Last Saturday, at a ham swap that I attended, Scott, N8SY, our division director, came up to my table and extended his hand. I just couldn’t shake it, though. When I didn’t reciprocate, he asked, “You’re not going to shake my hand?” I said, “No.”

I wrote a couple of months ago about the shameful disqualifications of several candidates for the ARRL Board of Directors. In an attempt to prevent future embarrassment—and prevent any dissenting voices being elected to the board—the ARRL Special Committee on By-Law 46 Revisions, headed by Arthur I. Zygielbaum, K0AIZ, ARRL Midwest Division Director, has come up with revisions to By-Law 18. After reading it, and the commentary, By-Law 18 is a Terrible Idea, written by past New England Division director and chair of the Ethics and Elections Committee, Fred Hopengarten, K1VR, I can only ask again what the heck are they thinking?

I was never very interested in emergency communications. Perhaps it’s because I live in Michigan, which according to World Atlas, is the second safest state as far as natural disasters go.

With what has gone on lately in North Carolina I’m rethinking my position. I still don’t think that every ham has to go whole hog (pun intended) on emergency communications, but we should have the ability to communicate without grid power and some knowledge of emergency communications techniques and protocols.