Friday, February 21 Club Meeting -Valerie Monroe- 3-Point Display Tips

In preparation for our April Club Show, Valerie will give us tips on bonsai display focusing on the artistic pairing of a bonsai tree, stand and accent plant. We have previously covered pairing a pot with our tree and also the ins and outs of creating an accent plant. Valerie will engage us in a participatory evening to help us with the next step of selecting a stand and accent plant for the tree we will be showing in April. Instead of our usual show and tell, Valerie will use selected member trees to parse the many decisions of display.

Valerie Monroe has an extensive breadth of bonsai teaching and leadership experience spanning 40 years including caretaker of private collections, individual and group workshops, and has given workshops at GSBF conventions. Her expertise covers a wide range of deciduous and conifer species. She has been a strong leader at San Mateos SBBK and has spoken at Kusamura a number of times.

Membership Dues for 2025

Help keep the club going strong by renewing your membership today! Club membership dues are $45 for a single membership or $55 for a family membership. New members who joined Sept through Dec 2024 are also considered paid for 2025. Renewal online is very easy, visit Kusamurabonsai.org and then look in the Membership tab to find the Renew Membership page. This will let you submit the payment using PayPal, Venmo, or a debit or credit card. Additionally, Hal Jerman should be able to take checks or credit card payments in person at the February meeting. Please make your check payable to Kusamura Bonsai Club.

You may not have given much thought about how our club works. This article will help explain how it works today and some changes we’re considering for the future.

First, Kusamura is a non-profit volunteer run organization dedicated to education about bonsai. All work is done by volunteers and no one is paid or receives any sort of compensation. According to our bylaws (club’s rules of operation) the organization is governed by a Board, which consists of a President, Vice President, Recording Secretary, Corresponding Secretary, Treasurer and six Directors. The previous president is also a member of the board.

The president is responsible for running club meetings and board meetings. The vice president assists the president, serves when they aren’t able and is responsible for meeting programs. The recording secretary records minutes (discussion and decisions) of board meetings. The corresponding secretary handles all communication, including notifying members of meetings. The treasurer collects all money, pays the bills and maintains the financial records. The directors are at all board meetings to ensure the rules are followed and give advice.

In practice we’ve found it helpful to modify and extend the rules a bit. For example, sometime in the 1960s we created a monthly newsletter. We also created a Show Chair - a person responsible for organizing our club’s annual show. That led to a Publicity Chair, someone who is responsible for getting information about our show out to other clubs and the public.

In our 2015 update to our bylaws we added a Hospitality committee which was responsible for providing snacks at our club meetings. We also added Program, Member Training and Membership committees. Some of these committees aren’t active at the moment. We’ve also added some new functions not defined in our bylaws. For example, webmaster, audio and video equipment, tree purchase (for potting parties). Members of these committees are assigned by the board. A problem many volunteer-run organizations have is that one group of people do a lot of the work and people outside that group don’t have an opportunity to participate. Kusamura has worked to avoid that by inviting newer members to join the board to learn how the organization works and once they have experience to become a club officer. However, that mechanism hasn’t been applied to our committees - some of which are handled by a single person. At the recent board meetings we decided we want to have at least a second person for each committee to learn how to do that task. That decision is reflected in the proposal below.

The Future

Our Bylaws suggest several committees that will help spread the club tasks among more people to create a strong Bonsai Club that can be responsive to members needs. We have identified several committees you might enjoy contributing to. Many of us realize the potential of valuable friendships and improving our bonsai skills when we get involved with the club.

If you join a committee, it is to assist the committee chair and learn how to do that job. We ask that you participate for at least 3 months, but after that if you want you can try a different committee. Here is a tentative list of committees and their responsibilities:

• Program - This committee identifies programs of interest and speakers to talk/demo on the topic during monthly meetings. The Program chair is always the club vice president.

• Show - A lot of planning and organizing goes into making our annual show successful. Besides organizing the location, the layout of tables, a demonstration has to be organized for both days. A selection of trees are also photographed by the photography sub-committee. The current chair is Idris Anderson.

• Publicity – Traditionally, only a single person is primarily responsible for advertising our annual show to the clubs and the public. But today we have other public events, such as our event with Filoli in May so perhaps Publicity should be a year-round activity.

• AV Equipment - This committee handles setting up speakers and microphones for speakers at our annual show. During many of the club meetings we need to set up speakers and microphones, plus lighting (for the speaker’s demo). Sometimes we need to set up a large video projector and screen. Occasionally we use video cameras to capture the demo. This committee needs 3 or 4 people. The current chair is Dave Curbow.

• Membership Training - This committee is responsible for teaching basic bonsai techniques for our new members. Today this training happens on Saturday afternoon before the Intermediate Workshop. The current chair is Michael Greenstein.

• Membership - This committee is misnamed. It really is about getting new members into our systems - onto the mailing lists, badges, logins to the website, and providing information about our club meetings, workshops and training, etc. A new feature we are also considering is “buddies” for new members. That is, asking a current member to be paired up with new members and help them learn what they need to know, introducing them at meetings, etc. The current chair is Richard Phillips.

• Hospitality - This committee originally was responsible for arranging refreshments during club meetings. A separate committee under Show Committee managed volunteer food served for club member’s lunch during our club show. Since 2015 both of these responsibilities have evolved so perhaps this committee

• Nominating - This committee consists of three members with its chairman appointed by the Executive Board no later than the regular March meeting. Members of the Executive Board shall not influence the Nominating Committee. The Nominating Committee shall present a slate to the membership at the regular May membership meeting. Additional nominations may be made by the membership. All nominees must agree to their nomination.

• Audit - This committee is appointed by the President from members of the board. The auditing committee meets with the Treasurer and President prior to the Annual Meeting to audit the books of the club. If you are interested in participating in any of these activities, we encourage you to contact the chair of the committee.

If you are interested in participating in any of these activities, we encourage you to contact the chair of the committee.

Welcome New Members

The club kindly welcomes Jennifer Beck, Estefi Pisciotta, John Peery, and Jacqueline Lin who joined in January.