Notes from Gordon Jackson;  President

Have at great time at the December meeting!!  There are a couple of things I did not mention at the November meeting. We may have to set up in the regular room, and won't know if we can use the gym until the week of the meeting.  The other thing is that for the last couple of years we have given some of the left over food to the Salvation Army for use at the McKenna House, so if you think your dish my be one of those, bring a container/ tin foil wrapping or something that you can part with to hold the food.  One thing is a must HAVE A GOOD TIME.

I looked at the associated costs of renting the Manchester Armory for our show and when you add things up it is expensive.  When the show is open to the public, about 12 hours, the associated costs are per hour, maintenance $80.00, fire $32.00, 2 police $80.00 for about $2300.00 the Hall costs $1200.00 per day.  Since I don't think we would want to spend an extra $1200.00 to set up on Friday, we would have to complete our set up early Saturday morning, say 6-8 and the dealers would need to set up 8 -11, starting the show an hour later than Sunapee.  Their would be an additional maintenance fee of $320.00, added paper work and increased insurance costs guess $400.00.  This would total $5400.00 compared to this years Sunapee cost of $2000.00.  What Manchester brings is more exposure and about triple the space on one floor compared to our arrangement at Sunapee.  Any way, I indicated for 2005 we probably would not be renting the Armory It currently is available the first 3 weeks in October.  The Everett Arena has the same problem as last year available on a major car race weekend.  If we could solve the motel situation I think we could learn to live with the races and would like out live them if we kept the same date since the race dates seem to bounce around every four or five years.

The Show door prize was won by a New Hampshire teenager, Michelle Boule of Antrim.  She was very excited to win the Brazilian amethyst.  She and her folks have been coming to the Sunapee show for the last few years since Michelle enjoys the mineral world.  Maybe we will see them as new members.

The Kids mineral card samples were passed out again this year at the show.  One to each kid 12 and under.  We started doing the cards in 2001 when 186 were passed out. Since then we have given away 170, 200 and 246 this year.  Must be that more kids are coming, we had 200 less paying people and 46 more cards were given out.  We must be doing something right, because I know we wouldn't give more than one per kid and I know everyone pays to see the show, so if you add it up we have a potential of 802 new members sometime in the future.  Keep in mind we need more minerals.  They need to be small (1" +/-), have a flat edge for gluing to the card, be clean, and have several, 50 +/- or more.