News From National President Faith Tiberio: January 2010

“And when I went to sleep, I dreamed a dream but the dream was not in my
head: it seemed to come through my open bedroom door and settled on my
comforter for me to watch”
Angalina Luongo

Our Dreams sometimes elude us yet they linger some where in the backs of our busy minds …
Little snippets of memory that tend to color our thinking and actions, even though we aren’t consciously aware of it. You, as leaders in our organization, should take pride in the dreams of Woman’s Farm and Garden, for our dreams have fared well in 2009.

Our bee project has been successful. The Greenhouse Welcome Center is almost complete and in the next few weeks we will be working on our book and on plans for our June Meeting. Kathy Beveridge, our Sparkling editor, not only is helping with the book but working on a new branch in the Amber area.

On a personal note; if any of your have before worked in the postal system and the telephone system, relying on e-mail, I have to report to you that I have received no e-mails since November first.

The Chief Financial officer of our company, Edward Huppi has been in hospital and is only now, on Jan 6th at home under care, due to a very grave complication resulting from his cancer chemotherapy. This has been a most serious time for us; he is our nephew, and at Thanksgiving his step-father died so along with unremitting pressure at our plant for delivery of electronics to our troops in Afghanistan, sometimes over-night, you can imagine that our normal 8-5 lives are expanded and stressful. If you need to communicate with me, please write or telephone.

My dream for us at Farm and Garden in 2010 will be our finished greenhouse project, ready for the big, historic anniversary ahead, our book and a new emphasis on doing things locally. Next time I will be writing about the new trend in the United States, and we will want to be ahead of, or on the curve of this trend as were with the bee project, as we deftly close the door on our 2009 dreams.

Faith

Mark Your Calendar for the Spring National Meeting

As the old year closes and the new year begins, you are probably marking your 2010 calendar with the important events that are coming up.

Please be sure to set aside June 2 – 6, 2010 for the WNF&GA Spring National Meeting in  Grand Island, New York. A summary of the meeting schedule can be found on our main web site along with information  and a reservation form for the Bus Tour. There’s also a link to the hotel if you’d like to make advance reservations.

As soon as the Spring Meeting Reservation Form is ready we’ll update you again. In the meantime, reserve those dates!

A Note From The Webmaster

My name is Kathy Maestas of Techkat Web Services and I’ve been your webmaster for the past couple of years. I want to take this opportunity at the Holidays to thank you for the opportunity of serving your excellent organization.  It has been a joy to redesign your site and “meet” some of your members.

I also want to thank you for including me in the distribution of the Farm & Garden Magazine. It is lovely and I always enjoy reading up on what the branches are doing and seeing who has won an award. I’m starting to feel like I know many of you. The recipes, stories and poems are fun as well.

I noticed in the last issue of Farm & Garden that you are looking for someone from within the membership to take over the web site. I thought it would be appropriate for me to give a bit more detail about the technical requirements for working on the site for anyone who is interested in taking over the position.

The following are the basic skills that are required to maintain the site:

  • Ability to read and manipulate basic HTML code
  • Ability to read and write CSS code
  • Understanding of the use of templates
  • Ability to read and write JavaScript
  • Understanding of FTP and the ability to transfer files from your local computer to the web server
  • Familiarity with the administrative functions of WordPress including regular software updates as they are released, updates to and configuration of the plugins and monitoring and deleting comment spam
  • Familiarity with AWeber email list management software (this is how the blog updates get automatically emailed to the subscribed members)

Much of the site can be maintained using a graphical HTML editor like Dreamweaver or Kompozer, but knowing HTML will come in handy in seeing where the JavaScript elements are and also for editing the JavaScript.

I wish everyone a beautiful and happy holiday season and a prosperous New Year.
Kathy Maestas
Webmaster

2 Comments

Comment by Susan Yeager

December 29, 2009 @ 1:10 pmHello Kathy,
Thank you for this additional information. We appreciate all the work you have done.
Is it possible for our branch to be connected to this website? We are currently not using any web connection.
Is it possible to post photographs to this site from our joint meetings? We have a number to share.

Susan R. Yeager.

Comment by Webmaster

December 31, 2009 @ 2:20 am

Hi Susan,Thank you for your reply.

I’m not totally sure what you mean by “be connected to this website” if your branch does not currently have any web connection, but I think the answer to your question is “yes”. If your branch does not currently have a web site we could add a Category to this blog for your branch and your news and images could be posted there. Then, to direct people to your part of this blog you’d direct them to https://wnfga.orgblog/your_branch_name. Is that what you had in mind?

Kathy Maestas
Webmaster