Hello Conch-L,
 
I'd about rather eat live crunchy bugs than come on here again right now,
but I feel the need to say my piece.  There has been a lot about shell shows
and competition lately, stuff that was given rise to by my inadvertent
actions, and I understand the reasoning behind it, but, sorry! friends of
mine, I do disagree with some of it.
 
Shell clubs are the lifeblood of the collecting hobby for many people, and
shell shows are, for many of the clubs, their annual celebration of the
beauty and fascination of shells.  And, I might add, they are one very
impressive and important event that reaches the public to teach them about
both mollusks and shell collecting. Thus the quality of these shows is
important, both to the club members and their exhibitors, and to the general
public, and it's important to mollusks as well. The more people whom we
reach with the messages that there is a neat hobby here, and that mollusks
are fascinating creatures worthy of our attention and concern, and
protection, the stronger the hobby grows and the safer mollusks are from
human destruction. Ther are still very few people who really know what a
mollusk is, and even fewer can name two things they are good for, so
educating them ought to be a large part of our mission, the price of
ADmission, so to speak.  And shell shows are a great place engage in this
payback. The better they are, the better they work, in general.
 
But without competition, I believe there really would be no shell shows. (I
am not an exhibitor myself, I must add here.)  Competition is the carrot on
the stick that keeps the donkey going round.  Ask yourselves who the best
exhibitors are.  Aren't they the winningest ones too?  What drives them to
produce top quality exhibits? Think about human nature.  Yes, Linda B, I
agree, it is true that some of us are simply driven by our natures to
educate. I have a bit of that in me too <G!> But most of us want to win.  We
play the lottery to win. We play cards to win. We gamble. We drive our cars
to win, we dress to win, we are rabid sports fans who can barely endure the
thought of our teams not winning, we compete in so many ways in our everyday
lives that it should be obvious this competitive thing is an instinct, an
integral part of human nature.
Also we work for reward.  How many of us would show up at work without pay?
Or as someone else mentioned, how many athletes would work toward Olympic
excellence without competition or medals? Look at figure skating. . .how it
has improved through the years. First there were singles of all those
elegant figures, then doubles, triples, and more.  An athlete builds on the
achivement and excellence of athletes who came before him. It is true of all
sports, and of movies, and cars, businesses and restaurants, and computers.
So too the shell shows.  Without competition, they go nowhere. They don't
even get a lot of entries.
 
If competition does not make our hearts sing and our blood course through
our veins in eagerness, yet we are still driven to exhibit our treasures,
then most shows also offer non-competitive divisions.  Let's use them, and
see if our non-competitive exhibits measure up to the competitive ones.
Yes, there may be politics at shell shows.  It is possible that a given
judge will know your exhibit through recognition of your cases, or a
particular fabulous specimen.  That is all part of things human too. We're
political animals. It's the framework within which we have to exist.
 
We need to support and uphold all the aspects of our hobby, and seek ways to
make it better and more effective, in pleasing us, in educating the public,
in preserving mollusks from the enemies of habitat destruction, pollution,
and overexploitation.  And so I think we must support and strengthen and
encourage the shell shows of the world, understand that the competition
inherent in them is their motive force.
 
Let's all support the new year of American shell shows that opens next
weekend with the Astronaut Trail Shell Show in the Melbourne area.  It
continues the following weekend with the Greater Miami Shell Show at a
fabulous new venue, the Fontainebleau Hilton Hotel on Miami Beach. Next
comes the Broward Shell Show, Jan 30-Feb 1, the only show in the country
where one can win the American Museum of Natural History Award. Late news is
that the S.W. Florida Conchologist Society Show, slated to be non-juried
this year, has been cancelled...the committee ran out of time trying to
prepare for both a new venue and a brand new format. Bad luck!  But we'll
welcome this fine show back in 1999!
 
Sarasota and Naples are both being held on Feb 20-22, which will make it a
fabulous weekend of shells for any of us lucky enough to be in the area!
Next comes the St. Petersburg show, where the coveted U.S. National Museum
(Smithsonian) Award is offered just this one time each year, Feb 27-Mar1.
Following is that Grandmother of Shell Shows, The Sanibel Shell Fair, the
first weekend in March.  Here at Sanibel, and at the Astronaut Trail Show in
January, are the only occasions in the whole show circuit where one can see
the competition for the Big One, The Sanibel Shell Museum Masters Award,
open only to exhibits which have won a COA, a du Pont, an AMNH or a USNM
(Smithsonian).  Then travel down to Marco the second weekend in March for
their little gem of a show.
 
Another cancellation, this one on the west coast, where the Pacific Shell
Club has called off this year's show scheduled for April 19.  But April
24-26 will bring the Greater St. Louis Shell Show, an event held only every
two years.  Meet everyone in St. Louis.  The Winter-Spring Shell Show
concludes in the Nation's Oldest City, St. Augustine, Florida June 26-28,
with the Jacksonville Shell Show.  And there's a whole second season lineup
of summer and autumn shell shows. . . we hope to see shows at Gulf Coast,
Central Florida, North Carolina, Jersey Cape, Oregon, Philadelphia.  Did I
miss any?  And there are a nice group of foreign competitions and exhibits
as well.
 
Let's all try to attend at least one of these great events, better yet,
enter one or more, to support the shows and the clubs who go to so much
effort to produce them for the benefit of shelling. Support shell collecting
in all its aspects.  Let's ask the best of our hobby and give it our best.
Or it could disappear right out from under us.
 
Lynn Scheu