January 2021

Christmas is done, the new year hangovers and/or resolutions have been made, and it’s a good time to look forward. Usually, it takes me until about mid-March to stop putting the old year on things that I type or write. Given how much of a dumpster fire 2020 was, I suspect this year I it’ll only take a couple of hours. Happy New Year, lets hope 2021 is a vast improvement over 2020!

Even with the pandemic, our club had several positives in 2020 that deserve to be recognized. We grew our membership, completely redesigned and updated our website (clarified content, added more pictures of our work, and added security to prevent another catastrophic hack), established a PayPal account to allow for electronic payment of club dues, figured out how to use Zoom and our AV equipment to hold virtual meetings, began putting video out on the web so members can re-watch any club demo that was recorded over the year, and we came dangerously close to donating our 1000th wig stand! I am actually looking forward to 2021 to see what we can do when we don’t have the pandemic holding us back!

The new board will be meeting in February for our quarterly meeting where we will be setting priorities for the upcoming year. If you have thoughts or ideas on club goals or activities, please contact me or any of the other board members if you’d like to provide input.

Russ and I have been talking about demonstrations for the 2021 club meetings and I have a challenge for the club. On our website, in the “tips and techniques” section, there is a lot of documentation and hand outs from a wide variety of projects and demonstrations from throughout our club’s history. Since it’s been quite awhile since many of these project were demonstrated, we’d like to have some demos where club members start with one of the links, then build a demonstration around what’s out there. It’ll be good to revisit some older topics and it will allow us to put some video with the text on the website. If anyone is willing to participate, please contact Russ with the item you selected and he will work with you to get a date scheduled. On a similar note, if there’s a topic or technique you’d like to see demonstrated during a meeting, please contact Russ and we’ll start looking for someone to present on that topic.

With the new year comes a whole series of “yearly updates” that need to be made: Facebook events for meetings, perhaps a calendar on the website, our annual review of the bi-laws, scheduling demonstrations for the year, updating club information on our site and the AAW site, and I’m sure a hundred other things. As/If you see information on the web or our FB group that’s not updated, yet, please let me know so updates can be made.

With the new year comes a new list of president’s challenges. In looking at the master sheet of 2020 entries that Dan Augstin has been keeping up to date, it looks like we will end the year with around 110 entries into the special prize drawing. That is a MUCH larger number of submissions this year as compared to prior years during my time with the club. THANK YOU to all those who took the time to participate! At the January meeting, we’ll hold the special drawing for the 2020 President’s Challenge winner using an online tool that will randomly pick the winner. Each person’s name will be entered onto “the wheel of names”, one entry for each entry submitted. Those who completed all 12 challenges and the bonus challenge will see their name on the wheel 13 times! The prize will be a 1/2″ Thompson bowl gouge, with a matching Thompson 16″ handle that is engraved with ‘2020 CIW Challenge Winner’. It’s not just a tool, it’s also a trophy of sorts for the lucky winner. For 2021, I’m going to stick with the same approach as we used for 2020, but the 12 challenges will have some changes. The 2021 challenges will be posted on the web and a link will be sent to all members via email.

With the end of the year, come the inevitable task of looking back. “Year in review”, “The year that was”, and a whole host of other titles are plastered in news feeds, TV broadcasts, FB posts, and anywhere else the media can trap an audience. The theme always seemed to be “look how bad the year was”. Facing that kind of onslaught, my kids and I had several conversations about life during 2020 and realized if you squinted a little, you could see some positives. For example, if you walk into a bank wearing a mask and gloves, you get to feel like an outlaw without ever getting arrested. If you wake up really late for class or work, you can still make it on time because you don’t have to waste time putting on pants or worrying just how much your breath stinks. If you take the trash out to the dumpster or the curb and the bags clink and crackle from all the empty bottles and fast food bags, no one will say a thing because their garbage is making the same sounds. If your grand child’s favorite stuffed animal has to go in the washer, all you have to say is “they weren’t feeling good, so they had to go into quarantine for a little bit” and there’s no epic meltdown. Finally, if you’re in a hurry at Wal-Mart and the line is too long, a fake sneeze into your mask followed by a whispering “Ugh! I feel like crap” will suddenly make the line much, MUCH, shorter.

2021 is surely going to be better than 2020, but just in case, I already have a 24 count, double role, bag of toilet paper stored away in a spare closet. If anything, 2020 has taught me the Boy Scouts were right when they said “Be Prepared”!

Until next time, please be safe, be thankful we’re all still here to see what the new year brings, and please remember that eventually, everything will pass.