My personal congratulations to everyone concerned with our recent conference at the Huntington Library. To all of our speakers, well done! A terrific program with a varied menu. No bad papers in the lot, maybe not a first, but close. All of the graduate students proved smooth presenters, belying their experience (some of them are actually quite experienced), especially in light of some of the problems we had with the projectors and the microphone. I do apologize to those who couldn’t hear well.

The Huntington staff, especially Evie Cutting of Special Events and Melanie Thorpe of the Botanic Gardens building did everything they could to assist, and without Melanie the Caterers might never have appeared at all (when they did, their foodstuffs were good). Thank you to Dr. Murdock, the Director, for dropping by, and for Diane Waggoner’s tour. Your officers feel she deserves some honorarium and will see to it. Thanks to Derricksen Brinkerhof for his remarks on the history of the AHSC, and to Matt Gleason of COAGULA. Irina Costasche led a great roundtable discussion. Thanks to all those who helped out with the projectors and lights when a glitch appeared.

Happily the attendance exceeded all recent meetings and we took in enough money to cover what otherwise would have been a deficit. This leaves new President Connie Moffat with little to work with: donations are welcomed. Send to Treasurer Nina Berson (contact her at: therizuli@comcast.net).

In answer to many questions that came up at the conference, we met at the Huntington and paid for it (one third of their normal fee of $1500) because I felt that attendance would again be disastrously low if we asked people to come out to the Pomona area two years running. There was serious talk last year that the AHSC might have outlived its usefulness and should be disbanded. I disagreed with this proposal and did my best to make this meeting one which would extend the life of the organization. Thanks to all of you, I think we succeeded.

All success to the incoming officers, Vice President Connie Moffat who assumes the Presidency, Irina Costasche who will be new VP to follow as President the following year, and Nina Berson doing yeoman service again as Secretary Treasurer. Though not an officer, Nina Christensen will continue to look after our website, perhaps phasing it over to our officers; thank you!