it was time.  Not!

But I have this new toy that Julie set up to keep me busy.  And Martha kept mentioning how bad the specimens were getting to look, with dust and cobwebs (mostly cat hair, really!) on them they didn't really shine or glisten much, and she thought a good spring cleaning was just what they needed.

So I spent 3 days cleaning everyone off with Dawn, lukewarm water, and the softest toothbrush I could find.  I did damage a wullfenite TN, but repaired it with Elmer's Glue, and you can't really see that it was ever damaged without looking at the bottom from in back.  It actually looks better all shiny and repaired than it did all fusty with dust and lint.

I took some pictures of some of the more interesting things while trying to get things reorganized in the shelves, and noticed a couple of things I wanted to ask about.

I have a little linarite on galena from the Blanchard mine in New Mexico (one of my favorite states!) and in cleaning it, I noticed that right by some of the most electric blue you ever saw there were tiny little green crystals.  I looked the locality up on MinDat (Thanks, Jolyon, what a fantasticly valuable tool!) and noticed right off that some of the adits were reported to have atacamite!  Now I have several nice Atacamite specimens, and on those, it is a brightly lusterous, shiny, dark green glassy crystal, or more often a rosette of acicular crystals.

This little cluster of tiny crystals is just not shiny.  Just a bright piney green...  maybe malachite?

Anyway, I put a picture of it up on Julie's new site, so take a look.  The whole cluster of 4 or 5 crystals is just a few mm across, which is why I never noticed it before, nor did anyone else.  I also put up one of my favorite personal finds, a fossillized brachiopod geodized with multiple crystals inside, so take a look.  

Let me know what you think that tiny little green hicky is, too!

KoR,
JR
 




      

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