by George Buehler

I want to wish all of you a Happy New Year. Hopefully, Santa brought you everything on your list. You were good little boys and girls – right?

There is a lot of information in this newsletter. We are celebrating our 35th year as a bonsai society. The club has met continuously over that time. Many faces have come and gone during those years. We get new members each year, but for some reason, we also lose people each year. I think some of our past members have lost interest in bonsai because the club didn't provide what they needed to maintain their interest. I don't know what that is, but if you are considering dropping your membership due to not getting out of the club what you want, please let me know. I don't know if anything can be done about it, but at least the board will have some basis to plan for the future. Perhaps it was just at a time in their life when there was so much to do (kids, etc.) that there just wasn't enough time for it all.

You will notice two changes that are occurring: (1). The membership dues have increased by $5.00 per year; (2). We are soliciting advertisements for this newsletter. You might be wondering why on both counts. There are several reasons why we need to do this. In order to bring in qualified masters, the club has to pay for their travel as well as their charges for the workshop. Currently, the club's checking account is rather low, and we need to get it back up in order to pay for the workshops.

Another cost to the club is this newsletter. Although I try to keep the number of pages to a minimum by using small type (some would say too small), in order to present interesting and informative articles, there has to be a certain number of pages. We use a local copy shop that gives us a break in charges to duplicate the newsletter but it does add up. Also the cost of mailing the newsletter is going up. In 2005, the cost of copying and mailing the newsletter was over $400. A number of members receive the newsletter electronically (and we thank these members). This saves the club money. We need more members to get this newsletter electronically to save even more money. If you currently receive the newsletter by mail, please consider getting it electronically. You can print it out in living color if you want to keep hard copies or just read it.

In the upcoming months, I hope to start some monthly articles on various species. If you would like to see specific varieties, let me know and I will try to include it. I also want to start listing general monthly tasks. If you do something in a particular month, let me know so I can include it. This will start as a small list, but hopefully with your help, will get longer as the months progress.