Events

WHAT: “Telling Stories in Your Garden” lecture by Daina Graziunas

WHO: Clearwater Branch, National League of American Pen Women, Inc.

WHERE: Countryside Library, 2741 State Road 580, Clearwater, FL 33761 (1/4 mile east of Countryside Mall)

WHEN: Saturday, July 19, 10 to 11:30am

Do you want your garden to be both colorful and restful? Try the Oriental approach of Feng Shui in your landscaping.

Master Gardener Daina Graziunas will present a workshop on how to use Feng Shui principles in your own yard. Building on her experience as an award winning artist and novelist, Graziunas calls her design concepts ‘Thrones & Scepters’. She says, “My approach creates both visibly themed gardens, and gardens which mask their “subtext” meanings behind the languages of flowers, art objects and colors.”

Some of the design ideas Graziunas will cover will be:

Octopus’s Garden
“Prosperity” Red Door gardening
Buoyancy in the garden, lifting shrubs and vines through pruning and on fishing line to help them to gracefully and seemingly magically “float”

The lecture is sponsored by the Clearwater Branch of the National League of American Pen Women. The League consists of professional women writers, artists, and composers. The Clearwater Branch has been in existence since 1957. Admission is free and open to all. After the lecture, participants are invited to join the Clearwater Pen Women at Two Jays deli at Countryside Mall for a Dutch treat lunch.

For more information, call Sandy Huff at 727 420-6184.

The subject of the meeting was to explore the feasibility of building a web site for the Clearwater Chapter of Pen Women. Guests in attendance at the meeting were Caroline McKeon, Treasurer of the Florida NLAPW, and Anna DiBella, former President of the NLAPW.

For some time, the members of the Clearwater PW have been discussing the feasibility of developing a web site. As a member of the Tampa PW, Caroline has already developed a website for that chapter: www.flpw.org. Caroline operates her own business, DreamWeb Office Consultants, Inc., and in that capacity, she develops and maintains web sites for her clients.

We believe that having a website is important for communication with our members and prospective members.

At the meeting, the Clearwater PW members voted (10 – 0) in favor of a chapter web site and to have Caroline McKeon act as the web master. She will develop and maintain the site.

§ A web page with information about each member including their skills, accomplishments, education, awards, and general professional summary.

§ Public outreach and support activities such as the scholarship to the St. Petersburg College Women on the Way Program.

§ She is an active Pen Woman who understands the organization on a national, state, and local level.

§ She is a trained professional, who has built many web sites for her business customers.

§ She is enthusiastic and well-organized, with excellent ideas, communication, and follow-through.

§ She will give us a discount on the price of building and maintaining our web site, so the cost will be VERY reasonable. Her proposed cost is:

$250 to erect the initial website
$ 50 to host the website for the first year
$ 30.78 for the domain names
Total = $330.78 for the first year

In future years, the annual cost will be:
$ 50.00 to maintain the website
$ 30.78 for the domain names

The next steps are to gather information for the member pages. Also, we will gather information such as old HOOTS, and contest rules, etc. Caroline will build the web site using MS Front Page software. The domains that we are purchasing are: