Because I have talked about alternate venues does not mean that I would discontinue anything that is at present. I do not have the power or desire to do so. As the number of possibilities has increased the participation in all groups goes down. As I stated earlier, Hort-net is my favorite venue. But realistically there is a need for a members group for all the Iris sections. But again when they all do this independently it dissipates the participation in any one group. I do not even know how many list-serves I am on anymore, but most are not that active.

As president of the Aril Society International I have currently an unresolved problem with the arilrobin, a yahoo group. No one may join because both administrators died. Yahoo has been terrible at trying to let us fix this and just getting to speak to someone has been a huge task. Sadly I am told one of my helpers finally got through but when yahoo wanted money to fix the problem they refused on principal. I would have gladly paid out of my own pocket but now we are still at square one.

Sometimes it seems impossible to accomplish anything. Whenever people gather together there will be disagreements. In the spirit of democracy we are supposed to be able to tolerate that. I not sure we ever get that thick skinned, but we just have to accept that with different points of view we may still all be working toward what we perceive as the common good and should not personalize our arguments.