October 2022 Board Meeting Notes

Bartlesville Astronomical Society Board Meeting Minutes

October 12, 2022

Present at meeting via Zoom:

Craig Brockmeier

Evan Zorn

Denise Gregg

John Blaesi

Duane Perkins

Mike Woods

Not in attendance:

Rick Buck

Bob Young

Daryl Doughty

Rick Bryant

Discussed at meeting:

Club insurance:

Evan said that the new premium with State Farm has been paid. Craig pointed out, as he did at the October Club meeting, that this gives us a local insurance contact; our previous contact with Mercer didn’t offer this. The new State Farm policy is also in compliance with various recent tort law reforms.

Next star party:

Plan for Friday, October 14 at Jo Allyn Lowe Park

Denise will contact Chief Tracy Roles with the police department and Bobby Robinson with the city parks department. Lisa Beeman has given Denise Chief Tracy’s and Bobby’s email addresses so she can contact them directly if we wish to have a star party at Jo Allyn Lowe past 11 p.m.

Criteria for cancelling star party at the last minute:

If can’t see a reasonable number of stars, don’t come.

Elections for officers for 2023:

We decided to propose our slate of officer candidates at the November meeting and ask for any further nominations, and have the election in December. Denise mentioned that we have had December elections before.

Craig, Evan, Denise, John Blaesi and Duane agreed to put themselves in nomination for their current positions for 2023. Craig will talk to Rick Buck to see if he is willing to serve as Vice President for another year.

Evan said that the time will come when he will wish to step down as treasurer—not for 2023, but it will happen at some point. Evan said that Vicky Travalgiini trained him for the Treasurer position; Denise said that it will take time to train a future treasurer; in the meantime, we could work on a Treasurer’s training manual like we did for Web Wizard. Denise can help him with this.

Meeting attendance:

John Blaesi offered a suggestion that we have quarterly meetings with a guest speaker, and in between have more informal meetings or star parties. Craig didn’t think this would be wise; people might forget which month was a guest speaker and which not, and meeting attendance would drop lower. Denise mentioned that the library has already told her that there are non-profits with regular attendance greater than 50 people at meetings; we are OK in meeting room A for now, but if we start having fewer meetings, it could be harder for us to get meeting room A. We agreed to continue to have monthly meetings, but try to get a really good guest speaker once a quarter.

Craig mentioned Gary Nealis as a possible future speaker; he did in-depth presentations for us on the Hubble in June and July.

We also agreed—as we have previously—that we really need to get a good speaker for the June meeting, right after Sunfest.

Virgil had intended to start doing astronomy monthly news after Abby went to college, but he hasn’t started doing that yet.

Denise suggested possibly having dinner meetings if we wanted to do something more informal, but that really wouldn’t work, as a restaurant would want an approximate head count in advance.

December Club meeting:

Craig suggested doing a demo of the Club StarSense telescope, weather permitting, and if not, do a demo on SkySafari.

Gift for Dr. Antony Stark/more NSN speakers:

We need to do something—maybe one of our mugs?

Dr. Stark told Craig that he might be interested in doing another presentation for us—he has more “prepared” presentations that he could give us!

Perhaps the NSN will arrange such speakers again in the future. Denise sent them a note thanking them for giving us Dr. Stark as our “free” speaker!

BYA update:

Craig went to the September meeting. There were only 3-4 youth there—very disappointing, as Rick Bryant had planned this meeting as a reboot of the BYA.

We discussed possibly asking Rick Bryant if he could send out his emails announcing the next meeting earlier than Thursday/Friday the previous week.

Denise also mentioned that the Lemays came to the September star party, but other than that, have not seen youth that attend BYA meetings. Denise said she would contact Rick to see if there are any people who have approached him about attending BYA meetings that didn’t come through the usual main newsletter list channel; Denise can add such people to the main newsletter list, so they will find out about our star parties. Denise can also suggest to Rick that he forward emails about BAS star parties to his BYA email distribution.

Library Display:

Denise announced that we have our first choice month, May, for 2023.

We will have the same theme as last year, but we can add new pictures as we get them!

She said that we don’t know if we will have the First Christian Church for library display staging next year, which led to a discussion of…

First Christian Church Storage:

Evan last spoke with Mike Bailey on June 9. The city is not pursuing developing the FCC into a conference center at this time, due to estimated costs being much higher than had been anticipated. Evan said based on his discussion with Mike, our equipment is probably OK there to the end of the year. Denise mentioned that groups are now leasing space at the FCC—we could do that. We could maybe just do a downstairs room if we can donate the large telescopes we have there. Should we give them to the Oklahoma City club which has offered to pick them up and take them at no charge? One of the larger telescopes has a very fine hand-ground mirror that was done some years ago by Fred Frey, one of our former Club members. We decided that Club members should vote on this.

Craig suggested that we get an updated inventory of what is there, and asked for volunteers to work on this. John Blaesi and Evan volunteered to work on this.

Evan will also keep in touch with Mike Bailey about city updates to the FCC.

The question also came up earlier about storing things at Our Savior Lutheran. Denise has talked to Bob Young about this. The church does have unused rooms, but now there are church items in storage there, and Bob doesn’t know at what point church members might go through them. The possibility exists that way down the road they might have some room—but not anytime in the near future.

Star party at Woolaroc:

Time is closing in on the end of the year. Denise will email Jan at Woolaroc to see what dates would be open for later this year and into early next year.

Planetarium show at Tulsa Air and Space Museum:

Maybe next March? Do it on a contribution basis like we did pre-pandemic, or rent the planetarium for the evening? If do it based on contributions, have the Club match what people donate, say up to 25.00?

Tulsa MSRAL 2023:

We discussed whether we would like to participate in this. We don’t have any organizational details on the event yet. We decided that if/when they have a Zoom kickoff session to start planning it, people who might be interested in helping this would attend it, and then go from there.

Facebook:

Karen Cruce told Craig recently that she no longer wishes to do this.

We need someone to do Facebook and Twitter for the Club.

Astronomical League calendars:

Denise said that the cost of the 2023 calendars has gone up—18.00 if order as a group (minimum 6) or 20.00 if order individually. If order individually, must pay shipping—about 4.50 per calendar. If order as a group, get free shipping. We decided that Denise would tell members to decide before the November 7 meeting if they wanted to be part of a group order. If someone doesn’t come to meetings in person, then she will ask them to order a calendar on their own, if they would like to have one.

Buy more telescopes for Club or to donate to library:

Get another telescope for the library?

Get another StarSense for the Club?

Get a Unistellar for Electronically Assisted Astronomy?

Hold off buying another telescope for Club since people aren’t borrowing now what we have.