President’s Message July/August 2022

The year is half over. Time passes so quickly. Now is a good time to reflect on those items we want to make sure we accomplish in the last half of this year. I would hope that oneof those is making plans to attend the IWCS’s 75th Jubilee Year Annual Meeting in La Grange, TX, October 30 – November 04, 2022. President Elect Mark Duff and his team have been working very hard to make this meeting worthy of being our Jubilee Meeting. Mark sent me pictures of some Texas ebony, Ebenopsis ebano (see the back cover of this most recent WoW)) and 800-year-old bristlecone pine, Pinus aristata (page 29), that he and others have traveled a great distance to collect. The Texas ebony will be put on the on-site saw mill and the bristlecone pine in the wood auction. Both are great finds and increasingly difficult species to acquire. If for no other reason than the ability to acquire these species, and others, it would be worth attending this meeting.
A couple of membership reminders follow. Last year we had to discontinue multiple year memberships. The Secretary/Treasurer still receives an occasional payment for a 3- or 5-year membership. These are no longer available, and it makes for extra work to return the money over and above the one-year membership.
We are transitioning all members to have their memberships begin in October. This will mean that for some members the Secretary/Treasurer will send a dues renewal notice with the pro-rated amount of your dues to October. You will receive another dues notice in October for the full year dues amount. This change is cumbersome until most of our members are converted to the October date, but it represents huge time and labor savings for our Secretary/Treasurer. Thank you for your understanding and patience as we make this transition.
Earlier this year the Board of Trustees approved the appointment of Dr. Chuck Ray as Secretary/
Treasurer. Dr. Ray phoned me and after much consideration informed me that he could not proceed with
the appointment and resigned. The Board has approved the appointment of Patti Dickherber as our new
Secretary Treasurer. Christine Henning and Judy Miller have sent all the Secretary and Treasurer files and computer to Patti. I want to thank Christine Henning and Judy Miller for the great deal of work that they did in their past positions.
In case you have not visited our new website I encourage you to do so. Art Lee and Whitney Wilson have
done a fantastic job of freshening our website. Art has taken on the task of learning Word Press which is what our new website is constructed in. He is looking for someone to help him with some details of Word Press he or Whitney are not familiar with. If you have some experience or interest, please contact Art Lee directly. We are looking forward to more improvements in the website in the future as our finances and manpower will allow.