French & French Manicures

I’m reading an interesting thread on the forums about value of membership, and whether to renew or not. I think it's reasonable to claim that I've had more than my fair share of unkind treatment from members during my years of service. I am a life member, but even so, I can certainly quit, or at the very least, stop attending events, refrain from participating in forum discussions, and refuse to lift a finger. But I'm staying. After thinking about it for a while I came up with two main reasons: commitment and self-definition

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Commitment

I ended up with a degree in French; I stuck it out for nearly a decade, even though I hated every class I took after the first one in 7th (I had a crush on Monsieur Russell). It started out with such potential and excitement. And for a few subsequent years, I just kept hoping the boredom and frumpy teachers were anomalies and that it would surely get better next year. By the time I realized that Monsieur Russell was the anomaly, I'd already put in so much time that if I'd quit, all the suffering through Mesdames Vieille and  Ennuyeuse would have been for naught. The effort wasted. So I stuck it out and eventually ended up, believe it or not, as a French teacher. Yeah, the universe is a funny place.

Mensa... it's little like that. I've put so much into it, that if I quit now, all my work will be for nothing. Without really doing so consciously, I made a commitment to learning French.

A few years ago, when I became a life member, it was not because I was crazy rich, nor because I figured it'd be a wise investment (we really did run the numbers regarding estimated investment returns on the money versus estimated inflation of dues rates). I became a life member as a commitment to the organization. So just as people stay in rocky and and stressful marriages, screaming when it's really bad and helping to rebuild after a setback, I'm staying.

Self-Definition

The second reason I stay is the same reason I spend stupid money on my fingernails. I don't need them. They make it hard to open things. None of my friends even notice them anymore. My career as a hand model is never going to take off.  But to me, they have become part of my self-identity. I have long hair, glasses, and manicured nails.

I'm a Mensan, as I have been for nearly half my life. It's part of who I am.

Writing for InterLink

I was asked to write something for InterLink. Gee... what should I write about? RVC replacement, perhaps? (Why did I hear Dana Carvy's "Church Lady" voice in my ear when I wrote that?) The trick is to figure out how to condense ten pages of data into a ~500 word article.

Still Getting Hassled by Yash

Some members complain about letting their addresses be available to other members. Officers are required to allow their contact info be available to members. Today I got this "Thank You" card in the mail:

This is from the creator and leader of the A&E SIG Consortium, Yash Talreja, the same asshole who cost AML well over $10K in legal fees to get him to stop illegally using the Mensa name and Logo.  Same guy who is STILL using the Mensa logo for at least one of his groups:

Same guy who bought the domain "robincrawford.com" (seems to be defunct now) in order to denigrate me during the recent election. Same guy who libels me here and here.

I have complained to AML a few times, but no one seems to be concerned about my reputation or the on-going harassment.

Ah, the rewards of serving Mensa!

Links to Some of My Reports

Matt helped me set up DropBox, and now I have several of the big reports I've written for Mensa available for anyone who wants to download and read them:


The RVC Conundrum Background Paper 2011
The Local Group Service & Funding Report 2011
Governance Task Force Report 2010
InterLoc Background Paper 2010
Name & Logo Workbook 2009
Local Group Service & Funding Report 2006

RVC Replacement Proposal

My RVC Conundrum Background Paper is done. Wanna see it? 


Keep in mind this is not an AMC proposal, nor was it developed by the Governance Blueprint Task Force. This is plain vanilla member Robin's work and proposal. How it will be received I cannot predict, but at least the necessary dialogs will be shaken back to life, this time with plenty of hard data to consider.


Thank you to Howard and Pam at the National Office who kept answering my requests for information. Thank you to Marc for helping sum up the previously floated solutions' pros and cons and to the current and past RVCs who took time to answer my questions about their jobs.

Not-So Erudite

So I was sipping morning coffee and surfing the various social media sites I'm on, and came across this link to a blog post: 15 Things White Girls Love to do on FaceBook (no one I know).  I was cracking up as I recognized nearly everything she listed.

What is really amusing to me is that most of my Facebook and Twitter friends are Mensans, and the outside world somehow expects us to be far more erudite than we really are. But noooo... we're just as inane and dorky as everyone else. I think this is comforting in a way.

(Thanks, Leah!)