X-Message-Number: 1634
Date: 17 Jan 93 22:33:07 EST
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: CRYONICS New York meeting, 1-17-93

To: Cryonet
 
 
 
The monthly business meeting of the New York Chapter of the 
Alcor Foundation was held at 2 PM on January 17 1883. The 
following text is a brief personal summary and should not be 
considered official minutes of the meeting.
 
Brenda Peters and Courtney Smith announced that because of 
their relocation in Chicago, it is no longer practical for 
them to do as much in the New York area as before. Brenda 
proposed that I should replace her as President of the New 
York Chapter. No one else wanted to be nominated, so I was 
elected by general acclaim, or by default, depending on your 
point of view. Courtney became the new Vice-President in a 
similar fashion. (Michael Paulle, the previous VP, was unable 
to continue in this position since we now have a rule that 
any officer of Alcor New York must also be a suspension 
member of Alcor; and Michael resigned his suspension 
membership last year.) Kevin Brown and Janet Pinkney were 
reelected as Treasurer and Secretary, respectively.
 
We then discussed our general goals and the possibilities for 
achieving them. We agreed that our first goal is to improve 
our local capabilities for stabilizing a patient in an 
emergency. We need a van and would like some additional 
supplies. We also want to train an additional member for the 
stabilization team. 
 
This means (as always) we need more money and more members. 
We drew up a list of fund-raising and outreach possibilities. 
We plan in future to offer a series of seminars on cryonics 
and life extension, through The Learning Annex, a local 
organization that advertises adult-education classes and 
other activities. Each seminar will be on the same day of the 
month as our regular meeting, will be held at the same 
location, and will involve a slide show, using slides that 
Alvin Steinberg has spent a lot of time and effort gathering, 
with the help of other cryonicists. If a different person 
runs the seminar each time, this will give us all practice 
and experience in making presentations, and will prepare us 
for the next phase, which is to do an outreach to medical 
students. 
 
In addition, in collaboration with a couple of our members, I 
am planning a course in life extension and cryonics at The 
New School, a well-known New York college that specializes in 
adult education.
 
Other outreach proposals include sending out letters to names 
of rich and/or famous people culled from Who's Who in America 
(a technique used by Robert Ettinger thirty years ago), 
handing out leaflets at street fairs in the summer, and 
setting up a table at futurist and science-fiction events. 
Also we hope we will be able to get names and addresses of 
people in our area who have entered the Omni contest, so we 
can contact them direct. 
 
The level of enthusiasm at the meeting was high, and I 
believe that at least some of these plans will be put into 
practice. 
 
Obviously I cannot hope to be as effective as Brenda, my 
much-admired predecessor. But I do hope to expand the 
membership and activities of the New York group during 1993. 
I also want everyone who attends our meetings to become more 
involved, even if it means they can only donate an hour of 
time per week. Meetings themselves do not accomplish 
anything. Personal action is needed. 
 
--Charles Platt
 


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