When I was in high school, I first heard of AMICA and attended a
meeting of the Southern California AMICA chapter.  I enjoyed the
atmosphere, the meetings and I learned a lot about the hobby.  When
I started working, however, I moved to the San Francisco Bay area.
For whatever reason, I just didn't feel that I fit in with the group
there and didn't enjoy the meetings as much as I did in So. Calif.
I let my membership run out and didn't feel the loss.  I never ran
into any feeling of competition, nor of secretive techniques that were
to be kept away from amateurs; on the contrary, the people that I met
were friendly, helpful and open -- I just missed the enjoyment of the
meetings.

Now at 40 I have rejoined AMICA.  I live farther away from any chapter
than I did before, but I wanted to associate myself once again with
the group that drives the preservation and awareness of the magical
music machines.  While I think that, with modern technology, the web
site could be greatly improved and should allow access to members only
of archives, and could also be used as a bulletin board for members
to post items for sale, but allow access to all -- in my opinion, this
would be a great asset to the club -- when I get my AMICA Bulletin it's
already been read by everyone in the US for at least the previous
month.

As for the bulletin, stop whining and start writing.  I am not
interested in the local meetings section that fills up most of the
Bulletin -- I am interested in the technical articles, biographies,
reprints of fliers that they also provide.  I consider Robin Pratt
a friend and have discussed this with him; people like to complain
about the content of the Bulletin but aren't willing to put their pens
to work to improve the situation.  I applaud Robin on his patience to
deal with that for so many years, and I applaud Mike Kukral for taking
it over afterwards.

Eli Shahar