(also available as a Word file)

                                                                                                153 North Valley Road

                                                                                                Pelham, MA 01002

                                                                                                2/26/06

Dear Members of Care and Counsel,

This is a report on the operation of the Peace and Social Concerns listserv during the first five months of its operation, from October 9th 2005 when it was authorized, to now.  Here is a tally of the number of listserv messages in these five months:

October: 5

November: 12

December: 9

January: 12

February: 23 (of which 9 however were just brief responses to earlier messages)

This averages a message every 2 and a quarter days, apparently a tolerable rate for most of the 35 subscribers, since nobody has resigned yet.

The subjects which have come up include…

Peace and Social Concerns Committee's summary of its 2005 activities

Katrina: listing of items needed for transport to LA; Sandra and Irene's report on their trip

Friendly Friday events at Mount Toby, put on by the Affinity Group

Our participation in the 100,000 Rings national project, remembering Iraq civilians killed

Mount Toby's film series at Amherst College, on the history of active nonviolence

The Martin Luther King celebration and the participation in it of our Mount Toby Circle

Request and coordination of help in setting up the Eyes Wide Open exhibits

Vigils which Mount Toby people organized or participated in

Iraq concerns, especially the kidnapping of the CPT team there and our response to it

Query from Clerk Nancy about a request from Jessie's House

Where is the missing GI Rights Hotline manual? And a few other queries

The STEP resolution of CVQM, for reading before its presentation at Mount Toby

Concerns about the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor, and P&SC's draft letter about it

Of general interest: NSA spying on Quaker groups, Iraq support of Christian Peacemaker         Teams, National AFSC and FCNL soliciting our opinion, AFSC's Wage Peace        movie, etc.

And a few other miscellaneous meetings and opportunities, Quaker and otherwise

I am satisfied that participants nearly always kept to the advertised guidelines for the listserv.  The fears expressed earlier about things that might go wrong in a listserv have not been realized, and I strongly suggest continuing the listserv as a permanent service to the Mount Toby and Northampton Friends communities.  Operating the listserv takes very little effort and I am happy to continue as its administrator if you wish.  However…

It was decided at the start that for six months the messages would be printed out monthly and posted on the P&SC bulletin board, and afterwards put on file in the library.  Along with the printed posting, there is a sheet asking people reading the messages in print there to indicate that they have done so, so that we can determine how useful that posting is.  So far in these five months, not a single person has indicated that they have looked at any of the printed messages.  Creating this print version of the listserv correspondence is by far the most time-consuming part of administering the listserv, and it appears to be unnecessary.  So, I suggest that we stop printing and posting them after March.

I believe that the original understanding was that after six months of operation, Care and Counsel would evaluate the listserv experiment and determine whether or not to recommend its continuation, to the Meeting.  This letter is to help you in this evaluation.  Of course I am eager to answer any questions that could help you further.

                                                                                                Roger Conant