President’s Message:

Communication

How many of us could have known, two or three years ago, how much the Internet would have affected our lives? I wrote letters, mailed them at the post office and expected a reply in a week or two. Now I write an e-mail and am impatient if the reply does not come the next day – possibly even within a few hours or minutes.

The articles for this newsletter are obtained from files that are e-mailed to the editor by family contributors. The pages are then e-mailed to Pat Mersereau, who proofreads them for me and e-mails back the necessary corrections. (Yes, there are always some that her quick eye catches). Dewey Van Valkenburg has web TV Internet access; he can take the e-mailed pages, print them off and take them to his commercial printer, who would transfer the pages into your newsletter, or e-mail the files to his printer.

Rick Van Valkenburg keeps the mailing addresses in a database; he can e-mail them to the person who is putting them on the newsletters to mail to you and they can be printed there.

If you go onto our web site, www.van-valkenburg.org, you can read the newsletters there. (And see the pictures in color).

Included in this issue are several queries regarding Internet sites. Several of the queries from members request replies by e-mail. One page is a copy of a chart from CompuServe's Genealogy Forums – "A Chart for Figuring Relationships".

The NAVVF has been discussing updating the volumes of The Van Valkenburg Family in America, which was published in 1976 and re-printed in 1981. Besides a new generation, possibly two in your family, other relatives have been "found" and new information is available. What format will this publication take? Will it again be printed on paper and bound inside bindings? Or will it be on a CD? A DVD? A file on our web page? A format I don’t even know about yet?

These are such exciting times, when such alternatives are open to us. If you have not yet become a part of this wonderful modern world of the Internet, go to your local public library and ask for instructions on how to use it. When you are comfortable with using the computer, find a host for e-mail and communicate with your family via this marvelous new medium.

If you are an "expert" in this new electronic world, keep your messages coming for the newsletter - communication is such a vital component of our lives.