Continued from previous message.

New York 
 ------
    While the starviewing part of home astronomy was stifled, the 
overall climate for home astronomy in the City was great! We all 
cheered the visit of the brand new Queen Mary II oceanliner, the 
largest passenger ship on Earth. The mother was humongous, even to 
Jaded New Yorkers, and she extended about 70 meters beyond the end of 
her pier! 
    New York IN May 2004 made it into the five finalists for the 2012 
summer Olympics!! We're in with London, Madrid, Moscow, and Paris. The 
winner will be picked in July 2005. Meanwhile, the plans we were 
tinkering with are now going into steel and concrete. Construction 
starts by year end on certain facilities. 
    The new World Trade Center is moving to its cornerstone laying on 
July 4th for Freedom Tower. The new WTC is a lot more than just the 
one signature tower and a bunch of little ones. The little buildings 
aren't so little. Freedom Tower is the large fellow at 540 meter 
height. The others are, uh, huge in their own selfs. Like 360, 300, 
270, and 240 meters (rounded)! The late Twin Towers will become a 
grove of tallish towers! 
    Later in the year the first tunnelling for the Long Island 
railroad terminal in Grand Central. Construction ws underway for a 
couple years for clearing and relocating subsurface facilities. The 
'real' earthmoving starts now. The transit superstation along Fulton 
Street gets going next year as does the new permanent Hudson Tube 
station. 

Astropolitics 
 -----------
    Amateur Astronomers Association had its annual meeting on 19 May 
2004. There were no petition candidates to oppose and challenge the 
ordained roster of new Board members. There was, therefore, no need to 
disqualify them or rig their vote counting. 
    The Nominating Committee read off the new seatholders as follows: 

  seatholder       status 
  ---------------  ------------------
  Susan Andreoli   incumbent reseated 
  Elias Baltin     incumbent reseated 
  Alice Barner     incumbent reseated 
  Rachel Connolly  newly seated outsider 
  Lynn Darsh       incumbent reseated 
  Irving Robbins   incumbent reseated 
  Frank Schmidt    incumbent reseated 

    All of the incumbent officers were unanimously reelected: 

  office                   incumbent 
  -------------            --------- 
  president                Michael O'Gara 
  vice president           Rik Davis 
  financial secretary      Thomas Haeberle 
  recording secretary      Susan Andreloi 
  corresponding secretary  Frank Schmidt 
  in-house auditor         Elias Baltin 

    The election of officers is done by the old Board, including those 
seatholders whose terms soon expire. The choice, however, is made from 
among the new Board members, with those whose terms will begin on 1 
June. Hence, in this instance, Rachel Connolly could not vote but 
could have become an officer. 
    The reelection of Mike O'Gara was thoroly expected and actively 
advocated by both his supporters and opponents. The main reason is 
that utterly no one else wanted the position, not even Mike's most 
zealous cohorts. 
    May was a quiet period for the File Cabinet Incident, in which 
papers and articles from AAA file cabinets supposedly were stuffed 
into trash bags. The case is in the Manhattan District Attorney's 
hands with the next court date in mid June. 

NYSkies
 -----
    Astronomers are exploiting NYSkies as a quick, handy, friendly,
and potent source of astronomy news relating to the City. And there is
LOTS of astronomy stuff going on around New York! Since it revived on
28 September 2001 (it was interrupted by World Trade Center) NYSkies
became the definitive forum and public record for matters bearing on
home astronomy in and around New York.
    Granted, some of the banter relates particularly to the Amateur
Astronomers Association. It's the major astronomy union in town and
every home astronomer around here eventually runs up against it. It
pays to listen to those discussions (rants? blusters? tirades?), even
if you opt out of playing in them. At the least, you take into account
the words of the senior members before joining the Association. Or you
can let NYSkies dialog modulate your choice to renew AAA membership.
    NYSkies is the soapbox the AAA Board and rank-&-file had to speak
out on various Association problems. They turned to NYSkies simply
because the AAA as yet does not have a good faith sincere forum for
its own members within itself.

 Continued in next message.

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