Alachua Astronomy Club, Inc.	Member Astronomical League	Member International Dark-Sky Association
	FirstLight's First Ten Years
	29°39' N,  82°21' W Altitude: 50 Meters (more or less)		Updated Jan. 17, 1999
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An Open Letter To the Alachua Astronomy Club

by Charlie Tarjan, President

First and foremost, thanks for the opportunity to serve for another year as president. My name being the only one offered in nomination can have its negative implications, which I choose to disregard! Instead I look ahead toward the prospect of our club continuing "on course", gaining new members as we undertake still more activities, and having available the same excellent support from several members.

Without Randy Warren, our program chairman, and his tireless pursuit of speakers, we could not have had the excellent programs we've all enjoyed. Randy's enthusiasm is a godsend and his willingness to coordinate several of our past activities is really appreciated.

An organization such as ours is only as good as its newsletter. And we all owe a lot to Chuck Broward for his zeal in getting out a newsletter that continually has had interesting articles and can be reckoned as the most important club activity for maintaining our awareness of the Alachua Astronomy Club and what it's doing.

Stability and dependability describes George Russell (and his trusty old coffee maker which becomes prominent during our 10 minute breaks) and his willingness to conduct the meetings when I wasn't around. Now that Jeff Majewski has stepped in as vice-president, he will take over that job. We hope George will use his abilities in other club pursuits.

Susan Luke stepped in to pick up the reins of the secretarial office at a time when we were hurting. She has done an excellent job in getting our notices out to the media, in sending out the Xmas party notice, and in maintaining club records. Many thanks for your help, Susan, and for convincing Charlie Jarman, your replacement, what great fun it is to the secretary of our club.

To the best of my knowledge, Doug Richards has suffered no charges of misappropriation of club funds, and has not been seen secretively buying sheets of lottery tickets or boarding planes destined for Las Vegas at Gainesville airport. Instead, he's maintained the club treasury most professionally, as verified by the scathing audit Bill Wharton gave the ledger last November. Best of all, he didn't give us a hard time when we wanted to have a super-duper Xmas party with plenty to eat.

Howard Cohen, with his willingness to share his profound knowledge of astronomy with all of us is much appreciated. The programs he has given, some on a moment's notice, have been excellent. It's reassuring to know that we can always count on his expertise and that of Billy Dodd, Billy Cooke and others who are never reluctant to speak up and thus to keep our meetings alive.

For those of you who missed the Xmas party

Shame, shame, and again shame on you!! Randy and Janice Warren, with input from Billy Cooke, staged a magnificent feast, which followed the interesting presentation by John Leader. We had a number of guests and the entire evening was a fitting way to festively end our year of astronomical togetherness.

Many thanks, Janice and Randy, for making the party such a success! Then too, it helped to reduce the "fat" in our treasury, which neatly leads me into the pronouncement that --

It's time to renew our memberships!

Please don't give our treasurer a hard time and have your checkbooks in hand for the January meeting!

What lies ahead for the future?

One thing i personally would like to see happen is a night out either at Billy Dodd's place or at the special viewing area several of us use in the Haile Plantation (off SW 75th St, the tower road). It would be a night of "hands-on" instruction where several telescopes would be set up and those of us that need the practice could be put through the steps of finding celestial objects using setting circles and listed coordinates. It seems to me that such knowledge would be basic before we could even begin to call ourselves amateur astronomers!

Another activity could be participation, once again, in the spring equinox festival that the garden club held at the Kanapaha Gardens. A number of people stopped by to look at our telescopes and to look at the exhibits which George Russell and others prepared.

Although there was some talk about it, we never did have a co-sponsored night of viewing the stars for the general public, much like occurred for the mars viewing at the university observatory several months ago.

Surely some of you do have other ideas for club activities. If so, please speak up. In order to be a viable club we must be an active club and above all we must have the participation-participation-participation of all of you club members in our activities.

The best of the New Year to all of you!

Charlie Tarjan, President

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