President’s message March/April 2022

by
Arthur Lee

I am writing this message from the Lake Yale meeting in Florida. It is beautiful weather and lots of long time friends are here, a lot of wood for the silent and wood auction, some great craft items have been donated and an exciting list of classes and demonstrations to look forward to. The only thing that was missing was YOU. A great time has been had year after year here and one that many looked forward to attending. It is too late to come to this one, but now is the time to make plans to attend the annual meeting in Texas. President-Elect Mark Duff, and his team, are finalizing plans for a super time with local woods sawn on site, great trips to local wood interests and interesting demonstrations and classes. He can use your support in volunteering to present a class for an hour or two for wood related and craft related interests. Help support the meeting by planning on attending but additionally plan to step forward and reach out to Mark to offer to help with his program. I know he would appreciate it. The most important element that we all need is your presence. Mark has planned the meeting for the first week in November when the weather in that part of Texas is very nice. This will be the IWCS’s 75th Anniversary meeting. We are hoping for a large turn out from members from around the world to make this a very special meeting.
In conjunction with our 75th Jubilee, our member Eric Krum has scanned almost all of the past issues of our journal. He has put them on a thumb drive that is held in a walnut holder with a special designed 75th Anniversary logo laser etched on the case. More information will be in the World of Wood.
We have received several complaints from members both in and from outside the US about the slow delivery of their World of Wood. In the past we have had delays in sending the copy to the publisher. Publication Chairman Willem Hurkmans, his staff on the Publications Committee and our Editor Mihaly Czako have worked very hard to improve the delivery time of our journal to the printer and have made significant improvement. Our current delay now seems to be due to the postage system both domestically and abroad. That is totally out of our control. We ask your patience as the postal system is struggling with their own delivery issues.
Art Lee, our Website Chairman, has been working to largely take over the day-to-day management of our website. This involves his learning Word Press web site development software. He has been greatly assisted by Whitney Wilson. This change has been made more critical because we have had serious issues with our current web hosting company. Our long time webmaster Erlene Tarleton has retired, and our PayPal link is no longer working, and now no one knows how to fix it, along with other issues. This means that all payments to the IWCS via PayPal need to be done from the member’s PayPal account sending directly to our Treasurer at: [email protected] with a note attached to the PayPal payment explaining what it is for and whom it is from. Of course, payments by credit card and check are not affected by the website issues. We have agreed to have a company that specializes in websites using Word Press complete the process of moving our Beta website from the development area to the world wide web as well as some other password upgrades. Once our site is ready, Art will send it to a few individuals to test and then inform all the membership of our new website.
Now is the time for us to offer a list of candidates to stand for elections. Later this year we will elect new Vice President, President Elect as well as new Trustees for the Central States and Southeast regions. If you wishto serve in one of these positions or know of someone who would do a good job, please get their consent and submit their names to Gary Green, our Nominations Committee Chairman. ([email protected]).