Hi Folks!

I'm glad to be one of your new board reps, and in talking with Jack Shaw, it looks like I might be acting as interim president and possibly the president of the board. Whether I have a title or not is irrelevant to me as I am happy to be on the board to help the Great Lakes Chapter achieve better public exposure and get more good members. As you read this we are working to pull together the loose ends on Advance the Colors, are struggling with the "burdens" of E-Communication and generally working to improve the content and quality of HMGS Great Lakes.

One of the new things added this issue is a mail list for members of Great Lakes on egroups.com. This hasn't been without some controversy, however. Our open discussions on convention content and the decision to include or exclude science fiction and fantasy gaming drew many heated and, in some cases, silly responses. There was a great degree of acrimony spread that shouldn't have happened. One of the best ways of preventing such events from happening in the future is a little self-censorship when posting to the mail list or, for that matter any newsgroup. This mail list has great potential for members of this hobby to get together, set game times and generally discuss the finer points of the hobby -- you know, painting, terrain making, how to get some more money out of the spouse for minis and gaming! (Please Note: to any non-gaming spouses that read this I was kidding on that last one!) However, in order for it to see that potential, I think a few tips might help us all stay civilized and make better posts for all of us.

1) Bear in mind the fact that, even though the messages travel at the speed of light, this is still a written form of communication. As such you do have the ability to formulate carefully what you want to say and how you want to say it. I've seen a number of numbskulls on USENET that fire off messages as if they are talking to you. As you may imagine things appear differently to people in writing than they do when spoken to them. While it may not be as easy to retract a spoken comment or retort, we do have time to think about and formulate our written comments and ideas. Please folks take the time to say what you really mean.

2) Please, let's try and keep the bile and vitriol out of this mail group. I know its hard when passions flare, and I am heartily glad to see so many members of our hobby so passionate about it, but please lets try and keep it down a touch. One of the big reasons I left the Warhammer newsgroup about a year ago was because of just such spleen venting, and the sheer preponderance of dreck one had to wade through to get to anything substantive.

3) The last thing is let's try to keep posting to the mail group relevant and on target as much as possible. This one should be a no-brainer, but we all need to be reminded that the purpose of this mail group is for the discussion of events about the Great Lakes Chapter of HMGS and historical miniatures gaming. Ok, what that means is we really don't want to see ads for somebody trying to sell their 1976 lime green AMC Gremlin on the list! Try to avoid outside political or social discussions as much as possible here as well as anything that might be considered off topic. I know it is hard, and I am as guilty of this as anyone. I accidentally made a comment on the rec.games.miniatures.historical newsgroup about wearing my NRA hat to conventions and started a whole flame war that lasted almost a month. One of these days I'll learn to keep my big yap shut!

I see this mail group as a great resource for those of us online. It's will have teething troubles, which is to be expected with any new baby. Let's help this child grow up to strong adulthood and make us all proud.

It is with some reluctance that I mention the leaving of our group of one of our more esteemed members Ray Garbee. After some of the mail list comments and much deliberation Ray has decided to leave active participation in HMGS Great Lakes. He has passed the torch for AtC to David Van Hoose as events coordinator and dealer coordinator. We almost lost Jack Shaw over this stuff. A great deal of the trouble comes from a sense that a very few of us are doing almost all of the work for the conventions and the bulk of the commentary and complaints seem to be coming from those "who just show up." I know how hard it is to work in a volunteer organization and I also know its nameless and thankless work for a large part of it. All that aside I also know it can be deeply rewarding when you see something you've worked so hard to put together get go off without any hitch and bring praise to the organization.

What I'm saying is this: get involved with HMGS Great Lakes. More than just going to the cons, paying the dues and reading the Herald. Organize some local games days, write about a battle or send in a book, game, miniatures, or movie review for Mike. Start gaming in the local game shop that DOESN'T carry historical miniatures. Head to a generic gaming con and run a historical event or two. There are also lots of things that can be done to help out at our conventions and games days. AtC 2000 still needs some helping hands. Contact David Van Hoose for more info on how you can help out. Folks we have a bright future ahead of us, its just going to take some effort to do it. Let's all join in. Now back to the front.