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2003: 2002: 2001: 2000:
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Q U E S T Newsletter of the Madison Aquatic Gardeners Club As a club, how we can do things better during the coming year? This will be on the September / October meeting agenda. NEW NAME: Want to consider something like Madison Planted Aquaria Club? Folks tend to associate “Aquatic Gardeners” with ponds. MEMBERSHIP CULTURE: We are three groups. Some are active, long timers with ever growing skills. Beginners pay visits to discover good directions. Others with varying skill levels have either moved out of town, are too busy to attend meetings, or have concluded the organization doesn’t offer value. Regardless of were we find ourselves in this picture, the goal is to learn from each other. The foundation notion of membership participation through meetings and e-mail exchanges is key. CONSIDERATIONS: Q&A Panel….. A format designed to explore core themes of planted aquaria. Topic ideas originate from members. A group of four does some preparation for a future meeting, at which point the panel has a discussion and fields questions from the floor. Mini Reports….. Members sharing notable experiences. For instance, David Reese is spending several weeks in Florida attending some career related technical workshops. He mentioned he’d like to visit some of the aquatic plant nurseries around the Tampa Bay area. With camera slung over the shoulder, he will blend right in with the tourists. Monica Adams is spending time in Japan consulting with some science based entities who are interested in her innovative research. In between commitments, Monica would love to check out Takashi Amano aquariums. Yes, she is taking a digital camera. As visiting Professor of Botany at the University of Hawaii, Tom Givnish goes there now and then. He says there are some excellent public aquariums in Hawaii. One of these time he is going to check them out. Mark Adams has had some dramatic things happening in his experimental aquarium. Though an impending disaster was in the making, he turned things around. Good story, Mark. CLUB OUTREACH OPPORTUNITY: Let’s send some of our surplus plants to a teacher in Champaign, Illinois. JoAnn Amber is a science curriculum developer for the home school sector. She is creating an impressive biology course with planted aquaria as a central teaching resource. I’m one of several folks she is using to garner practical information and resource materials. At this point she is getting together aquarium plants for her students. I’ve already sent two boxes of surplus plans from the West High aquarium, Birge Atrium and greenhouse venues, Science House aquarium and from my home tanks. If you have surplus, give me a call. I can pick them up. I’ll be sending out a package in a couple of weeks. A NEW LOOK: TAG (The Aquatic Gardener) Journal of the Aquatic Gardeners Association) has a new “knock your socks off” format with glossy paper, lots of full color photos. Karen Randall is the new editor. What a job she is doing! I have three copies of the magazine. Give me a call if you want to check out one for a while this summer. NOTES: I hope to launch an August QUEST newsletter sometime. If you have anything to include in it, let me know. If you want to borrow from the club library, stop by my place and pick up some titles and bring some samples of your aquarium water and we will test it, just for fun. COMPUTER HISTRIONICS: You don’t want to hear about my computer hard drive going AWOL. I think it crashed because it had a heat stroke or something. I’ll leave it at that, and to your fertile imagination. The less said, the easier for me to forget this misadventure. With all the hot weather we’ve been having, what a time to lose one’s “cool”. John
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