It’s been more than a year since the final convention and this is only the second issue of the Checkerboard for 2012. Readers may have had their doubts that the newspaper was still in publication.

At the final board meeting, the board of directors agreed to continue publishing the Checkerboard as long as the funds and content holds out.

Content has slowed to a trickle and that accounts for the almost year-long hiatus.

Readers of the first issue of 2012 were treated to the first installment of Harry Arnold’s “Easy Memories.” The manuscript is typewritten, single-spaced. Your editor is painstakingly keyboarding the memoir so it can be included in the Checkerboard. It is a labor-intensive endeavor, but it is a story worthy of being preserved in the pages of the association’s newspaper. Another installment makes up the bulk of this issue, along with Arnold’s hand-drawn maps.

Without new contributions from readers, Arnold’s manuscript and whatever stories the editor can dredge up from the dusty old file cabinet in the basement may be the only content in future issues.

This is your newspaper. You pay dues. If you haven’t told your story yet, now is the time. Get your memories down on paper and send them to the Checkerboard so they can be shared.

Without new content and dues-paying members, the Checkerboard may cease to exist sooner than expected.

If you have a story to tell, suggestions, comments about Arnold’s memoir or anything else in the pages
of the Checkerboard, send it to the editor at PO Box 99, Marion KS 66861, or e-mail donna.bernhardt@
sbcglobal.net.

Donna Bernhardt