Over the many years that I have been a meteorite collector and in the meteorite business I have had the opportunity to speak to dozens of groups and tell the story of meteorites. I thought when I moved out of a large metropolitan area to a quiet retirement in the mountains that my speaking engagements would be rare for the future. Boy could I not have been more wrong. In the last year I have spoken to five groups and turned down three offers to speak. In the next two weeks as I write this, I have three speaking and lecturing events alone.
Tomorrow, I need to spend some time getting together the specimens I will take with me to the local high school where I will talk to all the earth science students on Monday. Six periods of classes from 7 am to 2:30 pm. A long day of talking, but it should be great. The department head has made some suggestions for things to additionally mention. Among the suggestions was to tell the students about opportunities to work in the field of meteoritics. So I will devote a nice spot for that. I will follow another gentlemen from the local Gem and Mineral Society who will present on rocks, minerals and gemstones.
One of my early talks was to a group of astronomers at the Chapman Colleges campus in a large auditorium. There were about two hundred people in attendance including my late wife who had never heard me give a talk before. She was quite surprised at how calm and relaxed I was and how well I was received. I was surprised when a group of the attendees asked to take her and I out to dinner and we spent the next two hours continuing to talk about meteorites in the restaurant. We pulled into the driveway at nearly one in the morning. I had passed around about twenty different meteorites through the audience and every one was successfully returned to me. I don’t have that kind of confidence about high school students today. I will not be passing specimens in the classroom through about 160 sets of hands. But as I said, I have to pick out the ones to take. I know that I will have to go through the security screening, and we will see how that goes with the metal detector. Our world has surely changed greatly in the last forty years.
In two weeks I will reprise this talk to the home schooled students of our city. A much smaller group of twenty or so of all ages at a smaller venue; a local park. I will probably let this group hold and handle the meteorites. I will take tektites and iron shale to give away with id cards. I have enough of those items for them but not enough for the big high school group.
Mid-month I will be giving a PowerPoint presentation on tektites to a large group of adults at the Gem and Mineral Society. I hope that I can give them better facts than I heard at a rock shop this morning. The owner there is known by some of the members of today’s field trip. His store was one of the stops after coming out of the desert. It was mentioned while I was paying for some ammonites, I bought to slice in half that I was going to be speaking on tektites at the next club meeting. This was his opportunity to tell me in a few moments about all the places on the earth where new tektites have been found and about the ones, he sells from some of these places. I held my tongue about his obsidians. But did say that I would love to do some experiments on specimens from those locations. He did not offer to go and return with any for me to buy and work on. So maybe I need to do a little research into any newly discovered tektite locations. It has been at least twenty years since I have actually spoken on just tektites. The last time was at a junior college on Science Day. The students from all the local schools were invited on a Saturday to come and hear presentations about many areas of science. There was an astronaut and many exciting topics and activities for the students. Paul and I presented our presentation on tektites and had specimens for the children to take home. I got paid for that talk. In actual money. Which was a first and only time. But I have been taken out to dinner on many occasions, usually before the presentation since after often gets too late.
I have had the opportunity to speak at several Tucson Gem and Mineral Shows. A couple of those were live streamed. I really enjoy sharing what I have learned and the research I have done. On one occasion I had just finished a new book about a special piece of Meteor Crater’s history and was doing a handful of book signing at the Tucson Gem Show. I spoke about that topic to a group at Pima College in a big lecture hall that was not very full. But it was a very narrow subject, and the few dozen guests were very enthusiastic and that’s what is important.
I am glad that my opportunities to speak to groups has not gone into retirement along with me. There are many future topics that I can think of and after most talks someone from another club will ask me to present the same program to their group. So far, I have turned them down politely, but I just might take a few up on it in the future. Especially since I have the PowerPoints already made.
We are holders of very special knowledge as meteorite enthusiasts, hunters and collectors. We love material that is not originally from our world, and it contains secrets of our solar system’s past and sometimes evidence that we should take seriously about the dangers to our future. So much is presented to the public incorrectly in movies and TV and literature. They are still unable to correctly use only meteorite for the rocks and want to continuously call them meteors. If any readers of this article have the opportunity to speak to an adult group or to students at a school think about accepting the invitation it can be very rewarding. You might challenge a young person to pursue a career in some area of meteorite studies. Many times people bring specimens for me to look at and none so far has ever been an actual meteorite, but you never know. You might get lucky and identify a new meteorite and wouldn’t that be exciting?
I know this article has been mostly musings about my life of lectures and presentations but after several hundred articles over more than twenty years try to forgive this article since I have three presentations to get ready in the next two weeks and a field trip to lead out to a trilobite site with the club. Which needs to get to before the weather gets too cold. I have never been so busy. Can a person retire from retirement? Maybe I need to slow down just a little.
