About staying informed: I often find emailed announcements too late to plan to attend, and I don't read Facebook posts, but I think Facebook messenger is great.  I works like a free texting service between anyone on Facebook, and it has an option for creating a group.  I have notifications for my email turned off because I get too many.  If LAS board created a weekly or even once a day a digest of announcements on Messenger I would allow notifications and read it.  This would allow me to distinguish the  LAS announcements from the barrage of information I receive daily.  Messenger is pretty popular. Anyone on Facebook can easily add it to their account.  I suspect I am typical of a lot of people.  I encourage the board to create a Messenger group and limit messages to a digest sent once a day at most.  Info in the digest can easily be cut and pasted to an email for those who prefer it.  In my case this would eliminate the need for Ken to make a phone call to get me to an event. 

A comment on weather conditions and commitments to public and private outreach efforts.

Unless you receive an official cancellation on an event, it is a GO! In the case of the Girl Scout Star Party last night, we only had four scopes for 300 people. Many members get concerned when it is a ratio of one scope to ten people. Please don't look up at the clouds over your home and say 'Gee, its stormy here, so I'm not going to help at Camp Shantituck, even though I said i was because, at Camp Shantituck, it was CLEAR with HUGE sucker holes above us.

I only called certain people to maintain security and when I receive promises of attendance, they have to be kept! We got $500.00 for the LAS which is enough to pay for the Internet at Curby for a year. We got it because we worked as a team teaching, hosting, doing outreach, all in 90+ temps. Tom Bibb came out early even though he was sick. Our instructors Mike Murphy, Tom Hughes and John Ford worked all day in excessive heat.

My wife Mariann, Amy Causey and fellow NASA Solar System Ambassador Lindsey Gilmore were there until 10:30. Sue Loucka even offered to come from Santa Claus, IN at her own expense and spend the night. At my fault, I did not get back to her. Thanks, Sue!

Apologies after the fact do not make it! Several people had good excuses, a relative being operated on, illness, prior plans but several members did not show. My phone was discharged, so if you called and tried to leave a message, thank you!

AGAIN, don't make your own call on the weather! It rained and lighteninged (is that a word?), one half mile north of us but never rained on us because my daisy Girl Scouts beat drums, chanted and drove it away.

AGAIN, for security reasons, I did not put this out online.  Hmmm. but I could have put it out in the Forum! (See, that would have been an improvement on my part!) But would anybody have read it??? So... lets talk about this. Civilly. What would have improved the communication here? This is what the Forum is about...so we can talk offline away from Facebook.

Ken Alderson

RESPOND HERE. DON'T CALL ME. Thanks.