Priorities

["Cynthia Eyler" <eyler@mindspring.com>]

> The current staff of AERC is responsible for the high quality of the
magazine
> as it is today.  They are the ones who brought it up from a mediocre
magazine
> to an educational, as well as visually stunning one.  And they have saved
> vast amounts of money doing it.  It WAS as one time published by
professional
> publishers, and it was costing a great deal more than it does today.
Also,
> I'm not sure why it is the EN that is taking the most of the flak for the
> costs of running the office.  There are a great many other aspects that
are
> costly......phone bill, postage (big cost), even office rent.
> I think it's time to stop beating the horse and come up with some positive
> input.

Ah, but can we afford all the costs of a "visually stunning" internal news
organ?

Here's my positive input:  let's keep first things first.

We need to continue AERC's recovery from near-bankruptcy, and we need to
communicate useful information to the membership.  Beautiful photos (costly
to print) on beautiful, heavy paper (costly in itself and *very* costly to
mail) are wonderful, but they're not essential.  What's essential is
information and education.

Endurance is growing rapidly, but when you're growing from miniscule, the
percentage of increase is misleading.  Endurance is a fringe equestrian
sport, and if we think that EN could be sold on newsstands any time in the
foreseeable future, we're deluding ourselves.

Cindy Eyler