I’m amazed that a policy this important is scheduled for discussion and approval without feedback from membership. After the fallout from the Vendor Colloquium last fall, I expected AALL to become more transparent.

Do you think AALL will respond before the Executive Board meeting?

That’s the conference website. Registration at the “door” are welcome. Milwaukee is 90 minutes north of Chicago/OHare airport if you can’t get a direct flight into Mitchell.

-I miss when area codes were few enough that you could be a geek and actually memorize (most of) them and know where a long-distance number was located. And when they only had a 1 or 0 as the middle digit. Similarly, when you could tell where in town someone lived by their phone exchange. And when calling a long-distance number within your own area code, you would just dial 1 + the number.

-Yes, 45s (though they were 96 cents, plus 4% tax = an even dollar, when I came along), and also Top 40 radio, where you would hear hard rock, “soul”, and bubblegum pop side by side, not today’s overformatted radio cacaphony.

-I REALLY miss the smell of mimeograph machines! How do schoolchildren find anything pleasant about tests, anymore, without the fresh, addictive smell of that wet (preferably) purple mystery “ink”?

-Having to write your name on a card to check out a library book, and being nosy and seeing who else had checked it out before you.

-Pizza places with jukeboxes, and jukeboxes with the loud red buttons that made a satisfying “chunk” when you made your selection.

-When cans in the grocery store had the prices stamped on them in that little purple circle

-When, if there was nothing you specifically wanted to watch on the 3 channels of TV, you’d turn it off and read or play a board game–not everyone go to their separate laptops, not speaking.

-When there weren’t SO many choices of every thing. There was basically ONE flavor of coffee in the grocery store, ONE kind of Coke and one kind of Pepsi (maybe Tab and Diet Pepsi), two kinds of Crest and one kind of Colgate, not 26 slightly-different kinds of each that you could never find again if you wanted to.

I miss something worth watching on broadcast television. I don’t have cable and I prefer to watch series on DVD, but I will put the TV on when I’m home on the weekends. Sunday in fall is still full of football, but I have been amazed by the amount of paid programming on the networks, especially on Saturday afternoons. All the niche sports (remember ABC’s Wide World of Sports), weird movies and Star Trek reruns are all on cable channels now, so the networks that don’t have a major sporting event just run infomercials all day.

We are, or speaking only for myself, I am, afraid of nothing. You are indeed free to propose bylaw amendments. Likewise, those of us who are inclined to ignore the petition are free to do so, and those of us, like me, who wish to persuade others not to sign the petition, are equally free to do so. The purpose of requiring a petition is to set a threshold to gauge whether the membership is concerned enough about an issue to merit a vote. I argue that the issue that concerns you does not rise to that level. If you succeed, you will have proved me wrong. If you fail, you will have proved me right on that one point.

One other thought: If you are looking to make the process for increasing SIS fees more democratic, you could achieve a similar yet more efficient result by requiring that the Council of SIS Chairs consent to a fee increase by majority vote.