Meeting Memories

I failed in my attempt to completely deplete the lobster population in Maine, despite several small victories. I will have to return again to re-engage the battle. It is a tough job, but someone's got to do it! Perhaps the best battle I ever joined in that little war was the clambake we had at the dedication of the Clinton Ford Headquarters Building. That was undoubtedly the best AAVSO feeding ever!

The meeting had some really fine points. In addition to the really inspiring Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Centenary at Harvard College Observatory, the first class facilities where the AAVSO meeting was held made the meeting really special. I made a short presentation about some of the features of spreadsheets I have posted for free use on www.lewcook.com. The use of a computer projection screen allowed me to make a demonstration in real time, showing just how quickly you can make a light curve plot from a data set. Less than a minute!

My special thanks to Mario Motta for arranging the use of the Massachusetts Medical Society facilities. The MMS is the group that publishes the New England Journal of Medicine, which almost everybody has heard of. The meeting room and facilities were superb.

Another treat was seeing the AAVSO staff members I had not met but had traded e-mails with. A lot of the time we send in reports and get a question about them, or just thanks for the report, but we may not get a chance to meet the authors. That HQ group is a terrific bunch of folks. Make sure you take a moment to say hello to them at the next meeting you get to.

Lew and Donna Cook
California

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