Happy summer, everyone! Hard to believe it’s June already. We have a lot going on in
CUAS and we appreciate you being along for the ride. I’ll try to summarize a few things
for you here.
First, I appreciate your patience during the May meeting. Lets face it – reviewing any
group’s by-laws will cure insomnia. It’s horribly boring. I may have mentioned that I
learned from my 30 years at Parkland that by-laws aren’t there for when things are going well. They are in place when things aren’t going so well. In CUAS, we’ve been fortunate to not have many times when things haven’t gone well, such as a contested
election. But it IS good to review the by-laws every 3-4 years. If I’m being honest,
then I say “whew . . . glad that’s done!” Thank you!
Second, construction at the observatory. It has
been very frustrating getting a contractor interested in our work. We’ve worked with four so far and
two didn’t even get back with us. One proposal
was voted down last month. My hope is to have
another proposal for you to consider at the June 8th
meeting from RLD Construction (thanks to Angie
Boesche for the referral). And there’s still a chance
that the team that worked on Mike Lockwood’s
shop may be interested but we’ve had no contact
with them as this issue goes to press.
Third, the weather. Midwestern weather never
ceases to amaze me. In April, we had variable sky
conditions the Saturday of our open house and decided to cancel but very late (that’s on me) and we
had one family attend. This past weekend, after
getting opinions from a few people and knowing the forecast, we decided to cancel
again. And whaddya know? It cleared off!! Well, for a couple of hours anyway. Thanks
to Jim Wehmer and John Richmann who showed up to join me in showing the Moon
and Venus to about 40 people (who didn’t get the cancellation message). We saw the
ISS go over, too. After over a week of beautiful weather, it clouds up on the night of
our open house. Go figure.
Lastly, I talked about eclipse
plans last month. This is heating
up! I hope you can attend the
June meeting where our secretary John Richmann will give us a
presentation and we’ll talk
eclipse in July. Try to make both
meetings if you can.
I hope you’re well and you’re
still looking upwards at night.