John:

Congratulations on your election for president. I look forward to working with you and the rest of the board if you want me to stay on. So far in the last month and a half that I have been director of P &amp; P I have placed 2 free ads for our national summer show in WI in 2 of the big show directories. I have also placed 1/4 page display ads in the 2 publications to try to get new HPOCA members. 

I have been working closely with Chris &amp; Becky Losey on some items that will come out in the Jan/Feb 2005 issue that we should see next week. I was out in MI for Thanksgiving weekend for my sister-in-law's wedding and I spent several hours with Chris &amp; Becky on the Friday after Thanksgiving. 

I also been up to Charles City a couple of times to visit with Mary Ann Townsend and her people. I wanted to see what they had for HPOCA inventory. Some of the HPOCA items that were in the Nov/Dec 2004 magazine are no longer available so I had Chris take them ouit of the Jan/Feb issue and off the HPOCA Web store. I am working on coming up with some new things for the HPOCA to sell. I plan to have some things ready for the Moline winter show at the end of Feb.

I don't know much about the Louisville Farm Show. I talked to Terry Allen on Dec. 20. It sounds like he was planning on bringing the trailer down for it. That is about all I know. At this point I don't know if I will be able to make it or not. My wife Sue &amp; I plan to be at Moline for the whole event. Terry sent me an inventory that he did of the items in the trailer around Dec 1. It looks like it is pretty well stocked. Should be enough to get through the Louisville show.

I would welcome your call so I can share more with you what I am doing. For me personally it didn't matter who got to be President. I feel I will be able to work as well with you as I have with Terry. My goal is to start growing this organization again. There was a time when we had over 6200 members and now we are down to some over 5700. We need to get those 500 back or replace them with new people and then start growing. I would like to see us at 10,000 in the next 4 years or so. If we could get there there are many costs that would go down. Like the cost per copy of the magazine.

As I said earlier, I look forward to working with you if you want me to continue in this position. My home phone number is 319-988-4319. We have our machine on at all times. Just start talking, if I am here I will pick up. I am in and out all day. Probably the best time to reach me would be after 7 pm. I am out in Iowa and we are in the central time zone.

Look forward to hearing from you!

--Marc Sletten--