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On May Day Maricopa
Audubon members celebrated Maricopa Audubon's 48th year with a banquet
at Shalimar Country Club in Tempe.
Our featured speaker, Dr. George Archibald, the co-founder of the
International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin, entertained and
educated us about the plight of cranes throughout the world. He told us that the most common and the
rarest species of cranes, Sandhills and Whoopers, respectively, are found
in the US. We learned that in many
places in the world cranes are positive symbols, their presence boding
happiness and good fortune for the community. Sadly, though, eleven of the worlds fifteen crane species are
considered either endangered or threatened.
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The nominating committee, Evelyn Lewis, Harvey Beatty
and Roy Jones, presented a full slate of candidates for the board. The present board was retained with the
exception of Secretary and Field Trip Chairman. Those positions will be
filled by Cynthia Donald and Mike Baker respectively. Also, the Hospitality
Chair had been vacated and Jeanine Baker has graciously agreed to fill it. The position of Editor is chosen by the
board and they will decide whether to retain Deva Burns for another year at
the next board meeting.
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Outgoing Secretary, Karen Kaiser, outgoing Field Trip
Chair, Walter Thurber, and outgoing Hospitality Chair, Evelyn Lewis were recognized
for their service and were presented with mounted certificates of
appreciation. Unfortunately, Evelyn
was rafting down the Colorado, darn, and was unable to accept hers.
It takes many people to put together a program and
dinner like this and many thanks go out to all. The only blemish on the otherwise perfect evening was that we
had to pay for the dinners for the 13 people who made reservations for the
event, never canceled, never showed and never paid.
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CLIFF NOTED
In 1996, before many of us
even knew what a web page was, much less how to access one, Cliff Drowley,
a computer whiz, informed the Maricopa Audubon Board that in order to be
cyber correct, Maricopa Audubon needed to have its own web page. After getting the go ahead, Cliff, with
the help of Karen Stucke and Dwayne Fink, created a web page for our
chapter, that has since been described by people who know about such things
as one of the best Audubon websites in the country.
But a web site is not a
static thing. Rather, it is a
living, breathing organism, which requires constant tender loving care in
the form of frequent updating and linkage with other web pages, in order to
be of any ongoing value to the organization.
We pause today to honor and
to thank Cliff for his contribution to Maricopa Audubon Society, and to let
him know that we all appreciate the hundreds of hours and the thousands of
dollars he invested in this task for no reason other than that he truly and
correctly anticipated that the web page would be an advertisement and
promotional tool for our chapter that would be viewed by countless web
browsers seeking information each and every month about our activities
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