PEACHFRONT SPEAKS

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The Amazing Bolivian Parrot and Rare Macaw Escapade
Eagle Overload: More Eagles, More Cats, the South Africa Edition
MY KENYA DIARY: IN QUEST OF EAGLES
MADAGASCAR DIARY: SERPENT-EAGLES, GOSHAWKS, AND MORE
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flirtatious birbs of the home - 2019-01-27
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Read my new book, The 10 Best Things You Can Do For Your Bird at Amazon or at many other fine distributors like Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, and more.


By public demand, and after a delay of an embarrassing number of years, I've finally put my notorious essay, Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman, free on the fabulous internets.

A bibliography of my published books and stories.

Here's a simple card-counting FAQ to get you up to speed on the basics. Here's the true story of the notorious DD' blackjack team, told for the first time on the fabulous internets. No other team went from a starting investor's bankroll of zero to winning millions of dollars.


A Sadean take on Asimov's classic Three Laws of Robotics can be found in Roger Williams' NOW REVIEWED ON SLASHDOT!!! The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Adult readers only please -- explicit sex and violence. For updates on the "Dead Tree Project" and other topics, you may visit the official fan site, Passages in the Void..


My Bird Lists -- My Louisiana State Life List, My Yard List and, tah dah, My World Life List.


HEY! What happened to the Peachfront Conure Files? The world's only OFFICIAL Peachfront Conure site now features free peachfront conure coverage, including a magazine length Intro to Conures previously published in American Cage-Bird Magazine, now free on the web. I offer the best free Peachfront Conure information on the internet. If you have great Peachfront Conure info, stories, or photos to share, contact me so I can publicize your pet, your breeding success, your great photograph, etc. on my site. Thanks.







page three: my mineral collection -- the spheres, or, good thing i'm not a better photographer or you guys would be drooling helplessly on your monitors by now

2010-09-22 - 7:33 p.m.


all photos this page � 2010 by elaine radford
gold crazy lace agate sphere, roughly 2 inches in diameter, that we had handmade for us around 1993 -- this is one of a kind, folks, NOT FOR SALE
locality of the material: West of Elido Benito Juarez in the Sierra Santa Lucia, Chihuahua, Mexico. probably the La Fortuna claim

Peachfront's Note: I'm slowly working on a project to document my mineral collection. Most of these items are not for sale. Really, none of them are for sale. However, if you really want to offer a ridiculous price to purchase one of the items, you are free to contact me. I probably won't agree, at a reasonable price, but if you must have something, I probably will agree for a ridiculous price. From time to time, I will offer well-priced items or swaps/freebies either on eBay, the Rock Tumbling Hobby site, or (rarely) Craigslist. My seller name would be...wait for it...Peachfront!

To start with Page One of my Mineral Collection, the 80 pound Quartz Crystal who was hugged by Timothy Leary, you can click right here. To continue to page two, my petrified wood from Washington state, you can click right here.


labradorite, cut from our material

Ah, where to begin? I have a large collection of fine stone spheres, even after I consider all the beauties that I let slip through my hands. Sigh. But you can't keep all of them, and supposedly we were having these spheres cut to make money. I still remember a luscious Blue Amazonite with lots of silvery shimmer... and how about that large Green Quartz which was the first sphere of our material that we ever sold? The first two spheres pictured here, the gold Crazy Lace, and the Labradorite/Spectrolite, were also cut by our sphere cutter. The photos simply don't do them justice.

of course, there's nothing wrong with a humor element, and here are three fiber optic spheres, to represent all those spheres and marbles of the world that are cut from artificial stones or other manmade materials


a six inch Brecciated Jasper, don't remember where I bought it but it was not made for us, still an impressive piece though


another sphere that was hand cut for us, a fine two inch diameter sphere of turritella (rattlesnake) agate, he got a lovely polish on this handsome fossil material


BAD photos of a very fine, large Rainbow Obsidian sphere, although I couldn't capture it in the photo, this sphere is a "bullseye" of shimmering green and purple in the black obsidian

I also possess, but gave up on trying to photograph, a similar sized Golden Sheen Obsidian sphere from Mexico. Gorgeous in person but I can't make the golden play of light show up in my photographs. Here is a hint of it in a photo it shares with my Golden Sheen Obsidian Egg:

Living in New Orleans, where there are no rocks but where there is plenty of "voodoo," most of the folks I encountered who were into the rocks were either 1) from Arkansas, 2) into the New Age, or 3) both. Most of those folks were quite naturally fascinated by that most magical species of stones, the Quartz family. Therefore, I was willing to buy, sell, or swap stones made of Quartz crystal, not just for myself but also for resale. I think I pretty much cherry-picked the best of the bunch for my own collection.

this "star" rose quartz sphere is quite simply a stunning piece when turned in bright sunlight to show the large six-legged star, and i regret that i'm not yet set up to photograph phenomena like star stones because it's quite simply spectacular, pretty sure i got this mail order so i don't quite know how i lucked out -- must be magic!


i did both trades and sometimes just outright purchased from the alabama dealer who sold me this very fine specimen, so i no longer remember quite how it came into my possession -- i just remember that once i saw this lovely quartz crystal sphere with its long RED needles of rutile, i had to have it, i call it "the redhead," terrible photo of a lovely specimen...


another fine piece we had handcut for us, the sphere maker did not know what it was made of, nor do we, is it rhyolite...if so that's a wonderfully glossy finish for a rhyolite...another one that is NOT FOR SALE


i actually bought this fossil coral sphere retail, i know, you thought peachfront never, ever paid retail...


another one i bought in a new age shop and it wasn't cheap, chrysocolla, i'm guessing peruvian chrysocolla because it was a fine, large piece of material but a rather poor quality, bumpy "native cut"



bought this large sphere in a rock shop in the hot springs, arkansas area, it's flourite, but it's a big ole hunk with nice color and the price was right, so i grabbed it


blocking on the name right now, and not a great photo, but this is a clear quartz with a series of linear inclusions that make it look like the pages in a book or a bunch of stacked-up files


a large, 3 inch or more diameter quartz sphere simply CRAMMED with golden rutile needle inclusions, brazil


louisiana opal, purchased directly from ben stevens, the miner


a well-cut malachite bullseye sphere from house of onyx, a friend bitterly fingers it every time he visits and comments on how all the other malachite spheres he sees are "bumpy" (too quickly native cut with little regard for quality control) but this one is perfect

two commercial cut spheres, the 2-plus incher being hematite, the 1-plus incher being pyrite

two small "marbles" really rather than spheres, originally intended for jewelry making, one is ruby (Pakistan), the other is amber (unknown, but presumably the Dominican Republic if it's genuine)

maybe faintly smoky bit less than 2 inch diameter quartz sphere, brazil

there was not a lot of good quality ocean jasper on the market in tana, madagascar when i visited in late 2007, this was the best of the best, and it's a one inch sphere

small photo, but it's a big stomp -- a 4inch diameter all natural quartz crystal sphere from brazil

this huge, maybe 4 inch diameter Ocean Jasper sphere from Madagascar was purchased NOT in Madagascar, i never saw any spheres of this quality, but years earlier during the "boom" when there was a lot of this material flowing from Madagascar, i actually picked it up on yahoo -- anybody else remember yahoo auctions?

will have to re-take this way-too-blurry photo later when i find the time, a 2 inch diameter sodalite sphere, check out that natural blue...

The first sphere I ever made wasn't much of a sphere. It's "big marble" sized, and it's made of pink feldspar. When you turn it in the light, there's a silvery shimmer on it, but I have to admit that I don't much like this material. I didn't want to put my first effort into a beautiful material and somehow spoil it, but now I'm sorry, since it turned out very well -- nice and round, nice polish. I just don't like the material. Lesson learned: Always use material that you like. Always. Even for practice. There's a lot of rock, but very little time. Invest your time in a material that you can appreciate.

an interesting smoky quartz sphere with an angel hair (golden rutile) inclusion, although to me it looks more like a horse's tail than an angel's ponytail...

every sphere collection has an amethyst sphere from brazil in it, here's ours, over 2 inches in diameter

another one where i can't capture it with my camera, a large quartz sphere with a huge rainbow/iris inclusion trapped inside of it, only a hint of it shows in the photo -- material is from brazil, the purple glass "hand" is from a local flea market

aha, another sphere we had made for us from our own banded hematite, nice polish on this material!

a beautiful small bloodstone/heliotrope that i bought on ebay back in the day, it has much better color than my poor photo gives it credit for...wonderful blood red drops on the deep christmas pine green

a large sphere of the rare mineral charoite, a new discovery from russia in the 1990s

a large gypsum/ulexite sphere with a big bright eye, purchased at black chasm caverns in california, may 2011

picasso marble sphere
� 2013 by elaine radford

picasso marble by jim meeker

tiger eye sphere by jim meeker
tiger eye cut by jim meeker

bamboo stone by jim meeker
bamboo stone by jim meeker

NEW for December 2013

leaf jasper sphere by Jim Meeker
leaf jasper sphere by jim meeker

4 inch andara glass sphere by jim meeker

I have two great additions to the collection for 2013, both by Michigan spherecutter Jim Meeker @spheremaker. The leaf jasper appears to be some sort of brecciated jasper, and it's the one I originally bought for myself. The huge four inch green Andara glass was originally intended to be a gift but, oh well. Once I saw it, I couldn't bear to part with it, so it became a gift to myself. It's near perfect, bubble-free glass -- Jim says he saw one bubble but I haven't found it yet -- but the flip side is that this pure glass is so reflective that I haven't yet figured out how to get a good photo. It's one to admire in person.

Added July 27, 2014: Michigan Septarian sphere and base, with bonus polished freeform, by Jim Meeker:

michigan septarian on instagram

New for October 19, 2014: Glass conglomerate sphere made by Jim Meeker

orange glass marble handmade conglomerate sphere by Jim Meeker

pink glass on quartz photo & stone cutting by Jim Meeker

NEW Nov. 14, 2014: Pink glass on a quartz stand, cut and photo by Jim Meeker.

New for August 24, 2015 -- spheres, stands, and even the photos by Jim Meeker, THANKS

orthoceras awesome

This is a huge, absolutely awesome Orthoceras sphere on an Orthoceras stand that incorporates a small Quartz Crystal sphere into the design. Truly amaze-balls!

verdite on andara

Four inch diameter Verdite sphere on an Andara bottle-green glass. Wowsers.

Unakite on coke bottle glass

Unakite on Coke bottle glass stand.

Brazilian Bullseye by Jim Meeker

Kona Dolomite by Jim Meeker

Giant Marble by Jim Meeker

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