BARE AND FREE

Attend the Membership Meeting and Christmas Banquet December 11

Plan to attend our Christmas Banquet on December 11. Please bring TWO side dishes this time. The club will provide chicken or turkey. If the weather is cool, we will have a bonfire going. We eat early at 1:00.

After the meal, there will be a brief membership meeting to see if we can elect someone to fill vacancies on the board. We also need to place some of our money in an interest-bearing certificate of deposit, and the board seeks member guidance on what (if anything) we should do about high gas prices.

Two board positions are open: Corresponding Secretary and Member-at-Large. One of them must be filled by a woman. Any member is qualified after attending two membership meetings, or one membership meeting and two board meetings. The December 11 meeting can count as one of those membership meetings.

All terms of office expire at the time of our Annual Business meeting in March.

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A Note from the President

My dear fellow Tallahassee Naturally members,

First let me wish everyone a happy holiday season.  Of course we hope that everyone will join us at the lake Sunday, December 11 at 1:00 o’clock for our annual holiday banquet and a brief membership meeting at 2:00 pm.  Normally we might not mention this out of fear that potential attendees would skip but the rules are that candidates for the board need to attend membership meetings and/or board meetings before they are eligible to serve on our board of directors.  If you have any interest in being elected to the board and have not previously qualified:  please attend this meeting.

This fall the price of gasoline skyrocketed.  During the height your board considered various measures to encourage people to drive to the lake.  We know that the continued viability of our group lies directly in the size of our membership, but indirectly—more to the point:  In our attendance at the lake.  If it becomes too expensive for the average member to drive to the lake, not only attendance, but membership will fall.  We considered assorted ways to lower the cost of visiting the lake to sort of subsidize the costs of fuel.  In the end we could not find a formula for a fair means of reducing grounds fees since many members had already paid for the whole year…  We also were cognizant of the fact that the gas price increases could be permanent and although we might justify a temporary reduction in some fees and even temporarily operating at a loss, the issue inevitably becomes:  how long is "temporary"?

One other possibility discussed was car pooling.  Anyone interested in car pooling this winter should let us know and we will determine if there is sufficient interest to formalize it or let folks share rides as has occasionally been the case in the past….

Recently the price of gas has fallen back to pre-Katrina levels.  At this point it might seem that doing nothing was the right thing to do.  But your board wanted you to know that we were sensitive to this potential issue—and we would really love to have your input.  The time to review our membership and grounds fees would be at our spring membership meeting. Fees have been discussed several recent years and it can be expected this will come up again in March of 2006. We hope to hear from our membership in December and afterward, so we can review proposals and plan for our great future together.

Again, may I wish everyone a happy holiday season, and also a natural new year.

Your President.

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Membership and Attendance Are Rising

Club membership now stands at about 70--or twenty more than last year, and higher than at any time in the last four years. That is partly because our renewal rate this year was the strongest ever. We take it to mean that people feel satisfied. Our membership in AANR and The Naturist Society are once again looking healthy.

With gorgeous warm fall days, attendance also has been running the highest in three years. We have bettered last year's attendance numbers every month except April and August.

The board has appointed John to monitor Saturday attendance, making sure people sign in, and with authority to collect fees.

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Catching Up On the News

We haven't gotten a newsletter out for a while. No one person is to blame; we've all been busy. Besides, there hasn't been much exciting news to report. We did notify everyone by e-mail when Gloria was in the hospital. She really appreciated the plant, the many visits, the cards, and the phone calls. She is back home now, but still requires a lot of care.

Back in August, Paul represented the club at the last AANR General Assembly at Caliente Resort near Tampa. Starting next year, all members of the American Association for Nude Recreation vote by mail on all major issues. We were there to make sure that all members also get to vote for AANR officers, rather than having their board pick the officers out of their own numbers. The vote was close; the opposition fell just short of the necessary two-thirds, so we prevailed. A great innovation at the convention was the Geezer Panel, during which long-time members told memorable tales of conventions past. Doug, who now lives nearby at Paradise Lakes, also attended one day of the convention.

This year, The Naturist Society experimented with a second gathering in October at Lake Como, also near Tampa. Attendance was sparse, and the staffing thin. Paul ended up conducting four workshops.

This summer, we ran into a little flack at FSU. For seventeen years, we have been affiliated with the Center for Participant Education (CPE), the last of the "Free Universities" of the seventies, and we have set up our display table in the Student Union two or three times each year. For the second time in all those years, one rogue policeman objected to the discreet nudity on our bulletin board and the covers of national naturist magazines. Both times, the policeman was wrong and had to back off.

But we have been running into a second campus problem this year. Student Union officials are making up lots of new rules as they go along. One of them is an unwritten and unprecedented requirement that someone from CPE must sit all day at every one of the tables affiliated with them--a physical impossibility. We are working behind the scenes to get these matters resolved in time for our College Greek Athletic Meet in March.

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2006 Planning Calendar

(We are still hoping to schedule a trip to the Bay Bares near Panama City. Also, does anybody feel like inviting us to a house party this year?)