Next Meeting - May 18, 2008 STRAIGHT FOR EQUALITY The May meeting will include elections, a discussion of our new focus on STRAIGHT FOR EQUALITY, and MORE. The Board elections will be held after the education section.

CHAPTER PRESIDENT'S NOTE
(Kay Heggestad)

     Happy May!  I attended the regional directors' meeting in early May in DC so am now all fired up about Straight for Equality and will present the new information at our May meeting.  We will be working up some talks on this topic and will also use the information at our market table.  Board and officer elections will also be held at this meeting.  There is still time to nominate yourself or another member to be on the board--just let me know!
     A Madison West high student received one of the $5000 PFLAG scholarships and I'll have more information about her at our meeting.  Due to our efforts in going to the schools, Madison had many, many applications for these awards.  So, many thanks to  all of you that went to the high schools with this information.  (and, I hope we can do this every Jan/Feb from now on.)
    Dues are DUE now for 2008-2009 since our fiscal year starts on Oct. 1.  See DUES note in this newsletter.
    This will be my last president's note.  Diane Wensel will be taking over the presidency in September.  It has been great being president of this fine group!  Thanks!  Kay

Farmers’ Market

The famous Madison Farmers' Market has started and runs every Saturday morning until early November.  We staff a table at the South Hamilton corner of the capital square in 2 shifts:  8-10 and 10-12.  Jo Elder brings and takes the table and all materials, so volunteers just need to sit there, look pretty, enjoy the weather and people watching, eat pastry, and give out our booklets and answer questions from the walkers.  Kay does all the scheduling, so for more information or to sign up contact me.

 

From Other Publications

The Task Force Newsletter, May 8, 2008

WASHINGTON, May 7 — The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force denounces the Michigan Supreme Court ruling mandating that local governments and state universities can't offer health insurance to the same-sex partners of their employees.  The court ruled 5–2 that Michigan's 2004 ban against same-sex marriage also blocks domestic partner policies affecting employees with same-sex partners at universities and other public-sector employers (emphasis mine).

Dues

Membership dues are to be turned in by October 1.  PLEASE PAY NOW!  Write to Karen or print the form here.

Please PAY NOW for the 2008-2009 member year.  You may pay at the May meeting or the Sept. meeting or mail it in to Karen.  We really pay very little for so very much from national!  They have a very tight budget and member dues is only 3% of that budget ... the rest is from donations from all of us and from the corporate sponsors.

New Chapter Email

We have a new chapter email address:  pflagmadison@yahoo.com .  Kay will be checking this daily and when out of email range, will turn it over to whoever has the phone for the month.  This will appear on our letterheads, business cards, web site, and next edition of our brochures, etc.  The old one will still work but this looks more professional and easy to remember.

 

Perfect Harmony

GOOD NEWS
Perfect Harmony, the super men's chorus, is going to do a BENEFIT performance for US...for Madison PFLAG!!!  

Thurs, July 10, 2008
Time:  unknown yet.. 7ish or 8ish...
Place:  Glenwood Moravian Church (they are donating the space) off Monroe, near Dudgeon.
They need a good dress rehearsal for their Florida convention the following week.

THE REQUEST
Tickets will be roughly $10 each...
We get to sell advance tickets to friends and relatives etc... and all the $ we collect comes back to Madison PFLAG..

So, I need to know:  Please send me your best guess (only if over zero) as to how many tickets you might buy for yourselves/and sell to others. 

We need some sort of guess since the theater holds about 150... if we don't think we can get somewhere close to that, then Perf Harm will ask a second group, eg Proud Theater, if they want in on this...then they will get the $ from whatever part they sell and we would need to split the box office money with them.

I won't hold you to your guess, but please send it soon.

THANKS,Kay

 

American Airlines’ Deal for PFLAG

Planning a vacation?  Fly on American Airlines and support the preferred airline of PFLAG National.  PFLAG national staff gets free miles (and you do NOT lose any bonus miles).
When booking on www.AA.com, follow these instructions:
Step One - Choose your travel dates and your best flight option.
Step Two - Login. (If you have an AAdvantage Number and a password, key it in. If not, click "continue" without logging in.)
Step Three - Confirm your itinerary and complete passenger details
LAST STEP - Important! - Key in PFLAG's Business ExtrAA Account Number (527590).