FEEFHS News ISSUE 10, Jan 2005 Here's an update on FEEFHS matters. We are making good progress on our plans for a conference in Minneapolis (St. Paul, actually) in August. It will be held from August 19 through 21 at the Four Points by Sheraton at 400 North Hamline Avenue. The venue is close to several other attractions, including the Concordia University Library, the Minnesota History Center, the University of Minnesota Wilson Library and the Immigration History Research Center. The theme of the conference is Dare To Discover: Exploring Central and Eastern European Ancestry. Our co-sponsors are the Germanic Genealogy Society and the Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe. A hard-working team of volunteers is sorting out the details of the schedule. Expect more news shortly. Looking ahead, we are considering holding our 2006 conference in Portland, Oregon, in conjunction with the GRHS. This notion is also being considered by the GRHS board. I would appreciate hearing any thoughts that any of you might have on this idea. And, of course, we are looking for ideas for a 2007 venue. Ideally, we should be lining these things up well in advance, to avoid the last-minute rush we had with sorting out the 2005 details. At this point, no ideas about 2007 have come forward, so it's a clean slate. Other than conferences, several items are worth noting. The new Journal is almost finished. It looks superb, and is filled with great articles. Everybody involved -- especially our editor, Thom Edlund -- is to be commended. We are making good progress on a couple of matters that have been lingering for quite some time. Our incorporation problem has been resolved, and we have started work on getting the proper tax status. Much of this work is being done by our new treasurer, Don Semon. He was appointed to that role until the next election, succeeding Miriam Hall-Hansen, who stepped down for personal reasons. Miriam has done a great job for us over the years, and she deserves a round of applause from all of us. Secretarial duties are being split between two people -- Dee Semon is working as the publicity secretary, and Mila Snapp is the membership secretary. Our Web site, which has been hosted at BYU for the past couple of years, is being moved to a new server. This should resolve some of the access issues we have had. Yes, we will have to pay for the space on the new server, but it turns out that "free" isn't quite perfect either, especially when we can't update our own pages. Our new webmasters, Daniel Schlyter and Joe Everett, are doing a great job, updating and fixing problems on the site. As always, the more content we can put there, the better. So if anyone has anything of interest, please let them know. I will be sending a general announcement to all FEEFHS members in a couple of days. If anyone has anything of interest, please let me know ASAP. Thanks |