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Greetings to all
old an new members of FIRE. After a bit of an agonizing time,
we have finally secured a site and date for the 2006 Scottish
Fiddling Revival sponsored National Fiddling Competition.
It will be held on Saturday, June 24, at the Ohio Scottish Games.
There will be a Regional competition on June 23, open to all
except those who have already qualified for the Nationals. We
do hope that you will plan on participating. Please plan to
attend, if just to cheer on the competitors!!
The following may not seem earth-shattering
news to many of you, but we have finally achieved IRS
non-profit, charity status, otherwise known as 501(c)3.
This has been a long time in the making--it would perhaps have
been simpler to do when FIRE was organized in March of 1978,
but better late than never! What this does for us is to make
it possible to receive tax-deductible donations to FIRE, and
to apply for grant money to support some educational programs
that have not been possible in the past. This we hope to implement
as soon as we receive a ruling from IRS. And this leads to the
next bit of news:
FIRE has a new President,
Melinda Crawford. The FIRE Board approved her as a
member of the Board last fall, and also approved her as President
of SFIRE. The only reason for the delay was that all documents
sent in to the IRS had my name as President, so I felt that
the actual application had to be in before we made the change.
Our bylaws stipulate that we have an annual meeting.
We will look forward to having this meeting of members at the
Ohio Games.
For the past few years, we have not been able to get enough Board members together at a National venue to hold such a meeting, but the Board has been holding periodic email conversations as official meetings.We know you will want to participate
with your ideas, working with
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us to strengthen and enlarge FIRE
as an organization.
There are many programs
we can initiate now to provide support in the form
of scholarships for members to attend music camps or pursue
other education/research in Scottish fiddle music. Please
send your ideas to Melinda before the meeting, especially
if you are unable to attend in Ohio. How about a composition
competition? We held one ten years ago. With some volunteers
to arrange for judges, rules and prizes, we can do it again!
We could also use some local club reporters who
will send information on great things the local clubs are doing,
to our newsletter editor, Bonnie Stewart. This can be just a
short paragraph sent in quarterly, or it can be an article from
your local newsletter that you would like to see shared with
other clubs. These are member services that will be available
in our member newsletter. We might also have a competition to
see which club can recruit the most new members for FIRE--prizes
to be awarded.
And finally, I salute all of you
who have continued your membership in FIRE
through some lean times. I am sure Paul Brockman is amazed and
gratified by the spread of Scottish fiddling in this country
since its beginnings. His articles were originally printed in
several issues of the Scottish Games programs from the early
years--1976 and 1977. We have reprinted a few of these
articles in our current member newsletter. We celebrated
our 30th anniversary last year, but we are continuing the celebration
at the start of our fourth decade.
Sincerely,
Anne Leslie,
Immediate Past-President,
Scottish Fiddling Revival
March 28, 2006
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