State of

Crew of the Chicago, this is the captain;

We have not had a lot of activity so far this year, and I've been unable to plan any events due to illness. Without going in to the medical history of the year to date, January through April has seen several illnesses, enough to the point where it's been impossible to schedule any events for the chapter. I am pleased to report that we're getting healthy, though, and we're ready to get the chapter moving once more.

I'm going to schedule our first meeting of the 2008 calendar year for the weekend of Memorial Day, more specifically, Saturday May 24th. We'll tenatively locate at my house, but if we have a large enough group, we could opt for a park.

I would also like to direct your attention to a new group being started in conjunction with the USS Black Hawk (Rockford, IL) and the USS BortaS (Champaign/Urbana, IL). This join effort is currently being called The Illinois Sector Alliance. The ISA's goal is to foster a comradery among sci-fi fans in the state of Illinois, first by the creation of a forum and the eventual organization of meetings and conferences. ISA is presently located at http://mommysrealm.co... (my wife's domain of which we will work on getting something a little more spiffy). I invite you all to join ISA and invite your friends to join as well. Membership with the ISA is free and will remain free.

I'm looking forward to see you all again and meeting many of you for the first time this Memorial Day.

Capt. Jay M. Hurd
Commanding Officer - USS Chicago NCC-75011