(Link to PDF version for printing)

VOL 2  ISSUE 4           APR  2008

April 22nd - Earth Day

Arbor day in Nebraska

Contents

LocSec Column The Tenth Story FIRST FRIDAY Acoustic REPORT Membership Corner

 

LocSec Column

       The election was a success with all of one dozen Mensans voting.

The new officers who will  take office on may 1st 2008 are:

Local Secretary:       Richard Haney

Treasurer:           Tom Winchester

Editor:              Brian Johnson

Recording secretary:    Karen Haney

       The executive board has voted to accept the nomination of Brian Reeves to the non elected position of Membership Chairman, this is effective as of  2/24/08.

       With this new slate of officers, which includes some veterans we will take Palm Beach Area Mensa to a higher energy level with more events of greater diversity for our members.

Brian Johnson
LocSec.

 

The Tenth Story

         To some folks, April signifies spring and gardens and related things. Well, the first thing that is coming to my mind is that it is RENEWAL TIME! If you are receiving this after April 1, and you haven't yet sent in your renewal for Mensa membership, you need to put this down and do it right now! Otherwise, you will be missing out on everything Mensa! April 1 is the beginning of Mensa's new fiscal year, so don't delay.

           If you took the Mensa test, I would bet you can remember the proctor who administered that test. What kind of impression did that proctor make on you? For many people, the proctor is the person who determines how friendly a new person considers Mensa to be. I guess that makes the proctor pretty important. Maybe we should call them the PROCTOR instead of proctor. The PROCTOR is pretty much an unsung hero in many groups. Perhaps we can change that lack of recognition. 

       Right now, until April 18, is the time for LocSecs - or members - to nominate really good proctors for the national Abbie Award, for outstanding proctors. That is something else to do right now while you are thinking about it.

           I have made the decision not to run next year for re-election to the position of RVC 10. When this term ends, I will have been in this post for 4 years. Now it should be someone else's turn! We have many highly qualified people in Florida. I hope a few of you will consider stepping up and running for Regional Vice Chair.

           If you haven't been to the national Mensa website (us.mensa.org) for a while, you are missing some really good things. 

You can look up any member of American Mensa in the member directory.  The forum is now in the "Online Community." It is better organized and structured than it used to be. Participants can even have their picture that shows when they post. I go to the "Games" page every day to get my daily sudoku and jigsaw puzzle fix. You can find archived records of AMC meetings or records of hearings. You can register for the Denver AG there. You can contact the folks at the national office there. I could go on for pages listing all the things you can find and do on the website, but the editors wouldn't like that, so take the time to go and check it out yourself. It is there for you!

Maggie Truelove, RVC 10    3333 Honeysuckle Lane      Orlando, FL 32812
407-855-9078
rvc10@cfl.rr.com

 

FIRST FRIDAY Acoustic REPORT - March 7, 2008

We met at Payathai, a Thai restaurant in Atlantis. Since I was sitting at the far end of the table, and there were 16 of us, I could not hear what was said by those sitting toward the other end of the table(s). Although I usually do not count the number of members attending, this was the largest group of attendees at a First Friday.

Attending were (in no particular order): Fay Harrington, Faith Smith, Cris Rutter, Neila Rutter, Bernice Sklar, Carole Seuling, Jim Schueler, Karen Haney, Rich Haney, Maggie Haney, Jim Wilson, Sharron Ronco, Debra Burke, Patrick Burke, Michael Burkhardt, Barry Karas.

 

Membership Corner

We have had the good fortune to recruit Brian Reeves to the post of Membership Chairman. He will be welcoming new members and organizing occasional new member events for them to meet with officers, volunteers, and other interested members. His contact information is on the inside of the front cover.

NEW MEMBERS

We wish to issue a hearty welcome to all our new members who joined in January and February 2008. If you would like to contact any of them to welcome them, please use the AML web site and the membership search function for contact information. Young Mensans (YM) are contacted through their parents for safety reasons.

New Member	Type	City
Stephen M Chalker	A	West Palm Beach
Evan Fellman	YM	Boca Raton
Todd Fellman	YM	Boca Raton
Jason E Fenwick	A	Port Saint Lucie
Joseph Zaino	A	Boca Raton
John William Engel	A	Stuart
Cris Cameron Rutter	A	Lake Worth
Megan Williams	A	West Palm Beach

Birthdays in March and April 

Name	Birthday	Name	Birthday
Jarret Morrow	1-Mar	April Lynn Blanco	1-Apr
Brad Perron	5-Mar	Amy Rosensweig	2-Apr
Ronald A Capute	7-Mar	Donald Edward Delhorbe	4-Apr
Marc E Manis	8-Mar	Larry Berman	5-Apr
Pedro Marronetti	8-Mar	Barbara D Scott	6-Apr
Bill Carducci	10-Mar	William P Cofer III	8-Apr
William A Ashton	11-Mar	Jeff S Marder	9-Apr
Dr Morton Chalef	12-Mar	Leslie E Trowbridge	11-Apr
Leslie Smith	17-Mar	James Thomas Parsons MD	12-Apr
Thomas D Winchester	20-Mar	Jared M Siegrist	13-Apr
Richard Haney	21-Mar	Miles David Storfer PhD	14-Apr
Nancy A Greenberg	23-Mar	Brooke N Westover	14-Apr
Mohan V Thampi	25-Mar	Steven Garellek	18-Apr
Thomas John Zarate	27-Mar	Jason Gellert	18-Apr
Laura R Smith	29-Mar	Deborah Breuninger	19-Apr
		Dr Jeffrey Arthur Goldstone	19-Apr
		Kenneth Paulsen	20-Apr
		John M Swick	20-Apr
		Star Sansone	24-Apr
		Matthew S Mounts	25-Apr
		Barry M Karas	29-Apr
		Jay Neutzler	29-Apr
		Janice K Johnson	30-Apr

Member Request.

Barry Karras organizes the First Friday Dinner outing at the Payathai Restaurant. He send out notices to all members to remind them of the details. He is getting a growing number of undeliverable messages. If your email has changed for any reason and you would like to update it for Barry, you can send it to him at the bkaras@adelphia.net, and dare I add, that while you are at the keyboard, please consider updating your email with AML by login in at: with your membership number and password and updating your profile. Brian K Johnson

Parents with Gifted Children.

One of our learned members who lives Minnesota has recently (2005) written a book "losing Our Minds" "Gifted Children Left behind." Her name is Deborah L Ruf PhD. And from Minneapolis/St. and she works professionally as a specialist in gifted assessment and individualized interpretations and guidance for gifted children and adults.

       She is the parent of three highly intelligent children, and has made it her mission to research the best education for them. This book tells of her endeavor. It exposes the serious limitations of the typical public school, and describes how she negotiated special modifications for her children.

       Parents with gifted children may find this book helpful with negotiating the best education for their children. The URL for the Google books abstract is way to long to print, but you can get it by doing a Google search on: losing our minds book ruf . There is a good interview of her which can be found by Googling interview deborah l ruf .   Brian K Johnson

SCHOLARSHIPS

Thank you to Mensa members Pfeifer Trowbridge, Cindy Groover and Sandra Burkhardt for serving as judges for the Mensa Education and Research Foundation scholarships. They each read and scored the essays that were entered from Palm Beach, Okeechobee, Martin and St. Lucie Counties. Robert Rieffel and I then added the scores and determined which essays would be sent on to the regional judging. We will be notified in June regarding the winner(s). Last year we had three winners and hope to do as well this year. Janice Johnson

CONCLUSIONS:  All is not always as it seems!!!

One day a man comes home to find that his dog has caught his neighbor's pet rabbit. The dog drops the dead rabbit on the rug, and the man doesn't know how he's gonna tell his neighbor. He decides that he's gonna break into his neighbor's house, and put the rabbit back in the cage. He does so. About a week later, the neighbor has a BBQ, and the man goes. the neighbor tells the man," The strangest thing happened, about two and a half weeks and a half ago, our rabbit died, so we buried it in the yard, and last week, it ended up back in the cage.

A man walks out of a bar and sees a bum panhandling on the corner. And the bum says, "Mister, can you spare a dollar?" The man thinks about the question for a bit and  asks the bum, "If I give you a dollar, are you going to use it to buy liquor?" "No, says the bum." The man then asks the bum, "If I give you a  dollar are you going to use it to gamble?" "No, says the bum." So the man says to the bum, "Do you mind coming home with me so I can show my wife what happens to someone who doesn't drink or gamble?"