Considering all the fraud that goes on all over the world all the time, we really don’t need to set a day aside that’s devoted to the commission of more of it, even if it’s just in fun.
Today’s news is a jumble of complaints and injustices that don’t deserve reporting on, so I’ll share a bit about me, instead. What the hell, it is my blog.
I have several hobbies, one of them is collecting, primarily early crystal radios and associated items, and early tube radios. I’m talking 1920’s and prior, and one bedroom is crammed with it. I’ve actually had to stop collecting because there’s no more room for anything in there, not even something the size of a flip phone.
Another hobby is being a lapidarist and rock hound. I’ve collected agates and jaspers from all over the world, and most of it has long since been mined out. These mineral discoveries are always small to begin with and come and go rapidly, with the result that they all become very rare within a matter of a few years, especially the most beautiful and exotic of discoveries.
What I’ve done over the decades is buy a small quantity of each discovery as it happened and the material appeared on the market. I cut and polish a few cabochons of it and save the rest, with the result that I now have well over a thousand cabochons of rare semi-precious stones and several hundred boxes, shoe-box size and smaller, of different material, much of it being no longer available. Along with them are a number of 5 gallon buckets and cardboard boxes full of various agates and jaspers, geodes and thunder eggs.
To work on all these rocks are a variety of diamond saws large and small, several cabbing machines, tumblers, flat laps and a large amount of associated equipment and supplies.
Being a rock hound has found me on many adventures into a lot of pretty remote places, to find and bring home more gemmy new material. I went so far as Coober Pedy, Australia for fire opal but most of my USA collecting was done on the west coast. Most of my collection comes from all over the world, though, from Morocco to Madagascar, Panama to Peru, Mexico to Malawi. Everywhere good stuff is found.
Macular degeneration is causing me to lose my central vision, my right eye is end stage now and my left eye is beginning to darken, so before I can do it no longer, I bought a nice new cabbing machine and I’ve been cutting all those slabs that I’d set aside to do someday, and doing it now. The day has come.
The thing about macular degeneration is while you go legally blind, you can still see. Just not anything in front of you. You keep your peripheral vision, so I’ll be able to find my way around the house just fine but will no longer drive a car, as I’d run into anything right in front of me.
What you have to do is look beside something, then you can see it, but as soon as you do and try to look right at it, it’s gone. It takes some getting used to, so I hope my left eye remains useful for a long time yet. No guarantees there, though.
A lapidarist is a person who cuts and polishes gems.