I am, frankly, sickened by the direction this thread has taken. Travis started it to congratulate Gene on a good article he wrote, and it's devolved into personal attacks, unfounded criticism, and wild accusations.

The fact of the matter is that the CC&GTCC Board, all of whom serve the club without pay and despite the long hours and difficulties in pleasing some members, have been interested in and acting to develop the club and expand its membership since day one. It has never been the campaign of any single board member, nor is it of recent vintage.

We have worked hard - sometimes without as much success as we'd have liked, but always with a great deal of success - to obtain publicity (NOT the same as paid advertising, necessarily) for the club, with a view toward increasing its membership. We have been amazingly successful, I believe, given the fact that the organized hobby is only 10 years old, and that we have no paid staff.

The issue is not how much money the club has spent to publicize itself. The issue is exposure and recruitment. I suspect that if one were to poll the members here on Greg's board to ask how they became involved as members of CC&GTCC, we'd get a fairly decent picture of how the club recruits new members.

I am not about to catalog the countless hours the officers (elected and appointed) have put in to grow this hobby. I'm not even going to begin to try to list the activities I personally have undertaken, the press releases I've issued, the people I've worked with, and the articles I've written for publication promoting the hobby.

Could more have been done? Of course. Can more be done in the future? You bet. Has this Board exercised its efforts to do so? Absolutely. And I have hopes that the Board which takes office after next year's convention will do the same. In fact, I have every confidence that it will.

A final comment. Constructive criticism and suggestions, especially those backed up with a willingness to spend one's own time and effort to accomplish the goals one espouses, are always welcomed. The Board has never - EVER - to my knowledge, rejected a well-intentioned and constructive suggestion from ANY member, regardless of the subject.

Name-calling, personal attacks, inflamatory language, and accusations are NOT constructive. They are detrimental to the hobby and to the credibility of the person engaging in such tactics. There is no need for them. They are counterproductive.

-=Michael the Chipper=-