Good morning Lynne and cousins, Lynne, you bring up some interesting questions. I'll answer them inside your message. Please scroll down ... Lynne K Ranieri wrote: > > Hello Colleen, > Since you requested it...a couple of quick thoughts about your "Plans and > Proposals" e-mail. > The first thing that came to mind was that I was not clear about several > items. Perhaps a little clarification of terms will make a decision easier for > "the family". For instance: > > -I have visited sites that are part of a Web ring, so I have a vague idea what > they are, but perhaps an explanation of exactly what it entails would help > everyone. Webrings are groups of sites that all have a common interest. In our case, a Bower[s]/Bau[e]r webring would be all those sites that have Bower[s]/Bau[e]r, etc. data on them. However, belonging to a webring is a voluntary thing. The Webmaster must JOIN the webring, as opposed to our linking to his/her site. People surfing the webring can then hit a link inside the ring and move from one Bower[s]/Bau[e]r, etc. site to the next simply by clicking our webring's link. > -Re the awards program, for whom did you intend the awards? For only those > members of the Bower Web ring? No, the awards would be for any person having a Web site that visits us and applies for one of our awards. Many people use awards as a way of publicizing their sites. However, my idea would not involve giving an award to just any site as a way of promoting us; our awards would have to be earned ~ meaning that a sloppy site (including sites obviously still under construction, those with broken graphics, etc.) will not be showing our award. If an award comes from us, it should mean something. > -I am sorry for not remembering the meaning of what is obviously a familiar > term to everyone but me, but what is "the Continuum?" The Continuum is the formal name for our State/Country Project. This activity is designed to help all our Bower[s]/ Bau[e]r, etc. cousins find sources and resouces on the Web under one common roof. Are you familiar with the US GENWEB project? The Continuum parallels it by using our surname spellings and their variants. We currently have one country and eight states represented ~~ Australia, California, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. We'd like you to join us, build an online Continuum site, and aid in our efforts to get all those Bower[s]/Bau[e]r sites that are already online linked from one centralized site rather than having to use a generalized search engine like HotBot or InfoSeek to search them out. If you'd be interested in hosting a Continuum site, please contact me at <ladyaudris@earthlink.net>. > -What kind of "help with those special requirements" for the Native American > project is required? Upwards of 15% of genealogists say that Native American research is the most diffult ~ harder than slave research. Though the material is available through Federal and State Archives, most researchers don't know about it or don't know how to use it. Native Americans have research sources available to them that those of us who descend from European ancestors don't use. Two examples are the Henderson Rolls ~ a census of 1,959 persons of the Cherokee Nation in North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia in 1835; the Mullay roll of 1848 was the first census of the Eastern Band of Cherokee after their removal west. With this message came one from Shirley who asked: > Native American??? > Do we have any American Indian Bowers subscribers? To your question Shirley, I have to honestly say, "I don't know if any of the cousins in the family are N.A." I DO know we have N.A. cousins though because in the last three years I've received about 14 messages from people telling me about their N.A. connections and asking me if we had material to help them. We don't have that material, and we should. > -A logo is a wonderful idea. Perhaps there could be some sort of contest > among our artistically-inclined cousins? We could do a contest and that would be fine; what do we offer as a prize? :) The logo should be for <http://bowercommunity.com> as opposed to the Homestead or Cottage, since both sites are inside our domain. Also, the logo should (if it's possible) depict in some way, the fact that we are Bower[s]/Bau[e]r, etc. cousins ... not just Bower. What say you artists to Lynne's suggestion? ..... > What is a "compass page"? The first page that you land on in a site (that tells you where to go, I presume)? You're absolutely right. Our compass page is at <http://bowercommunity.com> and will be redesigned sometime this year. > -Re our own store...a cute idea. Remind me, please, of what the annual domain > fees are. The current fees are $35 annually. > -Re the chat room, as you know, I don't chat -- and am not particularly > interested in chat. It seems that your low numbers may indicate that it may be > tough for others to get to the chat room, too, with any regularity. It might be > worth one more effort to see if numbers can be increased, then evaluated. A good point here, Lynne. To use the family's Retreat you must be a member. Membership is obtained by sending an email to Vicky Bowers-Gielau <vichary@home.com>, our Retreat Coordinator. The Retreat isn't just for chatting, though a private chat amongst ourselves was one reason for starting our "hideaway." The Retreat is also the place where we can put current-day pictures of ourselves and our families online without having the entire Web seeing them. However, due to a breech in sites' security, the Retreat was moved from myfamily.com to intranets. If you have futher questions, please address them to Vicky as she is more informed than I on all this. > -Is there some way to actually vote on these issues? Yes. We can do this through the chat forum or you can send your votes directly to me. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ These are some well-thought questions ... obviously ones I had neglected to address. If anyone has questions, issues or ideas, please don't hesitate to bring them before the family. After all, we're all in this together. What benefits me most certainly benefits you, which in turn benefits our newest cousins, which ... I hope you're all having a WONDERFUL Wednesday! :) Colleen