Area Meeting:
By now you should have received your invitation to the Area Meeting in Brainerd on May 3 and 4. Unfortunately, I will be unable to attend as the Chorus will be performing in Grand Rapids and Brainerd that weekend. I also know that a number of our Board members are unable to attend. I hope that some of you are planning to go. Remember that we have some financial assistance available for registration fees. We want to take this opportunity to encourage people to come to the District Seminar in October, so I will be asking someone to present our "invitation".

Memorial Fund:
The Board has designated a separate fund for memorial gifts received in honor of Muriel Miller. We hope to create an endowed fund that will support projects of interest to Muriel and her family. We hope to have a conversation with her daughter at some point about this fund in order to designate the use of the money. We would encourage anyone who is interested in making a gift in memory of Muriel to consider adding to this fund.

Linder's Gift Certificates:
We are once again going to raise money for the Convention Fund by selling gift certificates for Linder's Garden Centers. We receive 15% of all gift certificates sold. Please contact Lois Nyman to order your certificates. Everyone buys plants in the Spring, please encourage them to buy them with our gift certificates. Linder's Garden Centers are located throughout the Twin Cities. Thanks!

Dues are Due!
Your dues for 2003 are due in May. Please submit those payments to Peggy as soon as you are able. We hope that each of you will renew your membership. I know it becomes more difficult each year to make that commitment, but I urge you to remember what we are trying to accomplish in support of women throughout the world. Please renew your membership.

International Delegate Actions:
On behalf of Zonta St. Paul, I will be carrying our vote to International Convention in Sweden in June. There are a number of actions that will be taken during the Convention. There are new service projects, board candidates, a budget and By-law changes being proposed. Included with this newsletter are the new service projects that are being recommended and a copy of the budget. I will bring the profiles on the candidates that are running for the Board to our meeting for you to review. It's far too long to include with this newsletter.

And, I'm not going to include all of the By-law changes that are being recommended. Many of them are offered with the support of the Zonta International Board. However, there are a couple that have multiple recommendations and those I would like to include for your consideration. I wish that they had all of this information available on their web page for you to review, because it's just too much paper to distribute to all of you. I will have all of the information at our meeting in April. I will ask you to vote on the service projects and the contested by-law changes, but not all of the other items.

In particular, I would like you to look at the recommendations for changes to Article XIII, Districts, Section 5, Officers and Article XIV, Clubs, Section 4, Officers and Directors. These proposals have to do with the eligibility of members who are not "actively engaged in a classification" to hold office.

Please review these carefully as I believe that with an aging organization such as ours, this requirement could become a serious issue. I suspect that this will be a heated discussion.