A Great Year of Contributions…
by Brian Pitman, December 2013
It’s been another fine year for the International Carnival Glass Association, with four excellent issues of The Carnival Pump (the shining jewel of newsletters through all of North America) put together diligently by Barb Chamberlain and her tireless crew of helpful elves, a wonderful convention run by Roger and Cathy Dunham and more exciting plans being made for the next few years. As always, we greatly appreciate your membership and are very pleased to consider you part of the ICGA family. We couldn’t have made it for more than four decades without you and those who came before.
So what are some of the things we are working on for the next year? Plenty, let me assure you. The website (found at www.internationalcarnivalglass.com) will be undergoing some dramatic changes in the next twelve months. The design is all new, with the base platform changing to something more modern and manageable, plus customizable by you. Barb will be delving into the website to make sure new content is available for you much more frequently, and we will have more information on the convention, its activities and the auction as well. More pictures, more details and overall more fun.
We are also working on updates to The Pump. Look for new sections, new types of articles, a continuing evolution of the types of articles to reach a wider audience and more. This year has been a great one for The Pump (as I mentioned before). Some of the best articles I have seen in a carnival glass newsletter appeared in our pages in 2013. And how about that full color photography? We get some great feedback from members loving the color and its very discriminating use in the newsletter, and we encourage you to continue sending us your comments, thoughts, ideas and more.
As always, the Annual Convention is the focus of a lot of time and effort, and as I write this, the ICGA Board of Directors is in discussions selecting a hotel and program for 2014. We have a wonderful auction already in the collection of Dick and Jenny Hostetler, brought to us by Jim and Jan Seeck. There are several highlights in the auction, especially some wonderful Millersburg (which you may know is my favorite). If we haven’t announced the convention in the pages of this issue, look for it on our website, via email blast and in the March issue (along with the registration information, program and much more).
And finally, you will find the newest Roster of members included with this issue of The Pump. This is the first one we have printed in quite a few years and we hope you find it a helpful way to contact your fellow members. We are a big, happy family in ICGA, and now you have the full listing of members to add to your address books. Thanks again to Barb and Becky and others involved in bringing you this new Roster. And of course, if we have your information totally wrong in the Roster (it happens!), please let us know so we can get it corrected in our database. And while you are at it, why not send me an email at bpitman@gmail.com to let me know your email address so we can add you to our announcement list.
2013 was a wonderful year for so many reasons. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! We’ll chat again in 2014…
Brian