September 2023 Board Meeting Notes

Bartlesville Astronomical Society Board Meeting Minutes

September 19, 2023

Board members present, in person and via Zoom:

Craig Brockmeier, President

Richard Buck, Vice President

Denise Gregg, Secretary

Evan Zorn, Treasurer

John Blaesi, Member-at-large

Not present:  Duane Perkins, member-at-large

Also present were Mike Woods, Newsletter Editor and John Grismore.  John Grismore is not an official Board member, but he has been included in Board communications due to his decades-long membership in the Club.

Club elections for 2024:

·       We need to give 30 days’ notice before elections, so that we can make and solicit nominations and make up a slate of potential candidates.

·       We voted unanimously to announce candidates for officer elections at our October 2 Club meeting, solicit any additional nominations, and have our elections at our November 6 Club meeting.

·       We discussed the number of at-large Board members we would like to have.  We now have two.  John Grismore would prefer to have just one.  Denise mentioned that at some point in the past, we had four at-large members, then we cut it to two.

·       Evan talked to Duane Perkins recently and determined that Duane will not seek another term as an at-large member; he is confined to his home now and his sister looks after him.

·       Denise mentioned Gil Greenwood as a possible at-large Board member.  Everyone seemed to think he would make a good at-large member; Craig pointed out that he came to our Girl Scout event this summer, he regularly comes to star parties, and he also went to the opening of the STEM lab at the Boys and Girls Club last Friday.

·       We discussed Craig being an at-large Board member, or possibly an ex-officio “past president” Board member, in addition to the two official at-large Board members.

Candidates for officers decided on at the meeting:

President—John Blaesi

Vice President—John Grismore

Secretary—Denise Gregg

Treasurer—Evan Zorn

At large—Gil Greenwood (pending his agreeing to be nominated)

At large—Craig Brockmeier?

At the October 2 meeting, we will solicit additional nominations before the elections on November 6.

Other positions:

·       Program Chairman:  We don’t have a specific nominee for Program Chairman, but we could really use one.  John Blaesi mentioned Board members continuing to provide speakers.  Bob Young is currently listed as Program Chairman, but he hasn’t been involved in seeking out speakers for the Club in some time.

·       Someone to do Facebook:  Denise mentioned Andrew Oleson.  He’s not a member yet, but if he joins, perhaps he could do Facebook for the Club.  (Craig met him for lunch recently and he worked on several Facebook sites during lunch!)

·       Observing Program Coordinator:  Rick Buck is listed as doing this (in addition to his current role as Vice President), but he has not been able to be actively involved in doing this.  We need a coordinator but don’t have a suggestion at this point.

·       Website Administration:  Denise said that Andrew might be able to do some web work for the Club, since his business is involved in graphic design and publicity.

Upcoming programs:

·       October 2—Byron Labadie on Refractor Telescope Lens Fabrication

·       November 6—pending notification on our Night Sky Network expert guest speaker.  Denise emailed the person she has been in contact with yesterday, asking for an update today before our Board meeting, and has not received any update.

·       December 4—Denise on A Year’s Worth of Meteor Showers. 

·       January--John Blaesi on what to do with any astronomy-related gifts you may have received over the holidays!  (Date TBD; January 1 is a Monday.  Denise can’t book the January meeting room until October.  We will ask for January 4, a Thursday.)

Event for the annular eclipse October 14:

·       We discussed having this at the mall rather than Sooner Park.  Evan said he could talk with Michelle at the mall—she was interested in us doing something.

·       Michelle at the mall offered to get a food truck, but Craig said we probably wouldn’t want to go to that length with this event.  (And as a side note: what if it ended up being cloudy that day, and the food truck had already been arranged for!)

·       We would publicize this just to our BAS newsletter group, not external publicity like the yellow sheet, etc.

·       We would need volunteers to work this.   John Blaesi and John Grismore would not be available that day to help.  We will need to have enough volunteers to watch the people coming to the event to make sure they have certified solar glasses, and that they are using them properly.  Depending on how many people might come, we might need 8-10 volunteers.  We will need to solicit these before the October 2 meeting; if we can’t get enough volunteers, then we couldn’t have an event. 

·       We also discussed getting someone with a solar-filter-equipped telescope to bring one.

·       We could consider giving away say 200 pairs of solar glasses (and say this many pairs in advance, so that people who come would know that we might run out).  We discussed charging say 50 cents for a pair, but then we could run into an issue of turning a profit, which we wouldn’t want to do.

·       Right now, we have posted on the Night Sky Network calendar an event from 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m., location Sooner Park, and noted this is subject to change.  Denise will change this to say the mall once this is confirmed for sure.

·       We are getting an eclipse kit from the Night Sky Network.

·       Denise has laminated an eclipse safety handout that Craig obtained.

Moving out of storage at the First Christian Church to the mall:

·       We decided to do this September 29 at 11 a.m.

·       Evan (who has a truck) won’t be available to help that day, but John Blaesi (who also has a truck) said he would be available.

·       Evan asked Craig to contact Mitch with the City to arrange access to our storage room at the First Christian Church.

·       Denise also has quite a bit of Club items at her house, but the most important thing on this day is to pull out of the First Christian Church by the end of September.

·       We will need to do some basic cleaning in our storage area before we move things in. 

Club display at the mall:

·       As part of our using a storage room at the mall, we have been asked to set up a display.  Denise is considering being the chair of the mall display committee. 

·       The mall hasn’t given us a set date of having an exhibit set up by, but we would like to have something set up by the Thanksgiving holidays.

·       We agreed that at least part of the exhibit needs to change periodically so that it will look “fresh” to mall-walkers and attract their attention.  We discussed putting in something like a telescope and a lawn chair sitting on artificial grass for a backdrop, and putting in notices about current items relating to what can be seen in the night sky, such as upcoming meteor showers.  If we could get a digital display to post notices that could be changed from home, that would be great! 

·       Craig mentioned that we could highlight three constellations that are particularly visible at this time, displaying pictures of them and telling where to find them. 

·       Denise mentioned that she was going to make up something on tips to look for meteor showers for the library display next August, and we could put this in the mall also.

·       We will have to be careful what we say about the youth group.  The one-page BAS handout may need to be changed, since it mentions the youth group.  There was discussion about what Club QR codes to publish at the mall; we may not want to post one that links to the youth group.  Denise also mentioned that our business cards mention the youth group; John Blaesi thought we might not need to change those, at least right now.  (We have lots of business cards on hand right now.)

·       We will need to do some basic cleaning in our display area, including cleaning the glass windows.

International Observe the Moon Night:

International Observe the Moon Night is October 21.  We have put this event on the Night Sky Network calendar from 7-10 p.m. that day, location TBD.   We discussed having this event be the evening star party for October.

PayPal: 

Craig said that we need a “business” version of a PayPal account in order to put this on our website more easily.  Craig asked Evan to look into this.

BYA newsletter/BYA members Google Groups: 

·       Denise offered to Rick Bryant some time ago to set up a Google Group for the BYA newsletter list and for BYA members.  Rick hasn’t wanted to do this up to now, as OU (where he works) email and emails sent from Google Groups don’t mix! 

·       Denise attended Rick’s August BYA meeting, where he announced that he was going to step down as the leader of the BYA due to family health concerns.  Denise asked Rick if he would be willing to send her his newsletter list, so she could set up BYA newsletter and BYA members Google Groups. 

·       Rick sent her this last week.  She started to set up the groups but realized she would need to put in a purpose for each Google Group, and wondered what to put, with the BYA being on hiatus right now.  She discussed this with the Board, and we decided for the time being not to set up BYA Google Groups. 

·       Denise offered to put Rick’s current newsletter list on our Google Drive, so that others would have access to it besides her.  (The older BYA newsletter lists on the Google Drive are out of date.)

Yahoo account: 

We had discussed getting rid of our Yahoo email address some time ago, but Denise hadn’t done it yet.  We discussed this again after Denise recently logged in and there was no content, so she will do this.