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MSA MEETING PROGRAM & PLACE

Franciscan Renewal Center, (Piper Hall),

November 19, 2026 @ 7.30 pm Arizona time

"Cornwall and Beyond:

A Mindat Adventure"

Presented by

Barb Matz

BARB MATZ

Bryan Swoboda, Bluecap Productions photo.

* Please bring refreshments to share.

* MEETING will be (In-Person and Zoom).

NOVEMBER: MINERAL OF THE MONTH

AGATE (Rough or Polished)

(Okay to bring 1-2 examples)

The Mineralogical Society of Arizona is pleased to welcome one of our own, Barb Matz, as presenter for our November 19 program, “Cornwall and Beyond: A Mindat Adventure.” Join us at Piper Hall on the campus of the Franciscan Renewal Center in Scottsdale for an evening retracing a Mindat-sponsored journey through Cornwall, UK.

In 2018, Barb joined a small Mindat-sponsored group led by none other than Mindat.org founder Jolyon Ralph. The first week took them to a dozen mines and related sites across Cornwall, followed by a road trip to the fluorite mines of northern England, a brief foray into Scotland, and an unexpected ending to the trip! Her talk is a travelogue featuring the mines, the minerals, and a brief introduction to the geology of Cornwall.

Mark your calendars for a program by one of the Society’s treasured members!

Barb is a retired professional geologist who grew up in Michigan, where her rockhounding began with “agate licking” along the shores of Lake Superior on family camping trips, followed by lapidary lessons at the local rock club. She earned a BS in Biology at Michigan Tech, then a BS and MS in Geology at the Mackay School of Mines, University of Nevada–Reno. While in Reno, she was an active member of the Reno Gem & Mineral Society, where she honed her lapidary skills. Work as an environmental geologist then sent her around the West: eight years in Albuquerque, where she learned to appreciate and collect minerals, and finally the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lives today. Along the way she spent 29 years characterizing potential hazardous waste sites through soil and groundwater sampling before retiring in 2018.

An avid traveler, Barb began taking Mindat-sponsored international trips in 2012; her most recent was in 2019. When Covid lockdown eased, she resumed traveling closer to home, on a quest to visit every U.S. state, in 2026 she checked off numbers 45 and 46, West Virginia and Virginia.

Barb is a member of the Mineralogical Society of Arizona, the Tucson Gem & Mineral Society and the Bay Area Mineralogists.

The Mineralogical Society of Arizona is honored to welcome Barb for this special program. We are grateful for her many contributions to micromount mineral collecting, her show leadership, and her remarkable travels exploring the history, localities, and specimen sites of the mineral world.

Photo from Barb Matz.

Photo from Barb Matz.

Meeting starts at 7.30PM Arizona time.