Good morning from Whiskey Creek, where we’re due to get up in the high triple digits today. When the dogs shrug at an offer to play ball, you know you’re in a heat wave. I’m just feeling a little sad for the Strawberry folks this weekend. Don’t know what the heat has done to attendance, not to mention the public health warning re: air quality due to the many, many fires up here in the mountains. But they got a great line-up this year, and evenings are cooling off nicely. Some, like the Brandli’s, are driving up the hill 40 minutes or so and cooling off at Pinecrest Lake, one of the loveliest bodies of water in the Sierras.
Just received an email from Larry Phagley, our Membership VP who asked me if we’ve loaded the Board of Director’s Ballot on the web site yet. My totally honest answer was, well, um, yes and no. The ballot and all the candidate statements are in this month’s Breakdown, and the BB is available for downloading at https://www.cbaweb.org/News/Breakdown. However, I did let Larry know that, as in years past, I’ll be getting a clean copy of the ballot, as well as all of the candidate statements up.
And speaking of the election and the web site, each year folks ask why we don’t return to on-line voting “like last year?” I’m always a little amused by the question, frankly, because even though it FEELS like it was just last year, the last time we actually offered online voting was about 12 years ago. We did it then because we’d had a rough patch of years in which we were coming close to not having a required number of members vote, which would have necessitated a re-vote. When voting activity returned to normal we dropped online voting, and here’s why: it costs the Association lots of money to send out first class letters to every member of the CBA and, ironically, that’s what’s required for an online voting system. You see, people have to have their membership number to click their vote on the web site ballot page, most don’t know what it is and, hence, we’ve got to send them their numbers. Classic catch 22.
A last word about the election. The CBA is a lot of things, and one of those things is an army of volunteers. You just couldn’t believe the number of men and women and even kids who work at events or year round to make the CBA one of the best, most active bluegrass organizations there is. That said, MOST members do not volunteer for anything and it’s to these people I want to say this—AT LEAST VOTE. You’re busy, you have responsibilities to your family, you’re trying to make a living, you’re not feeling all that great…okay, we understand that, but at least take five minutes and participate in the election. It’s a way to let the people who DO put in the hours know that you’re out there, watching and listening to what’s going on and, I’m certain in most cases, appreciating their work. This year we’ve got several new people who’ve formally expressed a desire to help steer the CBA as a board member (talk about a HUGE volunteer commitment); let these men and women know that they’ve made the right decision about running.
I couldn’t write a Welcome column this week without acknowledging the loss of someone who, many of us believe, had an enormous, ENORMOUS, impact on bluegrass in the San Francisco Metro Area. Sunshine Mc Clenahan passed away earlier this week. She died from a long-term illness, which, in recent years, caused her great pain. Sunshine is pain free now and at peace. Sunshine and Lou began hosting a weekly Friday night jam decades ago and it continued right up until her death. It is without a trace of exaggeration to say that that jam was where hundreds, if not thousands, of pickers met for the first time. As my son, Phil, who was very, very close to S said, it could take someone years to piece together a thorough schematic of the network that the Friday night jam produce over the years. I knew sunshine for close to thirty years, I loved her with in two minutes of meeting her, and I’ve never, and will never, stop loving her.
Okay, I’ll say good-by for now. First actual Welcome I’ve written for a while. Hard to believe that for four years I wrote one every day.
R