Re: AIS: Symposium/soap box

    Bill, your response to proposal # 9 sounds like you are thinking the list on the Symposium is just somebody's (or some group's) whim.  But please note what the criteria are for being listed on the symposium.  These are given on page one of the symposium ( don't have mine any more because I sent it in before I would forget, so I can't mention what they are) but they are very specific, certainly not just some person's individual tastes being reflected. 
    Also there was a comment to the effect that voters rank their choices.  We don't, of course.  Any ranking is produced by the number of votes obtained by a particular cultivar.  
    I would hate to have to do the counting if there were a completely open, write-in ballot, no matter how many choices each person might be allowed.  It's a big enough thing to do such  for a smaller group like the Siberian Society, but on a national scale that would be rather daunting.  Even for the RVP, who does have other things to do, that would take an awful lot of extra time.
    Finally (for now, at least, just to leave myself a opening to talk on this subject again :-)  )  though many of us like beardless or other types of bearded iris, we should keep in mind the fact that, whether it's one's own preference, the tall bearded are the iris of choice by most iris growers.  The numbers introduced, the amounts seen in gardens, the numbers ordered would, I'm sure, bear that out.  It's probably not as one-sidedly that way as it once was, as things like medians or Siberians become better known, but I'd bet that even in any kind of open poll in which every single  AIS member voted (not just median- or Siberian-lovers stacking the deck by voting en masse while not all others did) the list of 100 top choices would still be mostly, though certainly not all, tall bearded.
    That will probably raise some hackles, but it's not meant to do so, just be reminders that there is, after all, some sense in the Symposium having been constructed the way it is.  I don't mean to say it can't be improved, but let's not be too ready to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Arnold (who is cooking in the heat once again, as summer has returned to the upper midwest)
  
Arnold & Carol Koekkoek
38 7th Street, NE
Sioux Center, IA 51250
e-mail  koekkoek@mtcnet.net


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