1 September 2000: Same Stuff, Different Day The newly elected Advisory Board is seated. Once again, National Commander, Tim Stowell brings his unique style of "leadership" to the Project. The "new" Board is faced with a pocketful of outstanding grievances, most protesting the irregularities in the recently concluded election.

1 September: Better Late Than Never Pam Reid is belatedly elected as the Tombstone representative. Tim Stowell rejects requests to certify the election.

4 September: Tim Stowell once again rejects calls for certification of the election. The Election Committee disbands itself on 8 September.

4 September: A motion is made to form a committee to "to study and make recommendations about the election process within the USGenWeb Project." After some dickering about the size of the committee and the number of Board members on the committee and an attempt to table it, the motion passes on 12 September.

12 September: Another motion is made to try and force Linda Lewis to withdraw her service mark application. After quite a lot of arguing about whether or not the Board has the authority to force Linda to do anything, and the oblique threat of a lawsuit from Maggie Stewart [who appears as a signatory on the application], Tim Stowell declares the motion out of order. He also threatens the Board members with sanctions if they submit any more motions on the subject or use motions to threaten other Project members. More than one Board member points out that he is using his position to threaten his colleagues on the Board. A grievance is file against Tim for failing to act to protect the Project's assets [namely our name].

14 September: Job Vacancy Tim Stowell posts an announcement advertising for a Board Secretary. Ginger Hayes appeals his decision to declare the service mark motion out of order. Out in the boonies of the Project, John Schunk kicks off a pledge drive, to which some Board members object, to collect funds to pay for a service mark application.

15 September: Look Over There Maggie Stewart moves that the Board apply for its own service mark; she withdraws the motion on 19 September. Tim Stowell announces that he has secretly formed a "Trademark Committee" to look into the issues surrounding the service mark issue and report back to the Board.

16 September: The membership of the Election Study Committee is announced.

18 September: Joe Zsedeny moves that the Board overrule Tim's decision that the service mark motion was out of order; Ellen Pack reminds him that her appeal is still on the floor and takes precendence and Joe withdraws his motion. Ginger Hayes later has to remind Tim how to properly handle an appeal. Tim finally calls a vote on the appeal on 21 September.

21 September: Tim Stowell calls a vote on a topic that is not on the floor: "whether or not we are going to use Parliamentary procedure as the Bylaws state OR only when convenient to those with the most votes." A number of Board members refuse to vote on this item; one of them notes that Tim himself is most guilty of using parliamentary procedure [or what passes for it] to "club others into submission to [his] wishes". He also calls the vote on Ginger's appeal from 14 September; Ellen Pack immediately raises a point of order, which Tim declares "moot".

24 September: Overruled Tim's overruling of Ellen's motion is successfully appealed and the floor is opened for discussion of her motion. The item concerning parliamentary procedure is defeated for lack of interest.

25 September: More Words=Better Teri Pettit posts an extensive amendment to Ellen's motion; it is seconded and the group begins discussing that version of the motion.

28 September: Its About Damn Time 20 months after they were first requested to do so, Root$web finally agrees to change the registration on the usgenweb.org and usgenweb.net domains; unfortunately, all they changed is the contact information. As of August 2001, the registrant for the usgenweb.org domain is still listed as the "RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative." When asked about this, Tim Stowell claims it is a "clerical error."

2 October: The Trademark Committee submits a very brief "preliminary report".

3 October: Quid Pro Quo Tim appoints Roger Swafford, recent chair of the Election Committee, to the Board Secretary position. The outcry, both from the Board and from the Project at large, is immediate. Roger, however, leaps right into the fray; his first post to Board-L is to justify his own appointment.

3 October: Joe Zsedeny moves to form a grievance committee to address the backlog of grievances; this motion fails on 16 November.

6 October: Better Luck Next Time The amendment to the service mark motion passes; on 9 October the amended motion itself fails to pass. Tim withdraws his nomination of Roger Swafford and submits his name as a nominee for the Board Secretary position. Tim also fires Kevin Fraley as ombudsman, noting that he failed to perform the duties of the office; he also eliminates the ombudsman position entirely.

6 October: Ken Short moves that the NC apply for a service mark for "The USGenWeb Project" ASAP. Richard Harrison moves that the Board instruct the NC to immediately prepare an application for a service mark; there are currently three motions active on the floor regarding applying for a service mark. The Board discusses the pros and cons of each version for several days.

9 October: Speaks for Itself Tim Stowell calls Abraham Lincoln a "bozo".

15 October: A motion to amend Motion 00-25 to allow the NC to appoint Board Secretaries fails.

15 October: Not Finished Yet Yet another motion attempting to thwart Linda Lewis' service mark application is proposed, this time in the form of a resolution that the Advisory Board write and send a letter protesting her application to the United States Patent Office. This motion is misnumbered twice and eventually resurfaces in mid-November. It is defeated on 21 November.

15 October: Had Enough A member of the Trademark Committee resigns very publicly, noting that the committee was little more than a rubber stamp for a decision that was already made by the NC. Board members start publicly asking for a report from the TC; a few refuse to vote on the trademark motions until they receive one. Linda Lewis notifies the Board that she will refuse to withdraw her service mark application.

19 October: Ken Short posts a very brief report from the Trademark Committee.

21 October: Up To Their Old Tricks The Board receives another extensive and well-documented grievance involving misappropriated files in the Archives. Although at least one Board member publicly notes that the files in question were clearly duplicates of ones transcribed by the plaintiffs, as far as is known the grievance was never resolved.

22 October: One Down, Two to Go The first of the service mark motions fails.

28 October: A motion granting the Election Study Committee additional time to file its report passes.

31 October: The Election Study Committee releases its report. A motion to accept the report in its entirety is made. This motion is hotly contested. Some members don't like the part about allowing all USGW members to vote instead of limiting the number of CCs/SCs per state/county who can vote; others don't understand the purpose of the "minority" sections of the report. The motion eventually passes on 15 November.

3 November: The amendment to the Grievance Committee motion fails. The second service mark motion fails.

4 November: One More Time Ken Short moves again that the service mark "USGenWeb" be applied for. This motion is not given a number for over a month.

7 November: The motion to appoint Roger Swafford to the Board Secretary position fails.

16 November: After a vote that lasted over a week, the Grievance Committee motion is defeated. The Election Study Committee report is accepted and the DEGenWeb SC is removed.

21 November: The motion to send a letter to USPTO protesting Linda Lewis' service mark application is defeated.

11 December: Call to Serve A call for volunteers for the new Standing Election Committee goes out.

14 December: At Long Last The motion to apply for a service mark passes.

14 December: It is discovered that GenTech is advertising the "first-ever RootsWeb and USGenWeb nationwide group meetings" at their 2001 national conference. It is shortly revealed that the Board was unaware of this meeting, but that Board member Betsy Mills had offered to coordinate USGenWeb participation when GenTech made the offer of space. According to GenTech Conference Chair Leslie Collier, Tim Stowell had not bothered to respond to mail from GenTech on the topic. The meeting was not originally intended to be a "USGenWeb" meeting, but a TXGenWeb meeting. Holly Timm steps in and offers to coordinate a "meet and greet" style meeting for USGenWeb members.

24 December: A Sterling Example Tim Stowell posts a humorous essay to several lists without permission and without correct attribution. When the author writes to him about it, he ignores her for three weeks until questioned by some Board members, then posts an explanation that neither credits her nor apologizes. He then insults her by calling her "M$. Brown" and implying she had no copyright to her own work.

9 January: Linda Haas Davenport is appointed to Chair the Election Committee.

14 January: Tim forms a small committee consisting of himself, Holly Timm, Joe Zsedeny and John Schunk to finalize the details of the service mark application.

15 Jaunuary: Another Year Older The second anniversary of the banning of the Root$web Four comes and goes.

18 January: Esther [Esse] Fry becomes the new Board Secretary.

23 January: A grievance is filed against Board member Holly Timm by five NYGenWeb county coordinators who were summarily fired from their positions and their counties adopted out. Holly invites at least of the CCs back, provided they house their pages on any other server but the US GenExchange. The brief discussion that ensues on this topic indicates 1) that some Board members think that grievances against Board members are not appropriate; and 2) some Board members are hatching up a "mediation" procedure. The Board finds in Holly's favor on 7 February.

24 January: Board Secretary Esse Frye begins publishing a daily summary of the Board's activity. In short order, this attempt joins the others on the heap of failed Board reports.

26 January: Rich Howland and Ellen Pack reveal their mediation proposal. Although so seriously flawed that even its makers won't use it, the proposal is eventually accepted with few serious modifications.

26 January: Slipsliding Away The Archives loses another Census Project. Linda Lewis announces that the former Archives Census Project has gone independent and left the Archives. At the time, she stated that the Archives had no plans to implement another one; by August 2001 she was already talking about Census III.

29 January: The full Election Committee slate is approved by the Board.

1 February: Night of the Living Dead The Board begins to discuss resurrecting the Grievance Committee motion that failed back in November.

7 February: Board member Richard Howland resigns.

9 February: It is reported in the Daily Board Show that Rich Howland and Ellen Pack are "test driving" their mediation proposal; the report is based on independent sources provided to the DBS that indicated that the process was not going entirely smoothly [see below; this story gets interesting]

9 February: Esse Frye resigns as Board Secretary

12 February: Coming and Going Rich Howland withdraws his resignation.

16 February: Me Too! The USGenWeb Census Project applies for its own service mark, beating out USGenWeb's application.

20 February: I Got Your Free Press Right Here Board member Rich Howland files a grievance against the author of the Daily Board Show [me] for publishing "libelous statements" and "outright lies" regarding the "test run" of the mediation proposal. He asks that the author be found "not in good standing". He refuses to allow publication of the grievance, claiming that would "invalidate" it.

27 February: All In The Family Board member Ellen Pack also files a grievance against the author of the DBS; in addition to requesting that she be found "not in good standing" Ellen threatens to have her delinked and kicked out of the project if the grievance is publicized. She makes good on the threat following publication of the grievance on a CC mailing list. She also files a grievance against a person she believes to have been the source of the leak regarding the failed mediation. The author of the DBS requests that the mediation process be used to handle both Ellen's and Rich's grievances; this request is immediately rejected by Ellen.

28 February: Tit For Tat The other CC named in Ellen's grievance in turn files a grievance against her seeking an apology for falsely accusing her of involvement in this issue. As of this date, nothing further has been heard about these grievances.

28 February: The Mediation proposal motion passes. Two weeks later, and two weeks late, nominations for panel members are opened.

28 February: Following recommendations by a couple of Board members, Tim Stowell begins posting daily updates of Board activity. These soon also fall by the wayside.

22 March: The full slate of mediators is announced: Joy Fisher, Joe Zsedeny, Richard Harrison, Shari Handley, and Ellen Pack. As of August 2001, they had not mediated a single grievance.

24 March: Back and Forth Richard Howland again resigns from his Board seat.

25 March: River of Protest Ellen Pack announces that she is resigning her Board seat and leaving USGenWeb altogether [she did not follow through on the last part; as of this writing, she is SC for the MSGenWeb]; Ginger Hayes also resigns from the Board. Ellen's resignation leaves the mediator panel one member short; the Board never can agree how to replace her so the position goes unfilled.

28 March: Too Little, Too Late? The applications for the Project's service marks are in the mail.

30 March: Tim Stowell solicits nominees for the empty Census Project seat from members of the former Archives Census Project, without the Board's knowledge. The ACP sends as its nominee the name of Kay L. Mason, who was involved in the infamous Baltimore census files issue. The Board protests and the seat is never filled.

6 April: You Scratch My Back Tim nominates Sundee Maynez, a member of the [former] Archives Census Project, to replace Esse Frye as Board Secretary.

16 April: Righting Wrongs The Board begins to toy with the idea of relinking the Census Project and welcoming it back into the Project. The first of several motions to reinstate the CP is proposed by Joe Zsedeny; it is immediately protested by Maggie Stewart [who coordinates the former ACP]. It is quickly pointed out that as far as USGenWeb is concerned, Maggie's project does not exist either. It was never formally approved as a Special Project by the Board as required by the bylaws and has no standing as one. It has no more rights to the seat than the Census Project. Maggie [who apparently does not use IRC for personal reasons] accuses the Board of planning this action in a secret chat session. In short order, Tim Stowell declares Joe's motion out of order.

17 April: Richard Harrison moves to amend the bylaws to combine the Census Project and the Tombstone seats into one "Special Projects" seat; he withdraws the motion almost immediately. The Board discusses the Special Projects representative issue for a few days but nothing is resolved.

20 April: Census III Anyone? Joe Zsedeny moves that the Board establish a new official Census Project and to declare Executive Order 2000-E-1 and Motion 00-10 "null and void." Maggie Stewart immediately states this motion is out of order. On April 30, Tim Stowell declares this motion out of order, claiming that Executive Orders can only be overturned by another Executive Order.

26 April: Hold Your Horses Tim Stowell announces that George Waller has been selected by the Board to fill one of the vacant seats. Although Tim called for a public vote, no Board members had voted publicly.

29 April: Tim Stowell announces that the Board has selected Dick Marston to another of the vacant Board seats. Again, there is no public vote.

30 April: Joe Zsedeny appeals Tim's ruling that his Census Project motion is out of order. The Board discusses for several days such items as Presidential powers, the Constitution, whether the NC directs the Board or the Board directs the NC, Roberts Rules of Order, etc. Tim eventually withdraws his ruling and substitutes it with another one declaring the motion to be out of order because one part of it conflicts with another.

30 April: Tim Stowell announces that John Smallwood has been selected by the Board to fill the third vacant project seat. Once again, there is no public vote. A formal request by this author is made that the Board votes be made public, per the bylaws. The few members that do bother respond indicate that the project membership has no right to see the votes; some engage in wholesale re-interpretation of the bylaws. NO Board member would ever answer the question of whether or not the Board members actually conducted secret votes of the nominees.

1 May: Clueless Tim Stowell publicly accuses SK Publications, which has provided free census books to transcribers and copies of census scans to the Archives for years, of sending spam to CCs. In a couple of days, he posts an apology for this inexplicable action.

1 May: Betsy Mill moves to appoint George Waller, Dick Marston, and John Smallwood to the vacant Board seats. This motion is later amended and split into three separate motions. Although not yet officially Board members, all three are subbed without the Board's knowledge to the Board mail lists. One of them has to be told twice that he is not yet eligible to vote on the motions before the Board, one of which is the motion to appoint him to the Board.

3 May: Tim loses the vote on the appeal of Joe's Census Project motion and his decision that the motion is out of order is overturned. The motion is discussed by the Board and a motion to table it is defeated. The motion is tabled on 2 June at Joe's request and after much discussion on the merits of the motion, the bylaws, and the ability of the Board to force anything on either of the two census projects.

7 May: Dick Marston, George Waller and John Smallwood are formally appointed to the Board.

8 May: Less than 24 hours after being seated, John Smallwood and Dick Marston resign their new Board seats.

15 May: A plea from a project member to lift Root$web's bans makes its way to the Board list. This sets in motion a series of events that have unexpected results [see below]

18 May: Diane Parsons and Lorraine [Sunny] Newsome are appointed to fill the two recently vacated Board seats.

20 May: Good Times Gone By Jeff Murphy, founder of the USGenWeb Project, passes away from complications of liver disease.

21 May: Maggie Stewart moves that the Board establish a Bylaws committee; she names herself as Chair and provides the names of several committee members [this author's among them]. She apparently authored the motion without input from any other Board members and several Board members protest. The motion is not seconded and Maggie withdraws it on 23 May.

22 May: Teri Pettit moves that the Board petition Root$web to have the bans of some USGenWeb members lifted. During the course of discussion of this motion, before it is postponed on 4 June, it is revealed that Root$web did not lift the bans on the Root$web Four because it was waiting instruction from the Board on the issue. A number of Board members indicate that they will not support reinstatement of the members unless they behave more to their liking. A few others state repeatedly that the bans had already been lifted, although at the time none of the banned could post to any Root$web list and it was confirmed by a Root$web employee that all of them remained on the reject list. A few Board members persist in recommending that the banned write to Root$web employees asking to be reinstated, even though it has been repeatedly pointed out to them that the banned could not write to _any_ rootsweb.com address.

31 May: Joy Fisher moves to rescind Motion 00-10, the motion that severed the Census Project from USGenWeb, and to keep the CP representative seat empty until the census projects can agree on how to fill it.

2 June: Belated Recognition Jeff Murphy is finally recognized as "one of the people responsible" for the founding of USGenWeb on an official USGenWeb page.

2 June: Nominations for the 2001 USGenWeb Project election open, a day late. The Election Committee also submits its first report to the Board.

3 June: Joy Fisher moves to postpone the motion to intercede on behalf the banned members; despite several points of order and the NC's confusion over what type of motion it is, the motion is "tabled" on 4 June. The Board once again effectively washes its collective hands of the issue.

4 June: Oh Frabjous Day!: Following the intercession of Jake Gehring, current Executive Producer of Root$web, the bans are lifted after 871 days; this author makes her first post on the USGENWEB-ALL list in 2 1/2 years.

5 June: Maggie Stewart suggests a motion that the USGenWeb webmaster link to both the Census Projects on the USGenWeb home page.

6 June: Richard Harrison moves that Executive Order 2000-E-1 be rescinded; Joy Fisher amends this motion to add a directive that the USGenWeb link to both Census Projects "without prejudice". After much pointless arguing in defense of the EO by Tim Stowell, the motion is passed on 18 June.

6 June:Richard makes a motion requiring the webmaster to redesign the webpages referring to the Census Projects; this motion is very similar to Maggie's "suggestion" of 5 June; on 11 June Tim Stowell informs Richard that this motion is "dead".

10 June: Mole in the Hole Sundee Maynez is appointed to the Board Secretary position.

11 June: The Board is briefly diverted by a discussion on whether or not the failed bylaws amendments from last year's election should be automatically returned to the ballot this year.

15 June: Sundee Maynez begins publishing brief updates of Board activity.

18 June: At Long Last Despite the best efforts of the National Commander to thwart it, the motion to rescind the EO is passed. In a couple of days, prominent links to both Census Projects are placed on the USGenWeb home page

20 June: Oh Frabjous Day, part deux Tim Stowell announces that he will not be seeking re-election to a third term as NC. He has chosen instead to run in a race with no other candidates; he will thus be returning to the Board as a voting member in the 2001-2002 term. It is later revealed that he did not resign from his ex-officio position on the Election Committee until nearly the last possible minute and thus likely knew he would be unopposed.

22 June: Following the disastrous merging of the GenConnect message boards with those of Ancestry, Richard Harrison moves that the Board create a committee to pursue updating QueryExpress for the use of USGenWeb CCs. This jumpstarts a general discussion on the merits of the new boards, the necessity of queries in general, "shell" counties, new guidelines, and whether they should explore options other than QE. Tim Stowell calls for a vote before discussion is completed, and rather than see the motion defeated, Richard withdraws it on 29 June. The Board conducts no other public business until after the runoff election is completed in mid-August.

1 July: Democracy in Action The 2001 USGenWeb Election opens. This election season is marred by fewer of the concerns that crippled confidence in previous elections. In perhaps the biggest departure from tradition, the EC was able to enlist the assistance of Larry Stephens thus removing the spectre of any involvement by Root$web or other "interested" parties. In another departure from precedent, the EC announces that members may only vote one time; this causes next to no concern in the project at large. Despite a concerted effort by Tim Stowell and Maggie Stewart to derail the election, it proceeds rather smoothly, and the EC remains engaged and communicative throughout. Minor glitches included the closing of the polls three hours early due to a misunderstanding regarding time zones; this is known to have affected only two people. However, before the end of the election, a number of more serious issues are discovered [see below].

1 July: SW/SC CC representative Ken Short resigns following the death of his daughter. His resignation was never made public, and at the end of July the Board privately decides to hold the seat for him until after the beginning of the new term in September.

3 July: A Matter of Some Urgency On Board-Exec, it is noted that the usgenweb.com domain, registered to Dale "Doc" Schneider, expires on July 11. Board members ask Tim to find out what Doc intends to do with it, but by this time Doc had already renewed it. They also ask Tim why the usgenweb.org domain still shows the RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative as the registrant. Tim does not apparently respond to this question.

Mid July Tim Stowell begins a smear campaign against NC candidates Holly Timm and Phyllis Rippee on the USGENWEB-ALL mailing list. After he posts his picks for the various races, two candidates publicly distance themselves from him.

28 July: Mistaken Identity The Election Committee notifies the Board that they suspect that candidate Gerri Newton is really Kelly Courtney Blizzard running under a false name. The genesis of this concern comes from Board member Maggie Stewart, who used to work with Kelly and who recalls that Kelly used Gerri's name [Gerri is her aunt] as a front for several Archives Census Project state projects. Although Tim Stowell knew of this allegation and publicly alluded it to it more than once, he did not contact the EC about it, nor did he inform the Board [a lapse for which he is chastised by more than one Board member]. The EC instead was required to contact him. When the EC contacted both Gerri and Kelly for confirmation, Kelly responded with a long accusatory message, the gist of which was that Maggie herself had engaged in and continued to engage in the manufacturing of fake state census coordinators for the ACP. According to Kelly, at least two and possibly more people on the current SCC list for Maggie's census project do not exist, but are people created by her and Maggie and given fake email addresses using Maggie's AOL account. A number of names suspected of being bogus SCCs are fowarded to the EC; at least two of these "people" received a ballot in the recent election, although according to the EC they did not vote. Kelly alleges that the fake people were created in order to make the project look like it was doing better than it was and to prevent infiltration by members of the rival Census Project. It is eventually also revealed that Census Project liaison Janyce King is a "figment" of Maggie's imagination and that Maggie did approve the "reformatting" of Pauline Leitner's census files as well as the harvesting of census information from private web pages. Maggie declines to respond publicly to any of the allegations "on the advice of legal counsel", although Tim Stowell expends considerable ink both on the -ALL list and BOARD-EXEC defending and/or minimizing her actions. Privately, however, Maggie states that "All my USGenWeb Counties/Sites are as Maggie Stewart (my legal name) or Maggie Stewart-Zimmerman." [of course, this does not address her Census Project sites]. The allegation that Kelly is running for office under Gerri's name is disproven and Gerri remains a candidate. Maggie is later decisively defeated by Kathy Heidel in the run-off election.

3 August: The runoff election opens. Tim Stowell again initiates a smear campaign against Holly Timm.

9 August: Something in the Water Board Secretary [and member of Maggie's Census Project] Sundee Maynez admits that she voted twice in the recently completed election. Upon investigation, the Election Committee found that she had been issued passwords to two separate email addresses, failed to notify the the EC of this, and proceeded to cast votes using both passwords. However, she did not vote twice for any candidate.

10 August: Some Are More Equal Than Others After numerous questions were asked regarding why the members of the USGenWeb Census Project were not allowed to vote, but members of Maggie's Census Project were, it is revealed that the Board voted in secret to deny a Census Project member the opportunity to run for office. When this decision was forwarded by Tim Stowell to the Election Committee, he appended a statement of his own noting that members of "Ron Eason's group" are not project members and are not eligible to vote. He copied this message to BOARD-EXEC although he later told the EC that it went only to them. The Chair of the EC shortly requested that the Board allow them to remove Tim from the committee mailing list.

14 August: Results of the runoff election are announced. The results are surprising in that so many incumbents were defeated and so many new faces will be seated come September 1. This author is elected Representative-At-Large; other new faces include Jana Black, Nate Zipfel, Vicki Shaffer, Robert Bremer, Ron Eason and Mary Ann Hetrick. Holly Timm will be returning to the Board as National Coordinator.

15 August: Following an IRC chat in which she was allegedly disparaged for voting twice, Sundee Maynez resigns as Board Secretary but later rescinds her resignation. Tim Stowell asks if the Board intends to certify the election, but the Board briefly discusses it and seems willing to let the Election Committee handle it.

16 August: Taking His Ball and Going Home Although never announced publicly, Tim Stowell breaks his own established precedent and refuses to subscribe incoming Board members to both Board mailing lists. Although he had recently defended this practice as something to allow new members "to learn the ropes", he is reportedly reluctant to subscribe this author and Ron Eason, both of whom he thinks will violate his gag rules on BOARD-EXEC.

24 August: Dead Duck In an apparent 11th-hour attempt to influence the incoming Board, Maggie Stewart moves to appoint a replacement for Ken Short's vacant seat. As the Board never publicly acknowledged his resignation or voted to accept it, this is the first time many project members hear that he has resigned. Maggie's motion is never seconded, and although Tim appears later to explain that a lame-duck appointment is somehow mandated by the bylaws, the Board appears uninterested in pursuing the matter. The new term begins without any action being taken on the motion.

24 August: Backstabbed In an announcement that rocks the Project, Bridgett Schneider announces to the Board that she and her husband Dale will be selling the usgenweb.com domain. They are offering it to the USGenWeb Project for $2500; if the Board chooses not to buy it, they will auction it to the highest bidder. Bridgett goes so far as to suggest that the steep asking price is a "pay back" for the "bull" Doc put up with over the years. Given that the Project has been told for years that the domain was safe with Dale more or less in perpetuity, this comes as a huge shock to the membership. [Equally shocking is that Linda Lewis does not go absolutely ballistic over this undeniable attempt by the Schneiders to profit off the Project; she remains uncharastically subdued throughout the discussion.] Joe Zsedeny immediately moves to cease all use of the usgenweb.com domain and to write a letter of explanation to the project. This motion is later toned down a bit by Holly Timm, who amends it to "suggest" that members use usgenweb.org instead; it passes on 30 August; actually writing and distributing the letter is left to the new Board. Joy Fisher begins a pledge drive to see if the Project can raise sufficient funds to even consider purchasing the domain.

1 September 2001: Its The End of the World As We Know It, And I Feel Fine The keys are handed over to Holly Timm, apparently without incident and the new Board is seated.

TO BE CONTINUED....

© 2001 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved.