Gary c Tesser

1. Guest XIV, please see this thread: ... and note the succinct and comprehensive explanation by jstackpo (or however you spell it, I'm close at least -- it's the second or third reply) as to how to deal with the president's opinion.

Supposing so, then what, do you think?

As far as *the discussion* is concerned, remember, at least, that as far as the official record -- the minutes -- is concerned, discussion is not included at all. But as far as executive session is concerned, the doors are closed. What happened behind them is not revealed J(unless, of course, fundamentally, the body that was in executive session decides to lift the secrecy, as regards any or all that what went on behind those closed doors). For example, it is generally assumed (except maybe in Arizona) that the Sun rises in the East. When a board meets in executive session, and it is mentioned during that executive session, that the Sun rises in the East, all attendees at that executive session are prohibited from revealing that, yes, it was mentioned in executive session that the Sun rises in the East. Got that? The board members, like everybody else on Earth, including trilobites and dandelions who take note of the sunrise, have no inhibition on discussing the sunrise -- but they mustn't mention that it was discussed during executive session!\ (Some might suggest I'm being unduly and over-literal on this. They probably vote for Democrats too, the liberal pinko slugs.)

Gary c Tesser, on 11 Jan 2015 - 4:45 PM, said: Why? Are you thinking that pp. 574 and 653, bottom, apply? I don't see it, unless we know for sure that OP Pokey's bylaws contain the required wording, and frankly I've had enough of bylaws for one day (3:35 AM counts as late Sunday); and without that wording, "pleasure" should require only a majority vote.

Don't think you're the only one.

Nosey, look at this: ... and this: ... and everything else goes away (including, I have to tell you, the committees). (That is, unless there's something else. Like, was a quorum present? Did anyone who was NOT a board member vote?)

A few thoughts. First: I assume that the Guest_Guest of Post 3 is the Original Poster, _Dr. Matt Hogendobler. If this is somehow incorrect, please advise. 2. My thanks to Dr Matt (or would that be Dr Hogendobler? And what kind of doctor? My kid brother got his Ph. D. in mathematics (about "Clifford's Algebra," since no one asked), and has no compunctions about answering the telephone, "Dr. Tesser." Great Steaming Cobnuts. The silly git) for providing the link. I had forgotten how much fun reading bylaws (and constitutions) is. And why I drink. -- 2a. I have actually read, cursorily (forget about in depth, not at no 2 AM, and not for your fershtunkener Virginia patriot $4.50 an hour, I dickens well won't! ), all two or three versions of the constitution, and the linked bylaws. So first here (not first altogether, since I'm here in item 2a, and if I had made separate items of all the parentheticals I would probably be in item 37-triple-p by now), especially since you love this site ( and hooray for Richard Brown, that newfound arriviste, that born-again parvenu, and what are the rest of us, chopped liver?), note that it's almost a point of pride or of principle for the regulars not to read linked bylaws (part of why I myslef am so often in the doghouse, with crispy ailerons). So just don't expect much of that. -- 2b. I must say, none of it, old or new, strikes me as egregious or monstrous, so unless I'm overlooking something awful, that's buried in the dry print (pixels, you young people call it), like the revision's quietly moving all authority from the membership to the Managers, or making the Managers a self-elected body, or making cocker spaniels honorary members, you're maybe either making a mountain out of a molehill, or simply picking the wrong battle: Doctor, while I of course wish you a long, happy, healthy, prosperous life, like I do for everybody, except maybe horseshoe crabs, yukk, or Republicans, double yukk, and of course Microsoft, ptui ptui, remember, Dr Matt, you got a finite lifespan. [Pause for a personal note. My fourth hearing of Beethoven's Choral Fantasy just ended, so I have to go dry myslef off.] -- 2b (i). Which is to say, Doctor: c'mon. Granted, you have a major beef with the how what was done, was done -- and frankly (I will get to this if I live that long), I don't see much of a problem, at least, ongoing, with the "how," except, as Mr Brown notes, probably not backwards this time because he writes at 11:45 PM my time, when he's presumably still awake, the undelivered notifications really might be just enough to sink that ship. 3. Doctor. Please note that RONR kind of conflates what constitutions and bylaws do, while recognizing that some organizations maintain a distinction (RONR, 11th Ed., Reg. U.S. Pat. Off., p. 12 - 14): principally, if you'll allow me to get in trouble here, that when you do have two documents, the constitution contains the more basic, and the hopefully more immutable provisions, and it is therefore harder to change. (There have been arguments about this -- whether a document can itself prohibit its amendment -- including, in principle, questions about rigid internal logic; and, as a practical question, how binding might be the precedent (not as RONR, 11th Ed. (Reg. Penna. Dept. Agr.), uses the word, p. 251 - 252 ) of the US Constitution's original provisions that said that some of it, like the stuff holding that slaves and Indians are fractionally human, cannot be altered until 1808.) But as RONR has it, an organization will have only one fundamental document: RONR calls it the bylaws (middle of p. 12, op. cit. -- oh darn, that's a real term!), but I think you'll better understand what RONR says if, when you're reading it, you come to the word "bylaws," you just plain read it as "constitution and bylaws." You might want to actually go ahead and mark up your copy to say so (that's why when I show citations to people in my copy, they say "Whoa, but what's this about crocodiles?"). -- 3a. And, neither document, if you do have both, which RONR thinks is unnecessary, is in any way sacrosanct. In short, your first two paragraphs are just off. Deranged and unhooked, if you prefer the medical or Virginian terminology. --3b. So your third paragraph is invalid, if you accept RONR's terms. (And I presume you've also looked at p. 593. If not, please do. You'd better.) 4. Thank you also for reminding me about Alan Jenning's delightful book. So I've been paging through it now, while mulling on your thoughts (and how Beethoven melded the work of the women's and the men's trios: I can send you a good link if you like, but I think Dan feels lately I've been overdoing my musical references and recommendations -- but a few weeks ago, someone links to the Beatles' Maxwell Silver Hammer, and not a peep? And as long as I'm worked up, that diva Nancy can do no wrong?). But, I have the first edition, so maybe you have a later one, in which case, please say on this: but in my copy, nohow does Alan Jennings say - What he says (Jennings, Robert's Rules for Dummies, first edition, first printing, autographed edition, smug smug, p. 30), in the context that all the usual rules do apply (p. 27 - 30), is that the question of scope-of-notice is inapplicable -- since a proper notice will say that this is a revision, so that theoretically, the rule about scope of notice is -- O my, I'm just realizing this now -- scrupulously observed, because the notice has given the scope -- and the scope is the entire document. (I'm not just realizing this about Jennings, but also about RONR. And I'm realizing newly why discussing other books, even admirable books like Jennings', is discouraged here: because, in such a discussion, it's hard to keep track of what RONR says, which is seminal or iconic or something on The World's Premiere Internet Parliamentary Website Forum) So, Dr Matt, you may cheerily proceed to your unhingement, being mindful that, at least in this context, RONR does not differentiate between the two. 4. O Dr Matt, Please don't go there. Unless that's specifically what you intend to. Bearing in mind that the Convention in 1787 was charged with tinkering with the Articles of Confederation, not throwing it out. (You want to talk about "coups"?) O Great Steaming Cobnuts, Dr Matt, what the heck is your problem is??!? --5a. Dr.Matt, please what is your problem??!? I really don't see it; and it looks to me as if Mr Brown pretty much doesn't either... 6. OK. The notice question is a serious issue. I'm frankly, not at Four in the morning -- not at your damn $4.50 an hour, I'm not -- going to go back to look at your constitution, or your bylaws, but I think I read that your current rule, in all versions except maybe 1953, is that the notice must be "transmitted." So that hole is wide open, that the word "transmitted" deliberately allows for using e-mail for notice, like maybe "telegraph" would, though I lament that I don't see it in my RONR, 11th Ed. (Reg. somebody or other, it's Five in the morning). I think I'm disagreeing with your pal, Richard Brown, on that matter, now, although, commendably, he might have been restricting his comments to what Robert's Rules says, without, again commendably, not having read all fifteen linked versions of your constitution and of your bylaws, as I imprudently did. 7. Dr Matt, now I got more bloodstains on the wall (from bangin my head on it) from this. What in Sam HIll bothers you about what they published here?? You remember that a proposed revision can be amended from top to bottom, right? __________ N. B. Yeah, I know Dan and Richard, at least, are Republicans. That's why I got all those smiley-face icons plastered spang in the middle of every clause and phoneme and, what do you call this newfangled thing, computer screen.

(Part 15 or so.) OK: the rule-derived right to attend almost certainly affects the procedure for removing them from the room (for whatever, or maybe no specified, reason). Please, Guest Susie, I'm dangling on a string here.

OK, the non-members, per a rule, have a right to attend. How, you commie with legs of steel and thews of iron, ask, can they be ejected when necessary-appropriate. O Great Steaming Cobnuts.

O Great Streaming Cobnuts. Wrong again even when I shouldn't be. Y'know, I think I'm gonna uncharacteristically stand up for myslef here -- the default, which we go with absent a contradicting statement from young brave puissant Guest Susie in her bloodstained cuirass, is the default with which we go. (Ooo, proper English grammar is so challenging, yet liberating.) Gimme a bloody Break, George, my kitten just got eaten. Aren't I gonna win any of these this year, even with Tim Wynn lately not looking?

Or, more gently: note that, at a meeting, non-members have no rights. If they are granted permission to attend, that is all they have been granted permission to do. They certainly have no right to vote, and, as non-members, never will -- I trust this is obvious and beyond discussion. But neither do they have any other of the rights of board members at a board meeting: not to make motions, not to second motions, not to speak. Certainly not to disrupt. Of course, Guest Susie, I can't tell from your (admirably succinct) post what the non-members were doing that delayed the meeting. Of course, guest Susie, as Mr Guest advises, you can kick them out. Or some of them. Or not let them in, in the first place. Or some of them. Or shoot them. Hopefully, very few of them. Since you ask what's the best way, and since that's a judgement-call, I can offer you my own, perhaps less draconian, opinion. You can simply make sure that the non-members know that, as a condition of their attendance at the board meeting, they may not impede its proceedings. I frankly can't think of an exactly pure parliamentary way to do this (and since the subject has come up before, I've been thinking about it for some time). Common sense (I was looking at p. 456 in RONR, one of my favorites, not only because it's so much fun to type) might suggest a simple statement, by the chairman, at the beginning of the meeting, reminding the guests -- that's the non-members -- of their very limited role at the board meetings. Oh, it might chafe at first: but soldier on, young brave valiant Guest Susie: that's what youth sports team board members were weaned for, back in Sparta, where you all, at least in spirit, were conceived*. But I say it's not a pure parliamentary way, because parliamentary procedure, whose purpose is to provide that meetings be as efficient as possible while being fair to everyone (except non-members, who, remember, have zero rights), does not provide for an out-of-thin-air lecture, even from the chair. The fact that no board members might object to the speech, perhaps by its having been savvily pre-arranged among them, does not cut it, here on the world's premiere Internet parliamentary forum. But then, life sometimes demands compromise, and sometimes sorrow. You might look the other way when the chairman gives a gentle lecture that tells the non-board-members that they can only speak when the board grants them permission. And a crocodile ate my kitten. ___________ * Pun stolen from first page of King Lear [Edited to fix dopily messed-up] italic feature above] O great Steaming Cobnuts, now it works!

I wrote mine up (some scoffers called it "The Secret Origin of Captain America," which, as everyone knows, was really in an issue of The Avengers in 1964) as introducing my trip report on the 2003 NAP worldcon in 2003 in San Antonio. I got about four pages written -- I was on a deadline -- and was afraid for a while I wouldn't get the narrative out of the San Antonio airport before I had to hit To Be Continued, and was relieved when I managed to get to reaching the hotel, agreeing to meet George and Mrs Mervosh in the hotel's bar or restaurant (I forget which it was, but, not, in this instance, which is which), then getting there and realizing I had no idea what he looked like. I dithered at the entrance for a moment, then walked through the room, scrutinizing every patron and fetching waitress intently, looking for some telltale sign: a sagely twinkle in the eye, his vade mecum which always contained his RONR, bloodstains on his cuirass. And I left the room at the other end, fruitless and frustrated. So I found a chair in the lobby, mulled for another moment, crafted a plan, returned to the entrance, and then walked through the room, scrutinizing every patron and fetching waitress intently, looking for some telltale sign: a sagely twinkle in the eye, a vade mecum which always contained his RONR, and bloodstains on his cuirass. Achieving the same result, I returned to the chair in the lobby, earning me some little scrutiny of my own from the hotel registration staff and maybe their security personnel -- I thought maybe the bulges under their coats were their copies of the 800-page book, but left that investigation for another time. It came to me that I was coming at the problem in an excessively Cartesian, classical-mechanics, left-brain sort of way. Instead, for my third sortie through the restaurant (or bar; by this time I didn't care what the heck they sold), I settled on employing my understanding of Eastern philosophy, which I had studied at Brooklyn College thirty years earlier by smoking grass: I would walk through the room having cleared my mind, empty of thought and intention (also a good way to pick up girls, at least I keep trying it), leaving it to the fates to determine mine. Instead, George apparently got fed up with the prospect of watching me meander pitifully through the hotel all afternoon, and genially said, "Gary." Figuring I would have the presence of mind to answer to it. Fortunately, this time I did. ________ N. B. This is from ten-year-old memory. Details may blur. Also, what'ch'ma'call'em ... facts. [This addition posted after Post 11 here]

Generally, I stand behind no one in expressing this sentiment. But I think that Penny's follow-up on the existing question was so smooth and so just plain apt that the objection doesn't apply. If she had posted her question (in post 32, or 33, I"m not sure which I prefer, I'm so insensitive to nuance) a few hours or a day or two after post 31, I submit that we wouldn't have noticed it, which justifies appending it right here. (O, what a hot topic this is! And I had completely forgotten about the starship captain's shirt.)

I expect I'm not alone in suggesting emphatically that you first get your RONR - In Brief, without delay, and read it at once. I keep saying, if you go to a store to buy it, read it standing there. Maybe move away from in front of the cashier, to allow the other customers to buy their copies. It should take you an hour or so, unless you're a college graduate -- they can take all day, tomorrow also if they have to tie their shoelaces themselves. If you're on a lunch break, you'll just have to get back a little late. If people are depending on you to feed them -- relax, they won't starve. If you're there by car, give your keys to that cashier, who will be allowed to return them to you when you're finished. If you have ordered it by mail, don't take the time to get a box-cutter to open the carton: just have at it with your fangs and claws -- you're going to chair an AGM, so you need the practice anyway.

You don't think I coulda handled that?For that matter, we couldn't try seeing what Guest_Crystal would have done with it? (C'mon, Guest_Crystal, we're rooting for you.)

(Sorry for the delay, Guest_Crystal (and captious cavilling critics). I was unavoidably detained by adamantly intrusive aspects of Real Life.)I looked in the soi-disant lowbrow Jennings and Sylvester books, RONR 11th, ROR 6th, and RONR-IB, 2nd Ed. (sorry, Guest_Crystal, that's all I got now); can't find my Demeter, and don't have any of the others; although here, on the world's premier Internet parliamentary forum, RONR alone is more than sufficient. In addition to Mr Britton's citation from RONR 11th, I think p. 358, item (b ) is apropos. And no, even when unfinished business comes in a carton, there's no expiration date stamped on it. It's not perishable like your staple milk or cinnamon or marijuana. I think we should take it as given that, in the absence of a statement that there is a time when unfinished business, carried over multiple times, will die of old age, it simply does not happen. I think Guest_Crystal is spot on with this: ...Clearly, the expectation is that it will rarely happen that a meeting will not dispose of unfinished business that has been carried over from the previous meeting (let alone from more than one), and if it does happen, this is aberrant, and the organization needs to look to fixing the disfunction. Be mindful that when we don't get past unfinished business, we don't ever get to new business, which is often what organizations' business is mainly about. Incidentally, especially given Guest_Crystal's awesome capacity for exhaustive research (most of which would not be called for at all), it would be good, and more than welcome, if she would try and see if she would enjoy returning occasionally to this, the world's premier Internet parliamentary forum, and try her hand at answering some other people's questions, so maybe me and Mr (Edgar) Guest and Mr Britton could maybe take a couple days off some day this year or maybe 2018 and go fishing in West Virginia or something. We'd be glad to take her along but she'll be on world's premier Internet parliamentary forum coverage duty that weekend. Truly sorry, Crystal, next time.

A real parliamentary question. I think I have fallen in love. Gimme a few minutes.

I'm among those who favor a marginal note where the original inaccuracy appears. Maybe just a post-it (Reg. Penna. Dept. Agr.) note; haven't we agreed that that's no really so bad, and potentially useful?

Lynne, please note that Gabriella is probably not following this any more. Notwithstanding that I think your post is indeed sensible. And please don't stop.

I wasn't addressing the "automatically accepted" part at all, just ... Hmm. I'm going to amend Post 7 by adding, because I think I see the problem. Some.

M. thigpen, the job of minutes is to record what happens. The minutes do not dictate reality. Sometimes what the minutes say is wrong, and when that happens,each and every one of the facts that the minutes have misrepresented has not changed. Every fact is still a fact. It is, instead, the minutes that misreport those facts that have to be changed. I think what I just said does answer your concern about the minutes vs. the vote. I can't be sure, because I agree with Mr Martin (as I do when I know what's good for me) when he said, in Post 5, that the FAQ did answer your question. If you still have a question, would you please put it another way, because I don't think any of us regulars here on The World's Premiere Internet Parliamentary Forum understand what you're asking then. [Edited twelve hours later, prompted by Mr Martin, Post 8, to add : Ms Thigpen -- I may call you Ms Thigpen, I trust, as we are already perforce acquaintances, effectively having been introduced by our mutual acquaintance and registered Democrat Mr Martin, yes? -- it looks to me as if you overlooked this exchange: ruth.thigpen (Post 1): "Since the meeting minutes captured the verbal resignation does that constitute automatic acceptance by the board or does the board still have to vote on the resignation" Josh Martin (Post 3): "The latter.." Do you see how Mr Martin answered your question? When he says, "the latter," he's saying that the answer is yes, the board still has to vote on the resignation. (But most importantly, the board votes on the resignation ONLY IF the resignation is still in the board's hands. If, as seems likely, the woman did withdraw her resignation when she still had the right to, then there is no longer any resignation around for the board to act on. Ms Thigpen?]

That makes it pretty much the right place.

You all should be paying more attention to what Tim says, because he's wearing his starship captain shirt.