Good news!
Wednesday, February 3rd, will be our first meeting of the year. You may participate it from the comfort of your home. It will be a Zoom meeting. The Zoom link to the meeting will be emailed to you well before the meeting. I’m sure a lot of you have been working from home and are familiar with Zoom. Or Skype. Or Microsoft Meet Now, which uses Skype. We are planning to do this every month and, possibly, occasionally, more often.
On to dues!
Membership dues become due on March 1st. You can now pay your dues through our website. Here’s the link:
https://prairiestatebonsai.com/membership/
You can still print out the membership form, linked below, and mail a check to the P.O. box on the form.
What dues?
On the other hand, the board has decided that, due to the virus, and the loss of income members may have experienced, payment of dues is indefinitely extended. Extended to until the quarantine is lifted and things get back closer to normal.
Club expenses are reduced by not having to rent the room at C.O.D. But, we still have to pay for our Zoom meetings, the storage locker where our show materials are stored, the website, etc. So, if you can afford to pay your dues, please do so. But you won’t get thrown out of the club if you don’t.
I hope that all of you who are on Facebook, have liked and follow our club page. Charlotte Field and Craig Cronquist have been added as administrators. They are both posting lots of interesting things, if not always directly bonsai related. They’ve both found lots of cool tree pictures, for example. If you have anything bonsai or otherwise tree related, please feel free to post it on our page.
Now, lastly. This coming March will be the end of our two year board terms. The club needs you to consider, and having considered, volunteer to be on the board. The positions are:
President
- Recording Secretary—Writes up the minutes of board meetings.
- Programs—Organizes programs for regular monthly meetings.
- Special Events—Organizes yearly picnic, yearly Arboretum show, etc.
- Publicity—Oversees Facebook page, ads for yearly show, etc.
- Treasurer—Oversees our treasure, i.e., our checking account, pays bills.
- Membership—Maintains membership database, currently in MS Access.
- Newsletter—Assembles monthly newsletter. Currently uses Adobe Acrobat. Will soon switch to newsletter function on website.
- Website—Maintains our website. Modifies as needed.
If you’ve got any experience in doing any of these jobs, and are inter-ested in being on the board, please email me. Many of our current board members may well wish to stay on the job. We have yet to figure out how to hold the election. Zoom may be to unwieldy. We’ll probably do it by email.
I am currently also our webmaster. If any of you have experience in web design, we very much need your assistance. Our website is on WordPress.com and uses WordPress design plugin, Elementor.
—Dean Cooper
