) ( ) Good Morning Family! .-.,--^--. ( Come on in. . . \\|`----'| - The coffee pot's on. . . \| |// ...and we even have decaf, | |/ tea, and hot chocolate! \ / ------ Happy Easter everyone! Today's, and all future Coffees, will be going to three research groups - the BOWER-L, BAUER-L and BOWERS-L. Today's Coffee may seem like it's bouncing around and more wordy than normal. For that I apologize in advance, but I need to direct everything to the right group. Next week's Coffee will resume its normal length and format. Today's topics include: 1. Welcome to new cousins 2. Homestead moved! **PLEASE BE SURE TO READ** 3. Addition of two lists 4. Roll Call **STARTS TODAY** 5. Sunday Afternoon Tea - **ONE TIME ONLY** 6. Cousin News If you've been with the family [the BOWER-L list] for at least three weeks, you'll probably want to skip the following paragraph… TO OUR NEWEST COUSINS ~~ On behalf of the entire family, I'd like to extend a most hearty welcome to those cousins who came into the family fold this past week. We are very glad to have you with us and hope you'll stay and remain a part of our online family. As soon as you're comfortable with us and the list, please send in your Bower[s]/Bauer/Baur lines so we can all see how we're related to you. We do not have a fancy format for sending in records or queries to the list. Post as many as you wish! If the data has anything to do with Bower[s]/Bauer/Baur lines or any of the variant spellings that might help someone, please feel free to post it. Every scrap of information is appreciated. If you haven't visited the homesite of this list yet, you are encouraged to do so. The Bower Family Homestead [a.k.a., the Homestead] is our homesite and the gathering place for much of our information. It waits to join us all in welcoming you into the family at <http://www.crosswinds.net/~bowerhomestead>. HOMESTEAD MOVED! It's done.....finally done! Consider us moved into our new home! :) To you new cousins, this won't mean a whole lot and may be repetitious from the last paragraph. However, those cousins who have been with the family for several months or years do not read the welcome paragraph, hence the explanation here. Our home at GeoCities is now closed down. If you forget and use your old bookmarks, you'll see the forwarding page with a link near the bottom to take you to our home at Crosswinds. To write it down now, the URL is <http://www.crosswinds.net/~bowerhomestead>. Please do not use the shortcut right now as I haven't updated it yet to take you to Crosswinds. FOR OUR NEWEST COUSINS: We moved our home because of GeoCities carrying out Terms of Service sweeps without any warning. They closed down hundreds of sites without notice to the webmasters and many, many people no longer had access to their material. The family took a vote and decided we should get out of GeoCities as soon as possible to prevent the loss of our own data. I'll explain all this family and voting business at the Tea this afternoon - more on the Tea further into the Coffee. ADDITION OF TWO LISTS This paragraph is primarily to the cousins on the BOWER-L, though it affects everyone on the BOWERS-L and BAUER-L, too. We did not merge as I'd told you we would. The RootsWeb administrators could not agree on their merging policy and I/we were being bounced back and forth. I could not see us all being part of a tug-of-war so halted the merge. I sent messages to both the BAUER-L and BOWERS-L earlier this week notifying everyone of the halt, letting everyone know they were still on their original lists providing they hadn't unsubbed. So, we do not have the 140+ increase in cousins on the BOWER-L that I told you to expect by the end of this week. Instead, we are one family in three groups. I equate our situation to a parent with two children, both of whom have grown and moved out. They are still a family, just not in the same house; and they still communicate with each other as a family. Because of its size and its nature of the variant spellings, the BOWER-L is the parent group. To make sure we have free-flowing information across the family, all messages on the BOWER-L that deal with BOWERS and BAUER will be cross-posted to its respective group. Likewise, all messages will be forwarded to the BOWER-L. If someone can think of a better way to get the information to the entire family, please let me know; I'm certainly open to ideas. [There are no listowner settings at RootsWeb to accomplish an automatic cross-posting.] We CAN make this work, cousins. All we have to do is keep working together. I'll give you ALL the best coordinating efforts I can to keep the information flowing, I promise you that. We are a family of almost 500 now, so things make take a little longer than they already to do get accomplished, but like I said, I'll do my very best for you. ROLL CALL This is going to be my first heavy-duty cross-posting, but yes - we are still going to have a roll call, beginning today. We need to find out what everyone knows about their lines across the three groups and this is the only way we're going to be able to do it. TO THE NEW BOWER-L COUSINS, THE BAUER-L and BOWERS-L COUSINS -- A roll call means that everyone in the family should now post their Bower[s]/Bauer families to the list so everyone else can see them. There is no format you have to follow. Just please, do not type your messages in all capital letters as they are very hard to read. Also, please remember to put in dates and cities/towns/counties with their states or countries [if not U.S.]. Not all of us know where [for example] Oscoda County is <VBG>. To those cousins who are new to discussion lists, the traffic will get very heavy for a few days during the roll call, then will slow back down to normal. Please stay with us! The few days of extra traffic will NOT last and YOU WILL SURVIVE THIS!! :) Besides, this is your chance to find out if you have direct line family already with us. Start your subject line with ROLL CALL: then add your family or person[s] you're looking for. By the time you read this I will already have my roll call message out on every list simply so you can see how it's done. To those of you who have been with the BOWER-L since the beginning, please post too. With so many new eyes to view your data, this is one time you _really_ don't want to skip. Our last roll call brought four bingos. Will you get one this time? I hope so. [I will extract this portion of the Coffee and paste it to a separate message to make sure those people who don't read the Coffee get this piece of news.] SUNDAY AFTERNOON TEA These paragraphs will be for all the new BOWER-L cousins and those cousins on the BAUER-L and BOWERS-L. I don't normally have a Sunday Afternoon Tea. I'll hold one today simply because those of you on the BOWERS-L and BAUER-L did not get welcome messages from me. This afternoon's Tea will let you know who I am and how I operate the lists. You'll get the guidelines, find out what projects we are working on, and learn about our two big, annual events. In other words, although it will be rather long [there may have to be two parts], you won't want to skip over the Tea when it comes out. :) The heading of the Tea will be much like you see for the Coffee so you won't miss it. COUSIN NEWS Gloria Motter [[email protected]]is home recovering after surgery and some very unpleasant news - she was diagnosed with breast cancer. On the good side though, the doctor has told her they caught it early and she should be fine. That I know of at this point, Gloria has not begun her treatments and is still awaiting other test results. I'm sure she would appreciate your prayers and hearing words of support from all of you. Family....it's what we're all about. I really enjoyed this time with you. It was so nice. I hope your upcoming week is filled with health, productivity, fun, and above all, filled with love. ) ( ) _.-~~-. (@\'--'/. Colleen ('``.__.'`) `..____.'