February 2013

President’s Message

Our January general meeting was canceled due to bad weather. The first significant snow storm of the year made it too treacherous to be out on the roads. I hope none of you went out in that mess to try to get to the meeting. While it was unfortunate that the meeting was canceled, I was actually happy that the weather had changed from dry polluted inversion to wet and stormy. Plus, living on the edge of a desert, we can always use the moisture. Speaking of which, as a geographer, I sometimes measure how much precipitation we get. Where I live, the latest group of storms has dumped 16 inches of snow which has settled now to about a foot. Not to mention about a half an inch of rain.

Anyway, as we canceled the meeting, your HoU Board members became aware of the fact that we had no way to inform the membership of last minute meeting changes other than by an email blast. That awareness brought up the idea that a phone tree might be helpful. At least for those of you who attend meetings often enough to want to be informed. If members show enough interest we will set one up. So give us some feedback and let us know if you think it is worthwhile.

February means Darwin Day. In fact this will be our sixth annual Darwin Day celebration. I won’t go into the program here, as there are announcements elsewhere in the newsletter and online. However, I do want to mention that Evelin Damian, Zack Stevenson, and Brian Trick of the Utah Coalition of Reason have been doing a stellar job of planning Darwin Day for us this year. Their efforts have put together an event that will be an enjoyable and memorable event. So please do join us.

I want to mention another thought I’ve had about Darwin Day and that is the possibility of creating a foundation to insure that Darwin Day continues far into the future. I know that is a big order to say the least. I admit to knowing nothing about the process other than the fact that it will require a fair amount of work and of course money. I feel that such a foundation (with ties to HoU) would be a positive thing for our chapter and more importantly for the good of science.

—Robert Lane
President, HoU