November 2002
Dear Great Lakes &
Ohio Valley Mensans:
It’s the end of September as I write this
for you to read in November. The weather outside is close to perfect—low
humidity, sunny days, and warm enough at night to not need a sweater. It would
be rare, indeed, if the weather anywhere in this region can be so described when
you read this in your newsletters; November may not be winter, but we can feel
it coming.
News changes as fast as the weather changes
in October. I know that my columns are not going to carry hot news flashes when
they appear in the sixteen newsletters in this region. So I’m trying something
new—a project that I hope will be nurtured and tweaked by many succeeding
Regional Vice Chairmen (RVCs) for this region. I’m starting a newsletter on
Yahoo! Groups—AMLRegion3News; only your RVC will be able to post items. My guess
is that it will average one posting per week, but time will tell on that.
By the time you read this, many of you will
have received an invitation to join this group, and receive this newsletter; I’m
in the process of inviting every member of the region for whom I have an email
address. But some of you have never told American Mensa your email address; some
of you have suppressed distribution of your email address (and if your local
group doesn’t see it, neither do I as RVC); and a few of you have told Yahoo!
that you don’t accept invitations. So for those of you who haven’t received an
email invitation to get this electronic newsletter, please accept this print
invitation to get Mensa news as fast as I can post it; yes, my column will be
available on the website. To sign up, send me an
with a request to be added to the group; make sure your name is in the
email, since I need to be able to tell that only dues-paid members are in the
group. (If you’re wondering, others looking at the group will not be able to see
your full email address; Yahoo! truncates it, so that people would see RVC3@u…
for the above address.)
I’m going to use the newsletter for another
experiment: Office hours. Yahoo! Groups each have a chat room available, and I’m
going to try to use the chat room on the newsletter’s group site for a “chat
with the RVC” session. I’m scheduling it for Sunday night December 1, from 8-9
PM Eastern Time; that’s the Sunday between Thanksgiving and Cincinnati Area
Mensa’s “That’s Mtertainment!” Regional Gathering the following weekend. Bear
with me—this will be a first for me, and it may not work as well as I’d like—but
I’m hoping it can be one more means of communication within the region.
The September AMC meeting in Lincoln was
one involving a lot of rather dry but necessary work. It proved to be a long
meeting and the mini-minutes make it look like not a lot happened, but this is
deceptive. We had a lot of discussion in areas that will greatly affect the
future of our society, and I believe that we made good use of our time. As
always, a lot was accomplished at committee meetings Friday night that I don’t
think anyone appreciates until they’ve attended those meetings. Our next
meetings are in Salt Lake City in December and near Pittsburgh, here in Region
3, in March; if you’re interested in the business side of Mensa, consider
attending one or both meetings.
November starts off with the largest annual
Regional Gathering (RG), just outside our region, when Chicago Area Mensa hosts
“HalloweeM 27—Inventions & Discoveries” November 1-3 in Arlington Heights, IL.
It’s a good warm-up for the December 5-7 “That’s Mtertainment” RG in Cincinnati.
I hope to meet each of you on line or in person soon.
—Rick Magnus, RVC 3
Page last updated:
05/11/2005
