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An important announcement regarding COVID-19

The President's Corner

We owe a great debt of thanks to our outgoing president, Wayne Hale, for his excellent leadership of our club this past year. Wayne led us in adapting to the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since Wayne will be on the PHOC Board as immediate past president, we will continue to benefit from his wisdom.

Donna Peterson (vice-president), Susan Slocum (secretary), Lora Crowley (treasurer), and I will endeavor to serve the club well as your new officers. We thank you for your vote of support.

We have a good team of committee chairs in place for this year: Shari Altman for communications and marketing; Bernadette Sheehan for membership records; Clare Strayhorn for editing and publishing the Trailmarker; Mike Bianco for social activities; Marshall Weatherman for managing the PHOC website; David Johnson for the trails committee; and Gale Magann, our historian. In addition, six people have volunteered to coordinate hikes and outings for the Trailmarker: Glenn Davis, Alma Holland, Ken Yates, John Farmer, Nicole Mazgaj, and Gary Johnson. We are fortunate to have so many members willing to help.

It may be counterintuitive, but I believe that there is no better time to be an active member of PHOC. Work and schools are online, indoor meetings are discouraged or prohibited, and many people are missing their usual social activities. In contrast, our club has continued a full program of hikes and outings. Each of us can get outdoors, ditch the sedentary life, and socialize with our fellow club members while observing COVID guidelines. If you have not taken full advantage of the plethora of outings listed in the Trailmarker or the pickup hikes noticed in Google Groups, now would be a good time to start! If you have been staying home, you have been missed--and you are missing a lot.

Communications are the beating heart of PHOC. Our website, the Trailmarker, Google Groups, and ad hoc e-mails among members keep us trucking. Thank goodness for the internet because our once-reliable U.S. Postal Service has not been delivering the printed Trailmarker in a timely manner. Several members reported receiving their November/ December issue of the Trailmarker at the same time as they received their January/February issue. As you probably know, everyone has the option of getting a pdf copy by e-mail in addition to getting a paper copy by snail mail. Eventually the club may move to delivery exclusively by e-mail, but that probably will not happen for several years. In the meantime, the U.S. Postal Service is perversely accelerating the trend to electronic delivery.

Happy trails to you, `til we meet again.

Vance Barron
President