Saturday June 26, 1999

 Hello from Louisville, Kentucky. The hotel is beautiful, the skies slightly
overcast and the anticipation is running high. The Louisville group, Gene
Everson, Lynn Scheu,and  Bobbie Houchin have worked hard along with elves
Charlotte Lloyd, Karlynn Morgan, Ann Buddenhagen and Lori Schroeder who
worked behind the scenes to get it all together to see that registration and
planning went as smoothly as possible.
  The early bird session started off with a pretaped program by Jordan Star
titled "Walking on the Beach". His views of what could be found on a beach
and some close up views  of sea life were most interesting.
  Jim Brunner with "Before Linne' " a sometimes fractured history of the
early collectors and sometimes humorous naming of shells. Jim spoke of the
early writers including Rumphius, Lister, Seba and Gualtier among others and
showed some early plates from the books they published.
  Hank Foglino ended the evening with his talk "Tides Revealed". In it he
brought out the information that the first mention of tides was by Herodotus
in 480 B.C. He also brught out the fact that although the sun is much larger
in mass than the moon, the fact that the moon is closer makes it more of an
influence on the tides on earth.
  As a side fact, the food in the restaurant is plentiful and not too
expensive. Most of the rooms are very nice and large and we are all glad to
be here.See you tomorrow
               Carole Marshall