DESAUTELESITE AND ZOOMING WITH THE MICROMOUNT SYMPOSIUM

 I had a new mineral experience today (October 10). No, not an estate sale, backyard sale, or field trip but a mineral symposium via Zoom™. Now Zoom is the new wonderkid on the block that virtually no rockhound was familiar with 10 months ago.  Now churches are holding Zoom meetings, schoolkids are attending classes via Zoom, and many businesses are essentially operating via Zoom.  Zooming is now a verb and I assume Zoom will be the word of the year (or perhaps Covid or Coronavirus).  I did insert a trademark sign ™ after my first use of the word since I presume it is propriety; however, its use these days is similar to xerox (a verb used to indicate any photocopying) or coke (a noun to indicate any soft drink). At any rate, I attended a Zoom meeting—the Desautels Micromount Symposium.

I had known about the Symposium for years, mostly from reading Quintin Wright’s yearly review, “Through the Scope: The Year in Micromounting” published each year in Rocks and Minerals.  However, the Symposium is sponsored by the Baltimore Mineral Society and Maryland is a fair distance from Colorado Springs, so the Zoom meeting was a blessing in disguise, at least for me. The regular attendees were “OK with the format considering the Covid situation” but were missing the camaraderie, the specimen trading, and especially the give-away tables.  I certainly was an outsider, but no one could recognize me since my new webcam could not, or would not, (blame it on the electronics) post my video photo online! So, I was just Michael on the screen.  However, they are a friendly bunch and certainly would have welcomed me if I would have appeared 😊

The Baltimore Mineral Society was established in 1951 (CSMS dates to 1936) and is a member of both the Eastern Federation and the American Federation.  This year the Micromount Symposium celebrated its 64^th annual event (if I count correctly) and this was the first Zoom event! The official name is the Desautels Micromount Symposium named for Paul Desautels, a famed micromounter.  I am uncertain when that moniker was applied to the Symposium.

The Bibliographic section of the Mineralogical Record website (mineralogicalrecord.com) has a very inclusive biography of Desautels and a few points are extracted below. Desautels (1920-1991) held many professional positions in his career but perhaps is best known for his 25 years spent as Curator of Gems and Minerals in the Department of Mineral Sciences in the U.S. National Museum of Natural History, AKA Smithsonian Institution. In fact, he was “the most influential curator of the 20^th century.” Desautels was awarded the Carnegie Mineralogical Award for his mineralogical contributions, the Smithsonian Director’s Medal, and the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show created an annual award for “mineral collecting connoisseurship” named the Desautels Trophy.

The Micromounters Hall of Fame was established by the Baltimore Mineral Society to honor those who have supported and promoted micromounting.  In the early years, the Society honored “modern awardees” and a few “old timer awardees.”  In 1981, the initial year, Paul Desautels was inducted along with “old timers” George Fiss (d. 1925) and George Rakestraw (d. 1904). In examining the Hall of Fame recipients I noted the names of Lazard Cahn, 1982, the Honorary President for Life of CSMS, Arthur Roe, 1993, a founding member of CSMS who studied under Cahn, Jim Hurlbut, 2011, from the Denver area and a force in the Rocky Mountain Federation, Shorty Withers, 1995, the Honorary Curator of Micromounts at the Denver Museum of Science, Arnold Hampson, 2012, of Cortez who donated his micromount collection to the Colorado School of Mines, and Carolyn and Steve Weinberger, 2014.  For years Carolyn served as the Editor of the American Federation Newsletter and was a tremendous help during my year of writing land conservation articles for the Newsletter. Steve served as the Central Office of the Federation.

At the recent meeting two gentlemen were inducted into the Micromounters Hall of Fame: Michael Seeds, an astronomer at Franklin and Marshall College, and Renado Pagano, a collector from Milano?, Italy.  Dr. Seeds is a well known astronomer with numerous publications who entered mineral collecting later in life (he was not a career mineralogist). Pagono is an industrialist, and in conjunction with his spouse, have amassed a systematic and aesthetic collection of over 13,000 minerals.  Both presented the key talks at the Symposium, Seeds on the relationship of minerals and “stars,” and Pagano on sulfur in Sicily.  I learned much from both including Pagano’s note that mineral collectors often collect other items (see my last Post, October 7, 2020).

Bright orange desautelsite crystals scattered on serpentine matrix with bright white artinite.  I am uncertain about the different crystals on the left third of the photomicrograph.  Perhaps they are dehydrated desautelsite, or a different mineral. Width FOV ~6 mm.

  

A druse of nice, bright orange crystals of desautelsite.  Width FOV ~4 mm.

In 1979 the carbonate mineral desautelsite [Mg₆Mn₂(OH)₁₆[CO₃]-4H₂O] was named to honor Paul Desautels.  It is a rare, bright orange mineral associated with fractures and cracks in rocks called serpentinite.  These metamorphic rocks are composed of one or more mineral members of the Serpentine Group, magnesium silicates formed by hydration and metamorphism of mantle rocks along boundaries of tectonic plates.  Several other secondary magnesium minerals are usually associated with desautelsite, including artinite [Mg₂(CO₃)(OH)₂-3H₂O)], and hydromagnesite [(Mg₅(CO₃)₄(OH)₂-4H₂O] although desautelsite is the last mineral to form in the fractures.

Desautelsite is a very soft mineral (2 on Mohs) with translucent pseudo- hexagonal crystals forming an orange, druse-like, scaly crust.  Without a powerful microscope the individual crystals are exceedingly difficult to observe.

The type locality for desautelsite is in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and is associated with serpentinites. However, it is best known from two sites in California, especially the Artinite Pit in San Benito County. MinDat notes that at this locality an open cut of serpentinized rocks are exposed.  Secondary minerals like desautelsite grow on the altered surfaces of the spaces between the breccia blocks.  Other than these localities in Pennsylvania and California there is one locality in Maryland, and three in Japan, where the mineral occurs with other ultramafic rocks.  So, it is a rare mineral.

BTW, I missed out again.  On the NASDAQ Board Zoom Video Communications was trading at ~$62 on November 1, 2019 and ~$492 on October 9, 2020!  I also missed out on Apple! And Microsoft!

I think the one thing about the Zoom calls is unlike being in a room with people where you can look away or drift off, I feel like with Zoom, everyone's face is just dead center, head on, there is no drifting. It takes a lot of energy from me.            Mellody Hopson