The 2003 annual meeting of the membership of HGI prompts me to write down some thoughts about membership for this issue of the newsletter. For the moment, I am writing as a fellow member, rather than as the staff person newly charged with member services.

We all know it, but we probably tend to forget that HGI members are the not-for-profit equivalent of stockholders, and that we have a very real andimportant legal stake in the organization. At our annual meeting we elect a Board of Directors to oversee our interests and to forward our purposes and beliefs. When we do that our actions are exactly like those of any group of shareholders.

I think it's worthwhile to reflect here on the fact that in this
mini-epoch of corporate malfeasance and board dereliction the HGI directors have represented us faithfully and well.

As a result, our organization has a fairly astounding record of achievement and integrity. That record is directly and immediately attributable to th membership. If every group of stockholders were collectively as intelligent, interested and capable as the membership of HGI, our nation's corporate woes might never have arisen. At the very least, somebody -- and generally many somebodies -- would have trumpeted alarms and gotten things straightened out long before they ever went wrong.

And therein lies the difference between our membership and the usual body of stockholders. Unlike our corporate peers, we tend to take an active and creative interest in HGI throughout the year, and in person and by mail or phone continually engage in the time-honored practice of advice and consent, and we often go beyond that to physical participation.

May that always be true.

Let me switch now to my staff persona and describe some of what I've been doing in connection with member services.

First, I've been learning about database software and how to use it, and if you think that isn't titillating. Second, I've been trying to bring our membership records up to date, correcting addresses, contacting lost members, and so forth. Third, I¹ve been converting our membership-renewal procedures to a quarterly basis, instead of the present monthly approach. The quarterly system will enable HGI to dun you for membership dues systematically and repeatedly.

I don't know how you could ask for anything more, but finally, and less facetiously, I've also been working with the rest of the staff to develop ways and means to provide better communication and additional membership benefits.

Without in any way belittling the fundamental purpose we all have of preserving our western American heritage and enhancing our fellow citizens' understanding of that past, I think we all agree that it is worthwhile to learn new things ourselves, and when we are in Georgetown, to be able to have fun that in some way derives from and is related to the historic preservation work that we're doing.

It's these latter and subsidiary goals -- learning and fun -- that I'd like to turn to now, although space permits only one example. HGI has a considerable collection of documents, photos and artifacts that shed light on the past‹and raise questions about it.

Trying to decipher old photographs, for example, can provide hours of challenging intellectual entertainment. I suspect that the twenty-eight "music sheets" or discs that play on HGI's music box tell us a lot about social as well as music history. (I began to consider the possibility when I learned that our national anthem as the music box reproduces it is very lyrical, not at all martial.) The small machine called a ruffle crimper that we display in the Hamill House kitchen provides a fascinating insight into domestic matters and seems to me to rival Tom Sawyer as a source of ideas about 19th-century "fashion."We're exploring ways to make the HGI collection accessible to members for study and entertainment.

Membership Form