Dan
Paulsen called the meeting to order. around
7:20 p.m. Dan asked if there was any old business.
Jim
Redina explained that Malinda Welte had been working on our Web page, and that
Brian Dowell and Denny Medley, two of our newer members, had offered to help.
They have some suggestions on the site to share with us, and so they brought a
couple of laptops and have asked us to take a look and give feedback on the
mock-up site they have created. We will all have a chance to take a look later
when we take a break.
The
speaker tonight was George Scheil, and he
is giving a presentation on butterflies. George explained that he and his wife Alice, who was also
present, are members of National Wildlife Federation. They have been to about
25 of the annual summits, have volunteered at Squaw Creek for the last 13 or 14
years, and formed Friends of Squaw Creek last year. It now has 180 members. They
are the only charter Adopt Wild Child parents at the Kansas City Zoo.
George
started his slide presentation with some interesting general slides of
butterflies, some of which included a good view of the proboscis, which is like
a drinking straw but is coiled when the butterfly is not drinking nectar. His
slides included shots of cabbage white, cloudless sulphur, angel wing, tiger
swallowtail, black swallowtail, silver-spotted skipper, painted lady, red
admiral, hackberry, buckeye, and zebra butterflies.
George
said they went to Mexico with Dr. Bob Pyle, who is a renowned lepidopterist. He
was a Rhodes scholar in England. He has set up a sanctuary for monarch
butterflies and is known in England and the U.S. He has spent a lot of time in
New Guinea as well, and has worked to get people to raise butterflies instead of
capturing them in the wild. Dr. Pyle has authored seven or eight books, one of
which is on Big Foot. He lives in Washington State. He has followed butterflies
in their migrations from British Columbia to central Mexico. George explained to
us that all monarchs west of the Rockies go to Monterey in the winter and all
east go to Mexico on their migration.
George
said they went to Mexico to see the monarchs. They went from Houston to Mexico
City, and then to Michoacan. They were there in February. He shared some shots
of this area, where the land have been taken from rich landowners and divided
among the Indians. In the lowlands were banana trees.
El
Rosario is an area open to the public to which the monarchs migrate. It was
incredible to see the hundreds or thousands of monarchs attached to the trees.
George said they attach to branches in such large numbers that the branches hang
straight down. Here they are in a semi-dormant stage.
There
is lots of shade, making it hard to get good pictures.
George
said that poor Mexicans have been cutting
the trees down and feeding cattle on. the land. The number of monarchs that thus rest here is
reduced; there is an effort to reforest the area. Two sites in this area
are restricted to scientific personnel, but one is open to the public.
George painted out that butterflies are a barometer of human life.
The
monarchs make the trip from Canada each fall, and the offspring fly back to
Canada in the spring. In March to April, they leave Mexico and start north.
Their reproductive systems are re-engaged, and they may get as far as Texas
before they mate, lay eggs, and die. The second-generation heads north, lays
eggs, and dies, and this cycle continues. It takes about five generations to
reach Canada. The last generation lives about eight months, as opposed to three
weeks for the other generations, and heads back to Mexico. That generation
hibernates from August to March, and then starts north.
It
is not known how they all reach the same spot in Mexico.
George
then presented a slide show set to music, showing a trip he made to Pacific
Grove and the Monterey Bay area in California, the other migration destination
for the butterflies. His slides showed many butterflies resting on people's
noses. George said the butterflies would stay for four to five hours (unless you
are wearing sunscreen, in which case the butterfly will not stay).
As
he concluded his very interesting presentation, George painted out that people
often think it is neat to release butterflies at weddings. He discourages this,
however, because they are usually not raised for the climate and will die.
New
business was discussed. It was noted that George Lepp would be in town on March
24 and 25 for a photography presentation. The
fee is $75 for one day if you register ahead of time ($85 at the door). If five
or more register together, though, the fee is $50 for one day and $90 for bath
days. Is there any interest in getting at least five people together? Jim said
he would check into going at the reduced rate: if you are interested, talk to
him.
We
now have seven or eight people signed up for the Wolf Park trip. Bad news on the
motel - they are 90 percent booked on that weekend, so they said they wouldn't
give us a discount. [Note: Some of us managed to get a pretty good rate there
anyway.]
We
talked about renting a van for the trip, but that turned out not to be
practical, so Dan said we need about three people to drive.
Crystal Nederman said she could drive, and Dan said he could take a car.
The covered bridges are a couple of hours away from Wolf Park, on the way home.
Some people want to try to take photos of the bridges too.
The
Raytown Community Festival of the Arts is Sunday, April 1, and they are looking
for artists. It is $10 to enter and you can call (816) 356-4902 if you are
interested.
We
then reviewed members' slides. Sheila Rohrer had some from a trip to Thailand.
She showed some of a Buddhist monastery that takes care of Siamese tigers that
people have given up as pets. She was there in December.
She said the Siamese is a little smaller than the Bengal tiger. Dan had
some slides of ice on the trees from last Saturday while he was at Ernie Miller
Nature Park, using a 300mm lens and Kodak 100 ES film. Terry Fretz had some
shots of birds at Smithville and eagles fishing at the Lawrence outlet mall
by the river. Malinda had some slides of a trip to Shreveport, including the
American Rose Center. Downtown Shreveport has many nice murals on the buildings
and she had some shots of that as well.
We
took a break and ate cookies provided by Jim. During this time, members roamed
about looking at pictures brought in by others and checking out the mock-up of
the Web site. Linda Williams
brought prints of butterflies, and Marie Bohndorf and Linda Hanley also had some
pictures to share.
The
final topic for discussion was the Web site. After reviewing the laptop
displays, everyone seemed to agree that the site presented would be great. Brian
and Denny passed out a handout describing benefits and details, and gave a short
presentation on it. The benefits
would include the ability for the club to send mailings of items such as the
newsletter to e-mail addresses, rather than via the U.S. mail, which would cut
costs. We can also link to galleries where we can sell our works.
We
would have our own domain name for the site. We need to come up with one. It
would end in ".org" since we are a nonprofit organization. We talked
about a name - it would be good to have the KC Zoo in the title, but we need to
check with the zoo about doing that first. Something like "kczoophotoclub.org"
was discussed, but the shorter the name, the better. Jim volunteered to check
with the zoo on the use of the name.
The
Web site hosting service, Hosting Matters (www.hostingmatters.com), that Brian
and Denny are proposing to use would give us space for up to about 400 photos in
the 1/2 to 1 megabyte range. We could have our own domain with content controlled
by us. We could also have our own
e-mail addresses via that site at no additional charge.
It
costs $20 a year for the domain name; the hosting site would charge us a yearly
amount as well. The price presented was a 50 discount on normal fees, however.
We
discussed how we will maintain the site on an ongoing basis. Brian and Denny
said they would be willing to help with setting up the galleries and maintaining
the site, if we would upload our own pictures via a scanner, a digital camera,
or a commercial lab. They estimated that they could have the site up and running
within a month of getting the go-ahead to do it.
How
do we protect our images on the Web?
One
way is to not scan at a high resolution. You
can also put a copyright statement with your name on the image.
Jim
said we will probably need a program on file management for photos.
Jim
moved that we proceed with the Web site as discussed. Malinda seconded and the
motion passed.
Jim
said we need consensus on what to put on the site. Do we want to limit the
content of our images? We have specific guidelines on displaying our work at
Deja Zoo, etc. Jim said the emphasis should be on zoo photography: we should
keep content in the animal/nature area.
This
was discussed in more detail. We have broadened what we display at Deja Zoo to
be not just KC Zoo animals. We show other animals as long as the work is
captioned, and we allow nature photos too. But we do want to be sensitive to the
zoo sponsorship, especially if we use the "KC Zoo" in the name.
The
group seemed to agree that as long as the work was captioned, non-KC-Zoo animals
and nature photos would be okay. But we could also have a page devoted to the KC
Zoo collection and then separate member galleries for other images. We might
also want to require a certain percentage of each member's work be KC Zoo
animals.
We
may want to have a contest each month for the image to display on the opening
screen of the Web site.
It
was also moved, seconded, and successfully carried that we pick up Brian, Denny,
and Malinda's club memberships for their efforts on the Web site. It was a group
effort and they have done a great job so far!
The
meeting adjourned around 9:20 p.m. The next meeting will be on March 19 at 7
p.m.
*
Tracy Goodrich