2023 Bridge: The Weiss-Bertoni Award

Posted on July 29, 2023 by Mike

A new award for New England bridge. Continue reading →

The Larry Weiss Award (introduced here) was an engraved silver tray that was presented by the New England Bridge Conference a total of twenty-three times over the period of its existence—1982-2022. The history of the award, including its original criteria and evolution in 2023, is documented here.

In 2017 I won the award. I was very proud of this, but I also pledged to myself that I would make sure that it was given to someone else the next year. The committee that I formed in 2018 voted for Bob Bertoni, who was the District Director. That responsibility left him little or no time to organize a committee to manage the process of selecting the next recipient in 2019. Then came the pandemic, and to make matters wors Bob developed cancer and died in July of 2021.

It did not make sense to try to give out the award in 2021. No regional tournaments were held in New England the entire year. In 2022 I argued in the Executive Committee’s Zoom meetings that the award should again be given out in 2023, and I volunteered to chair the committee again. There was no opposition. The president, Curtis Barton, told me to go for it.

A few months later I discovered that no one knew where the Larry Weiss trophy was. I was not about to call Bob’s widow, Beth, and quiz her about it. Besides, there was only room enough on the tray to squeeze in one more name. So, the EC voted that the award committee should decide on a new award, name it, set up the criteria, buy it, and present it..

When Natalie Bassil won an event in 2015, she asked me to post this photo of her. She hasn’t changed a bit.

I selected committee members in much the same way as I did in 2018. I wanted people who had participated in the post-pandemic tournaments, and I insisted that at least one person be from each district. A few people turned me down or never responded. In the end two EMBA players agreed to be on the committee, Natalie Bassil and Dan Jablonski. The others were Michelle Blanchard, Chris Soares, Lucia Carlisle, Sue Collinson, Dan Morgenstern, and Judy Hyde.

The protocol was similar to what I used in 2018. All of the communication among members would be via email. Nominations would be submitted by the players throughout New England. Two sets of votes would be held. In the first one committee members would be allowed to name three (or fewer) nominees who they thought were worthy of the honor. Then each person would vote for one person from the reduced list.

The first step was to come up with a name and a set of criteria. I proposed the name Weiss-Bertoni Award and added one criterion to the three listed on the Larry Weiss document. “Extraordinary service to promote face-to-face bridge at all levels in New England.” The one thing that I was most adamant about was the phrase “face-to-face”. I felt that online bridge, championed by the ACBL both during the pandemic and afterwards, was destroying the face-to-face game.

I sent an email to each committee member with my proposal and asked them to suggest improvements. The proposal that I attached has been posted here. A few members suggested that two proposals would make more sense. Since I had only been authorized to award one trophy, I did not put those ideas to a vote. Chris Soares was the only person who made a constructive suggestion:

Thank you for a thoughtful and concise revision.
In new Section 4 I’d suggest that
“It would seem to make sense for the committee selecting the current nominee to include the current winner…”
be changed to
“It seems sensible for the committee selecting the current nominee to include the current winner, if possible…”
A bit cleaner and addresses the unfortunate reality of death

I liked her suggestion. Since I could not imagine anyone objecting to it, I did not put it to a vote. So, we now had a name and some good criteria.

Nominations: I asked the new webmaster, Gary Peterson to post an item on the main page of the district’s website to solicit nominations. Players were asked to send nominations with the reasons for their choices to my email account. At the same time I sent an email to all active players in D25. It is posted here.

The response was almost overwhelming. In the end I received ninety-nine emails nominating forty-one players. I nominated five people: Felix Springer, Trevor Reeves, Donna Feir, Linda Starr, and Joe Brouillard. I disqualified two of the nominees. Two people told be that I should be nominated. I told them that I was not eligible because I had won in 2017. One person nominated a woman who lived in New Jersey who, as far as I could tell, had never played in a tournament in New England. Chris Soares nominated someone who had recently died. Since he had been alive for most of the time since the last award was given, I allowed it.

I wrote php code for a webpage on Wavada.org to allow the members of the committee to read what players had said about the people that they had nominated. A link to the webpage is here. I left the nominations open until March 17.

On March 18 I sent the following email to the committee members:

The nomination process is now finished. The last nomination–and it was for a player who had not previously been nominated–came in at 11:53 last night. I was very impressed by the response. I am quite sure that no previous nominating process sparked anything comparable.
I only disqualified two nominations. One was for a player who lives in New Jersey and never seems to have played in New England. The other was for a previous winner of the Weiss award.
I have created a word-processing document for each nominee. Every document contains all the supporting material that was provided by nominators. I will create a pdf file from each of these and post them where each of you can read them. I have written a program that will make it easy to find and open them. I will send the link to this program as soon as all of the pdf files have been checked. I want to make sure that nothing was lost in the transition.
I hope for the evaluation phase to start on Monday. Since I am playing f2f today and tomorrow, it may be a day or so later. During that phase you will be provided time to read all the materials and, if you wish, to send me your thoughts (attributed or anonymous) to add to the pdf files before we start voting. I will provide more details when I send the link.

I made two mistakes in posting the nominations. I accidentally left off Ed Rothman, who Chris Soares had nominated. When she complained about it, I apologized, added him, and made sure that everyone knew about the mistake. I also left off Linda Starr, whom I nominated. I did not discover that until later.

The email containing the link and instructions for reading the nominating emails was sent on March 20:

It is time to start evaluating the cases for the forty players who have been nominated for the Weiss-Bertoni award. The official web page for this award is at https://nebridge.org/pages/481/. You can review the criteria there.
I have posted the text of all of the nominations on my website. You can view them through the alphabetical index at http://wavada.org/BAN001.php. When you get to that page click on the button at the bottom labeled “Generate HTML”. A list of the nominees, their units, ranks, and current masterpoints will appear. Beneath each nominee is a list of the people who nominated him/her. To read the text of the nominations just click on the underlined name of the nominee.
I did not edit the nominations except to leave out “thank you” and similar messages. I copied and pasted (as text) all of the messages. So, every message is in one uniform font without bolding, colors, emojis, or other flourishes.
The next step is to record your reactions and send them to me. You can specify that you want the message to be anonymous if you like. Otherwise, I will attribute it to the sender. I will either add the reactions to the bottom of the appropriate document or create a new document for reactions. I have not decided which to do. In either case you will be allowed to read them through the above link on my web site.
After everyone has a chance to digest the nominations and reactions, we will have a preliminary vote. In 2018 everyone was allowed to select three nominees whom they would be comfortable with as the winner. The people who appeared on at least five of these nine lists were considered finalists. The final voting was to select one of the finalists as the winner. Unless someone has a better idea, we will probably do it the same way this time.
Dan Morgenstern has agreed to be on the “subcommittee” that selects and purchases the physical award. If you have strong feelings about it (I don’t), you can contact him directly at dmdockayak@aol.com.
Please let me know that you received this email. I will send it again later in the week to anyone who doesn’t respond.

Discussion phase: On March 30 I sent an email to begin the “discussion phase”:

The nominating process for the Weiss-Bertoni award has ended. Before taking votes I want to solicit information and opinions from the committee members. I know a dozen or so nominees very well and another dozen or so well enough so to greet at a tournament. The people whom I know well live fairly close to me or have served with me on committees, boards, or projects. I would like to know what committee members with different backgrounds and locations think. I am also eager to share some of the “insider” experiences that I have had.
To that end I would like the other members of the committee to—if they want to—send me their anecdotes, thoughts, and feelings about any of the nominees that they know fairly well. I will create a pdf file for each nominee who receives comments from members and post them on the list. Each comment will be attributed to the sender unless it was specified that it was to be considered anonymous. For each nominee the word “Comments” will appear in red beneath the list of nominators if any comments have been received and posted. Clicking on “Comments” will produce a pdf file with all the comments for that nominee. I should have this portion of the web page working by Monday, April 3.
We can then start voting when everyone has had a chance to comment and digest the comments of others. I think that we should be able to do so near the end of April. It’s been five years since the last award; we should take as much time as we need.
Please let me know when you receive this message. I am sending the emails one at a time to try to avoid spam filters.

I was disappointed with the response to the request for additional comments. Perhaps it was a surprise to people that there were so many nominations to read. I read them all. Almost all of them were very short. Hardly anyone listed any details. I added my own comments to quite a few, but only one or two other people on the committee expressed their opinions.

This was, I suspect, another unexpected result of the pandemic. People had not been playing in very many different places. So, they were unfamiliar with the people who were working hard in other parts of New England. I know that I was.

Voting: The first round of voting began on May 1;

The participation in the “discussion phase” by the members of the Weiss-Bertoni committee was somewhat disappointing to me. The discussion phase in 2018 was more lively. Several committee members this time said that they were not very familiar with any of the nominees. Perhaps this is symptomatic of the isolation imposed over the previous three years.
It is May now, and we should start voting. Please send me a list of up to three of the nominees. They should be people whom you would be most comfortable with as the first recipient of the Weiss-Bertoni award. The criteria have been posted at https://nebridge.org/pages/481/. The list of nominees, including descriptions by the nominators and comments by committee member is stall available at http://wavada.org/BAN001.php. A few additional comments were added over this last weekend.
Please try to send your list to me this week, if possible. I will tabulate all of the votes and come up with a short list of finalists. I still expect to present the award at the Board of Delegates meeting in June.

The following people received at least one vote in the first round of voting: Karen Barrett, Joe Brouillard, Lois DeBlois, Yan Drabek, Donna Feir, Bob Gaudet, Kim Gilman, Tim Hill, David Metcalf, Sue Miguel, Ed Rothman, Bob Sagor, and Caroly Weiser. Sue Miguel and Joe Brouillard received more votes than the others.

This email for the final vote was sent on May 9:

Thank you very much for participating in the process of selecting the first winner of the Weiss-Bertoni award. Thirteen nominees received at least one vote in the elimination round. Two candidates received more than the others. So, the final choice is between Joe Brouillard and Sue Miguel. Please send me your choice of one or the other.
If you wish to review the nomination materials or comments, they are still available at http://wavada.org/BAN001.php.

The final vote was very close. It was 4-4 as I awaited the final vote, which finally arrived on May 18.

The new trophy: My original idea was to procure a tray that resembled the original Larry Weiss trophy as closely as possible. It was round and silver-plated. There was enough space on it for the name of the award, a phrase that described it, and twenty-four name-date combinations. If we gave it out every year, I would be 98 when it was full, and no one would ask me about it.

I spent many hours on the Internet looking for such a thing. I was pretty sure that the original, which was in my possession for an entire year, was at least eighteen inches in diameter. I found nothing that exceeded sixteen inches, and those trays all had ornamentation on them that would have greatly reduced the available space.

I asked for some time at the Executive Committee meeting. Of course, I was last on the agenda. I asked for a budget and/or help in choosing the new trophy. People were very eager to end the meeting. In the chaos of the last few seconds Sue Miguel, Peter Marcus, and (I could be wrong about her) Carolyn Weiser agreed to “take it offline”, which I interpreted to mean that they would form a subcommittee and take care of it.

I asked for a volunteer from the awards committee to join them, and Dan Morgenstern said that he would. I did not forget about the trophy, but I stopped researching. I received the following email from Dan on April 8:

I am out of the country until 4/25…I won’t be able to comment .
Also, none of the folks who volunteered to come up with a gift have been in touch…I am thinking a small individual plaque rather than an engraved plate.
Hope you are well!

This was what he wrote when he returned on April 28:

I have been away in the South Pacific for the past month, little or no internet.
Anyway,sorry about the slow response.
I haven’t heard from Peter Marcus ( I think he was going to lead the trophy choice team).
If we chose individual plaques, I would think they would be the same from year to year…no decisions needed.
I am a bit surprised at the lack of comments, other than yours…you might think the nominators would want to post…
I know most of the top players, other than Mark Aquino, I don’t know that most of them have done much to popularize bridge. I will look more closely at the list…

I resumed my research. I discovered that, depending on what we wanted, we could spend less than $100 or more than $1,000. I needed a budget. I wrote this email to Curtis on April 25:

As I mentioned before, I have little confidence that the subcommittee that volunteered at the end of the last EC meeting is doing anything to procure the physical Weiss-Bertoni award. Can you tell me what I need to do to get a budget for purchasing the trophy?

Here is what he replied:

We’ll discuss it at he next EC meeting (Saturday PM). If you have an idea what a suitable trophy would cost, that would help.

When I told him that we were in the process of voting, and I intended to award the trophy at the Board of Delegates meeting on the morning after the EC meeting, he told me just to get what I thought was appropriate.

I then asked Sue to help me with the project. She spent even more time on the Internet. As I did, she gave up on getting an appropriate tray. She did, however find a trophy with places for attaching a pretty large number of small engravings for winners and one big one for the name of the trophy. I liked it, and she negotiated a very reasonable price of about $150 including the shipping and engraving costs.

The vendor was Crown Awards. All of the engraving was done perfectly, and Sue assembled everything. I thought that it was very classy.

Presentation: The Board of Delegates met on June 25. Between twenty and thirty people were assembled. As always, I was last on the agenda. I made the presentation from my seat in which I was surrounded by the only other participants from Connecticut—Paul Burnham, Peter, and Sue.

I described the process that I used to select the nine committee members. I told everyone how pleased I was with the enthusiastic response to the solicitation for nominations. I held up the trophy for everyone to see. I told them that Sue had done most of the work in acquiring it. I said that if they liked it, they should compliment her. If not, they should keep their opinions to themselves. Then I read the name on the trophy: “Joe Brouillard”.

Joe was clearly stunned, but he wasn’t speechless. He gave a short acceptance speech. I was so happy for him.

General announcements: I had scheduled an email to go our to all active members of D25 at 10:30 while Sue and I were battling the traffic back to Enfield. It was short enough to post here:

Three members of the awards committee told me that they had enjoyed the experience and liked the trophy.

I also asked the webmaster to post a blurb that I wrote about it, and he did.

2006 March: Sue and Mike Spend a Week in San Diego

Posted on July 25, 2023 by Mike

Animals and more opera. Continue reading →

In the summer of 2023 I spent more than a day gathering information from every source that I could think of to try to determine exactly when Sue and I took the trip to San Diego. At first I thought that it was in 2002; I even wrote about one thousand words based on that assumption. I later found evidence that made me place it as late as 2009. As I was in the process of rewriting this to reflect the new date I came upon a set of Word documents labeled SD01 through SD07. They contained the notes that I had taken while on the trip, and they were dated. So, I can say with no fear of contradiction that the trip began on Thursday, March 23, 2006 and ended on Wednesday, March 29.

The notes were evidently intended to be expanded into a readable write-up of the trip and then, along with a sampling of photos, posted on Wavada.org along with my other travel journals. Evidently I must have gotten either busy or lazy; the readable journal never was written, and nothing was ever posted.

The good part is that the notes were a lot better than the septuagenarian memories that I would have needed to tap. Unfortunately, the photos have been lost. If I had integrated them into a journal, I would still have the best of them.

On the same day that I found the notes I rummaged through the bottom shelf on the bookcase in my office and found a paper bag with the imprint of the San Diego Opera on it. Inside was a receipt for the opera tickets, the program for the performance that we saw, and many other items from other places that Sue and I had visited. I would have preferred to find my photos, but this find greatly increased my enthusiasm for working on this entry.

Preparation: In March of 2006 we had two cats, the youngster Giacomo (introduced here), and my best buddy Woodrow (introduced here). The notes stated that Woodrow “purred in my ear”, which is how he often told me that it was time to get out of bed. We planned on leaving the cats alone in the house for a week, but we were not worried about them. Woodrow was well past his prime, but he was very self-reliant and quite tough. Besides, if things got bad, they could go outside through the cat door and make mischief. Sue’s father-in-law Chick Comparetto¹ promised to look in on them to make sure that they had food and water. Woodrow was not afraid of strangers (or anything else). He would certainly greet Chick at the door and ask to be petted. Giacomo in those days was quite shy. Chick probably would never lay eyes on him.

I had a Frommer’s guidebook for San Diego that I purchased in 2000 for the business trip that I took with Denise Bessette in 2000 (recounted here). I did not use it much then, but I must have researched it much more thoroughly in 2006.

We planned to meet up with Marva Whitehead, whom we had met on our first trip to Italy in 2003 (documented here), for dinner on Monday. To pay for the trip we were using my frequent-flyer miles on Delta, my Hilton Honors points for the hotel stay, and my frequent-parker points at Executive Valet Parking for a spot near the airport. It was actually a pretty economical trip.

Would you expect Charlotte to be on the left on a trip from BDL to ATL?

The notes said that we brought Sue’s backpack/suitcase purchased for the 2003 trip to Italy, the duffel that IBM had given me in 2000 and the cats had baptized shortly thereafter, a suitcase held together with duct tape, and another backpack that contained my computer. Sue also probably brought an assortment of bags to use as carry-ons. I brought my camera (a small Cascio point-and-shoot digital) with some ability to zoom. Sue may have brought her camera, too.

Sue had arranged for John Bolling, a former IBM employee with whom she had worked in (or maybe even before) the early days of TSI, to meet us at the airport in Atlanta during our layover there. Our plane to San Diego did not leave until 6:18PM.

Denny’s closed for good in 2022 after 45 years.

Thursday March 23: Our first stop was at Chick’s house. Sue gave him the spare key to the house. We then ate brunch at the Denny’s on Elm St. at a little after 10AM. For some reason we made two trips to the bank (or maybe one each to two different banks). Sue sent an email to Marva just before we left.

We drove in my Saturn to Executive. The guy in front of me in the line there asked the clerk about the company’s points system. He had paid only $4 per night by using prepaid coupons. It was nice for once to be the one who was going on vacation. Usually I was the stressed-out guy on a business trip, and everyone else was giddy about their upcoming vacation. It was an even better feeling this time because I had amassed enough points to pay for the car’s entire stay.

Our itinerary called for us to leave Bradley at 1:55 p.m. and to change planes in Atlanta. We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. For once there was no problem getting through security. Because of problems in Atlanta we did not actually leave until 2:41. Sue made short work of an ice cream cone while we were waiting.

The flight from Bradley to Atlanta was completely filled. Sue volunteered to take the middle seat, but she was quite uncomfortable. She learned that the guy next to her was going to Costa Rica to photograph wildlife. I had made this trip so many times that it was like riding a bus for me.

Somehow John Bolling found us in the gigantic Atlanta airport. He had a job there working for AirTran Airways². He told us that he did not like his assignment at all. He had reportedly lost twenty-five pounds in five weeks.

I bought and consumed a gyro and some curly fries while we were waiting for our plane to depart. It did not do so until 7:15.

The plane to San Diego was also very full. No meal was served on the flight, but we did get drinks and a package of snacks. I selected trail mix, Later the flight attendants brought some Gouda cheese spread, and crackers plus some kind of buttery shortbread stick. One passenger was a guy from Italy. I was impressed that the stewardess was able to converse with him in Italian.

Sue watched a movie on the little screen on the back of the seat in front of her, “The Family Stone,” with Sarah Jessica Parker, Diane Keaton, and Dermot Mulroney. I was in the middle seat. I undoubtedly brought something to read, study, or play with, but the notes did not mention anything. The guy next to me brought absolutely nothing with him for diversion, and he did not avail himself of anything offered by the airline. He just sat there.

Nothing held together with duct tape appeared on the carousel.

Although we gained three hours during the flight, it was still 9:30 by the time that the plane’s wheels touched the ground. When we arrived at the baggage claim area, I was amazed that our luggage was not there. This NEVER happened to me on business trips, and on this occasion both of our flights departed late. It was hard to imagine how Delta had screwed this up.

Sue was upset about it. It did not bother me a great deal. In the worst-case scenario we might need to wear the same clothes for a day or two. Only one person in San Diego knew us in San Diego, and we were not scheduled to see her for a few days.

We told the people at baggage claim that we were staying at the Hampton Inn in Kearney Mesa. They said that they would deliver the bags to us there.

We walked to the Avis counter and picked up our rental. Our vehicle was a blue Chevy HHR that, according to a form that I found in the bag, had been inspected by someone named Otis. I had seen one or two of these cars before, but they were still an oddity if March of 2006. I was not impressed. It had no pickup at all.

We found our way to the Hampton Inn in Kearny Mesa. By then it was nearly 11:00, which was 2AM Enfield time. I had never had a bad experience checking in at a Hampton Inn. This clerk was unenthusiastic, but he seemed competent. We told him that Delta would be delivering our luggage, or at least we hoped so.

We quickly went to sleep, but for once we hoped to be disturbed during the night.

Friday March 24: The bags were delivered at 1AM. They appeared to be in no worse shape than when we had checked them.

All Hampton Inns provided a free breakfast buffet. Sue likes to go to restaurants for breakfast, but the selection at this hotel was pretty good. This was a good deal for people who can tolerate plastic silverware and are not picky about how their eggs are cooked. I had scrambled eggs and biscuits, fruit, and cereal. The setting was very elegant by Hampton Inn standards.

Our plan for the day was to visit the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park³. The name was slightly misleading. Although the park was affiliated with the zoo, it was located in the San Pasqual Valley east of Escondido. It was thirty miles north of the zoo.

We had a very beautiful day for our visit—74 degrees and sunny. We drive north through a naval air base and then east through the back country. We drove by an ostrich farm, which was a first for me, and a few places where visitors were allowed to pick their own oranges.

The park was huge. It covered 1,700 acres! The animals at the park were not, for the most part, kept in cages. Rather they were kept in groups in areas that resembled each one’s natural setting. The easiest way to see a lot of animals fairly quickly was to take the monorail⁴, a two-car open-air train that made a clockwise circuit around the entire park.

The park was not too crowded. We picked up a map of the park and a list of the shows and their times. We also picked up pamphlets that described two sections of the park, Heart of Africa and Condor Ridge. The former contained the vegetarian animals that resided on the savannas. The latter contained animals from North America.

There were a few empty seats on the monorail. We took Frommer’s advice and sat on the right. The trip lasted a little less than an hour. Each train had a guide who explained over the intercom what area of the park we were passing and what animals were visible. In a few cases she needed to direct our attention where some of them were hiding.

The train ride was great fun. We saw three separate types of rhinos. At one point the guide told us about some kind of Japanese animal that was in a culvert directly beneath the train. We passed through lots of different terrains. We even saw mountain goats and bighorn sheep in the Condor Ridge section, a bonobo playing with a basketball, and a giraffe doing the splits in the Heart of Africa.

We could see a balloon ride that we did not take. There were also trucks that you could ride in. Their main purpose was to feed the animals, but visitors could pay to tag along.

My most distinctly remembered experience occurred near the end of the monorail ride. The guide told us to be very quiet as we were approaching a new exhibit. She warned us not to make noise, because it might disturb one of the park’s newest resident, a bobcat. We need not have worried; I doubt that any noise we made would have disturbed a loader manufactured by the Bobcat company.

After the monorail ride ended we stopped for some food. We purchased an apple, banana, muffin, a bag of $4 potato chips and a $4 glass of Diet Coke. I also got a refill for only $1. In 2006 these prices were outrageous.

I think that we walked up to Condor Ridge, which is in the northeast corner of the park. My notes say that we saw a bald eagle, some prairie dogs, and a porcupine.

Somewhere in the park we saw all of the following. I probably took photos of all of them.

Gorillas being fed some oranges.
A hummingbird and a bustard.
A sleeping warthog.
A meerkat colony. One was on guard; the rest were underground.
A bird show. I wrote: “Pete and girls. Forgot about the parrot act.”
An elephant show with two performing pachyderms, Mary and Cookie. The trainer’s name was Brittany.
“Poop from egret.”

I loved the Wild Animal Park even more than I had loved the San Diego Zoo six years earlier.

We ate supper.at the Pampas Bar and Grill⁵ in SanDiegoVille. Our waiter was named Pedro. I ordered a ribeye and mashed potatoes. Sue had a strip steak with sauce and rice. The vegetables were understandably meager. Argentinians are notoriously carnivorous. A guy played the guitar and a harp while we were dining.

The vacation was off to a great start.

Saturday March 25: The plan was to spend the entire day in San Diego. The weather cooperated. It was around 70 all day long, and it was sunny.

We ate breakfast in the hotel again. I had sausage and scrambled eggs, with biscuits, fruit, and cereal. The baseball team from Westmont College in San Diego was in the dining room at the same time as we were. Their uniforms had maroon trim. They reminded me of UMass’s colors. I had stayed at many Hampton Inns. I had never seen a breakfast area so crowded. Sue and I had to eat at little table.

The next line of my notes says: “Convoy St. Target: _______. Big dip to get in. Drove past Home Depot Expo Center.” I am not sure what to make of this. There is a Target in Kearney Mesa, but in 2023 it is on Othello St. There is a Home Depot Design Center in San Diego, but it is not near the hotel or Target.

Balboa Park was our first touristy destination of the day. The park’s website calls it, “San Diego’s ever-changing, always amazing, 1,200-acre back yard.” I distinctly remember having trouble finding a parking space along the side of the road. Several women were reserving spaces for their husbands. When I finally found one I had difficulty maneuvering the HHR into it. It was quite a bit larger than my Saturn, and the visibility was not as good.

The main thoroughfare, which is reserved for pedestrians, in Balboa Park is El Prado. The notes describe it as “very nice”, and the photos that I found on the Internet certainly confirmed that. On both sides of it were museums, hotels, restaurants, and other elegant places.

The notes state:

Railroad museum. Wooden trestle bridge. Imperial valley. Junkyard dog. Barrel falling off of truck. Pushing truck uphill.

I assume that the first two words referred to the Model Railroad Museum that was located in the basement of the Casa de Balboa building on El Prado. Although a flyer from the museum was in the Sand Diego Opera bag, I don’t remember anything about it.

Sue had her own N scale model train layout that she constructed on the ping pong table in our basement in Enfield. Someone bought a Lionel train set for me when I was very young. My dad and Joey Kuchel set it up in the basement when my family lived in Kansas City, KS.

Evidently we saw all of the following somewhere in Balboa Park: “Palm reader, bicycle taxi, guitar and flute.” None of these references rings a bell. I distinctly remember not getting my palm read in San Diego or anywhere else.

I did not find a flyer from the Natural History Museum, but we must have gone there. We saw a movie about Baja California and a skeleton of an allosaur.

I reported “lots of interactive stuff for the kids.” Don’t ask me what “Dave in white coat in bathroom” referred to.

I have no notes about the tram that went around the park. It was free, and I found a flyer for it, so there is a good chance that we rode on it for a while.

Try to imagine the Moreton Bay Fig Tree with seventeen less years of growth. That is what we saw.

Our next stop was at Sunset Cliffs Natural Park. I probably had some very striking memories of this stunning location, but all that I wrote was, “Sucking face. Woman with cigarette”.

I found handwritten directions to Old Venice Restaurant on the back of an advertising piece from Avis that was in the bag. We ate a pizza and a very good salad for supper there. The pizza had prosciutto, chicken and basil. The notes stated that the restaurant was near Shelter Island, which is really a long peninsula.

I remarked in the notes that the people in the restaurant were too good-looking. We ate our supper on a wobbly table outside. Darren was the waiter’s name. I didn’t record the amount, but I am pretty sure that I left a tip.

When we left the restaurant I noticed a small ding on the passenger side of the HHR. Dings on rental cars can be costly. I had to hope that Otis had made a note of it when he inspected the vehicle or that whoever inspected it when we turned it in was equally negligent.

I forgot to bring the good map that I had ripped out of Frommer’s in 2000. I found myself on Rosecrans road and couldn’t figure out how to get on the freeway. I also ran a red light. The notes did not state whether the malfeasance was accidental or deliberate.

Another great day!

Sunday March 26: The plan was to drive to La Jolla, Coronado Island, and Old Town in San Diego. I wonder how much I used the Frommer’s book to select the itineraries. My choices do not closely agree with “Frommer’s favorite San Diego experiences.”

Sue might disagree, but I found the weather to be less than perfect. Clouds kept the temperature in the sixties all day. That’s light-jacket weather for me.

We had the usual breakfast at the Hampton—eggs and biscuits, fruit, and cereal. They also generally provided at least two kinds of juices and plenty of coffee.

We stopped at Target again. This time we picked up some two-liter bottles of Diet Cokes and some snacks. These items were much cheaper at chain stores than at locations attractive to tourists.

La Jolla was less than ten miles to the west of our hotel. I anticipated that we might have difficulty finding a place to park, but I was wrong.

Sue and I walked down to the beach We saw the aggregation of seals that Denise and I had enjoyed so much in 2000, but the only thing that I wrote about the experience was that the rest rooms were “crummy”. My dim recollection is that it was breezy at the cove.

We walked into town and strolled around for a bit. It seems incredible, but I reported that we could not find the Best Western in which Denise and I stayed. I did take note (and probably photos) of two dachshunds.

We did not take the 26-minute route from La Jolla to Coronado Island that is shown in the map at the left.

We were in no hurry, and so we drove through San Diego down to Chula Vista and then over to Imperial Beach at the south end of San Diego Bay. from there we took the “Silver Strand” up to Coronado.

The notes indicated “6$ at beach”. Maybe that was what I paid for parking. All beaches in California have always been open to the public.

I remember that there were protestors at the incredibly elegant Del Coronado Hotel, but I do not recall what the issue was. We had lunch al fresco. It consisted of leftover pizza from Old Vienna and food that we had purloined from breakfast at the Hampton Inn.

We walked up to the legendary hotel and even went inside. I could not believe how many bellboys they had. I kept waiting for one of them to shout, “Call for Philip Morris.”

Afterwards we stopped at a place called Moo Time Creamery for some ice cream. For some reason we ordered three types of ice cream. The notes stated that Sue really liked the double chocolate and the pear sorbet. I preferred the stracciatella.

Moo Time had a statue of Elvis and another one of a cow. I found a photo on the Internet.

I am surprised that I even tasted the ice cream. It has never been my favorite food, and, if the temperature was only in the sixties, I was probably shivering while I ate it.

From Coronado we drove to Seaport Village, which was on the eastern side of the bay, so that Sue could do some shopping in what its website calls “14 acres of fine waterfront dining, entertainment and world-class shopping in the heart of beautiful San Diego”.

I had difficulty finding a place to park. I must have let Sue off and parked in a lot rather than on the street. The notes said, “Hard to park. Meet at four. Brought Sue the ticket.” I interpret this to mean that I was given a ticket so that the HHR could exit from the lot, that I brought the ticket to Sue, that I planned to mess around somewhere while she shopped, and that we would meet up somewhere at 4PM.

The rest of my notes about Seaport Village were difficult to decipher: “Smoking outside of jewelry store. Arabs. Cat.illacs.” I was evidently impressed by the number of boats in the nearby marina. I also saw quite a few sailboats in the harbor. In 2023 I have no memories of this place, but Sue’s only clear memory of the entire trip was that she bought her favorite earrings there.

From Seaport Village we probably took I-5, which in Southern California is called “The 5”, north to the Old Town section. Old Town is a State Historic Park. The website describes it this way:

Five original adobe buildings are part of the historic park, which include museums, unique retail shops, and several restaurants. The Historic Plaza remains a special place for gatherings and historic activities. Visitors can also experience a working blacksmith shop, enjoy music, see or touch the park’s burros, and engage in activities that represent early San Diego.

I reportedly was very lucky with the parking. The word “Closing” is mentioned in the notes. Perhaps the “unique retail shops” had closed for the day.

We toured the area for a while and then decided to eat supper at Café de Reyes. We ate outside. The weather was perfect for Sue, and I got to sit by the heater. Our waiter was named Daniel, and the busboy was Jorge. The clientele seemed to be equally divided between Mexican-Americans and gringos. There were free tables when we arrived, but it got pretty crowded after we sat down.

For an appetizer we ordered quesos fundidos, which was a plate of goat’s cheese and sausage. The notes indicated that I had “combination #1 and a very large margarita.” The combinations are no longer numbered on the restaurant’s online menu, and so I cannot say what it contained, but I did call the supper “very nice”.

The notes also specified a “lady making tortillas with scrunched-up shoulders.” It didn’t specify whether she worked for the restaurant or not. I assume that, despite the word order, the shoulders belonged to the lady, not the tortillas.

When we returned to the hotel we were both dead tired. Sue contacted Marva by phone or email. We saw commercials on television for Congress to replace Duke Cunningham, who had resigned in 2005 for taking bribes from military contractors.⁷

We also learned that although the UConn men lost, the women won.

Monday March 27: This was the zoo day. For photos of animals (including the pandas) from the trip in 2000 look here. The weather was beautiful until about 1:30PM. It became chilly after that.

My breakfast at the Hampton was sausages with cold hard biscuits supplemented by fruit and cereal. The notes indicated that I took photos of the grounds around the Hampton. You will need to imagine the basketball goal and what the “Shriner stuff” might have been.

The zoo was located in Balboa Park. By this time I was familiar enough with the area that the drive there was a stress-free experience. We arrived at about 10:00. I parked the HHR near the sidewalk between aisle 4 and 5. From there it was an easy walk to the entrance. We did not need to stand in line because we already had tickets.

We made a beeline for the panda exhibit. There was no line at all. We got to see the six-year old that had been a baby for my first visit as well as the parents.

We then took the moving sidewalk up to the polar bear exhibit. Only one of them was out, but he put on a show for us. I remember that half of the exhibit was water, and you could easily see the bears when they went for a swim.

We got a bird’s-eye view of the park from the Skyfari ride. It had been included in the price of the combo (Zoo plus Wild Animal Park) tickets that we had bought. Denise and I did not do this. My recollection is that she was not good with heights.

When we were back on terra firma we walked down to visit the tortoises. One of them appeared to be horny. After that Sue went into the lizard and reptile mesa; I think that I stayed and took more photos of the amorous tortoises. We both then spent a little time in the reptile house.

We then went to see the orangutans in their new home. The notes indicated that I took good pictures of the baby. It was painful to write the last sentence. I have got to find those photos.

We ate lunch in the Treehouse Cafe, which was definitely aptly named. The photo at the right provided a good indication as to how hilly the zoo was. I ate a chicken Caesar salad with some chips and coke. Sue had clam chowder in a bread bowl and chocolate layer cake.

While we were eating the temperature dropped like a rock. The notes do not indicate whether I brought a jacket, but I probably did.

The gorilla enclosure allowed us to be within just a few feet of the mighty apes. The notes indicated that I was very impressed with the size of the silver-back’s thighs.

We next saw the hippo, but I was unable to snap any good pictures. The water was too dirty.

The flamingos did what flamingos do.

I think that the “express bus” that we took was similar to this one. The park now has a Kangaroo Bus that is a double-decker.

We then took the zoo’s express bus from stop 3 to stop 4 so that we could see the giraffes and the other hoofed animals. One of the giraffes was only two days old, but it was already pretty steady on its feet.

Sue was disappointed that we never saw any meerkats. We viewed their exhibit from three separate vantage point, but they all stayed in their burrow. It was a good thing that we had seen the sentinel at the Wild Animal Park. If not, she might have insisted on extending our stay in San Diego until she saw one.

We reportedly saw all of the following:

A horny wallaby.
Bactrian camels.
Some very active koalas.
Both Asian and African elephants drinking from a fountain.
Llamas.
Pigs.
Capybaras
At least one tapir..
A peacock that had flown up on a roof.
Quite a lot of topiary.

We enjoyed supper with Marva at the Imperial Mandarin Chinese restaurant. I had wonton soup and spareribs. Sue also had wonton soup and moo shu pork, which was apparently a specialty of the Imperial Mandarin.

One of the rear doors on Marva’s car did not work. After noting this fact I included the phrase “Simply Marvalous”.

We drove to the Black Angus steakhouse for drinks. The bartender’s name was Ryan. I had Scotch on the rocks. The notes stated that someone had a lemon-drop martini. I have a hard time believing that it was Sue. She usually ordered a Scotch if I did.

It is telling that the notes included absolutely no mention of the conversations. Either I was not paying attention, or I figured that I would remember it without prompting.

I must have had only one Scotch. I managed to pilot the HHR back to the Hampton without any difficulty.

Tuesday March 28: The original plan was to go to Sea World. However, it rained lightly all night long. By morning it looked pretty good, but the forecast was for rain all day, or at least all afternoon. We therefore decided to skip Sea World. The new plan was to make return trips to Balboa Park and Old Town.

For breakfast we ate egg pizzas (that’s what the notes said), fruit, and cereal.

This time we had no problem parking in Balboa Park. We saw busloads of kids and also witnessed a group of Mexicans or Mexican-Americans in blue warm-up suits.

I do not know what to make of the phrase “Bridge over Park Rd.” There is a famous bridge in Balboa Park, and there is a Park Blvd., but the one does not go over the other.

We saw a cactus garden and a rose garden. I also noted a pair of sneakers in a tree.

The people in the park that day were interesting. I saw a guy with a flag, and I overheard another guy who said, “I should have shot him again. I should have shot him four times.”

We visited the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, and I picked up a daily schedule there and a flyer for an IMAX film about Greece. There was quite a bit of interactive stuff for kids in the area of the museum called Kid City. A few of the devices appeared to be broken. We watched a presentation on television entitled “Origins in Space”. It was about NASA and particularly the Hubble Space Telescope.

I don’t know why the word “Einstein” was included in the notes.

Sue and I enjoyed a cappuccino at Galileo’s Café inside the center and then watched an IMAX movie called “Greece: Secrets of the Past”. In the theater there you lean back and watch the film on a dome. I don’t think that this was a particularly useful way to learn about Greece’s past.

The statue of El Cid did not look much like Charlton Heston.

We saw a Venus flytrap, among many other species, in the Botanical Museum.

We walked past the Mingei International Museum, which promoted folk art and crafts from around the globe. We did not go inside.

We drove to Old Town again for a late lunch. We had tacos and a burrito at the Alamo Mexican Cafe. It got quite chilly. Sue wrote postcards, and I mailed them. The notes stated, “Alamo closed up.” I interpret this to mean that the patio area was closed because of the weather.

On our way to the car we found a store that was offering 50-65% off the regular price. The notes did not say what they were selling or whether we went in.

We drove back to the Hampton and took a nap so that Sue could stay awake during the opera, and I could prevent cartoon characters from appearing in the last act, as they had during the performance that Denise and I attended.

This time the San Diego Opera was presenting on a performance of Carmen by Georges Bizet. Both Sue and I had seen traditional productions of this opera several times. I owned a CD of the opera that used Bizet’s original version that included dialogue, not recitative. Every performance that I had seen had used recitative, which, in my opinion blunted the impact of Carmen’s personality.

We also had season tickets for the Hartford Stage Company when Mark Lamos, the director, was the artistic director. Both of us were quite sure that his Carmen would not be a traditional one, and we were right. The program for the opera contains 56 pages, but there is not a word about the production. The setting had been moved from Spain to an unnamed Latin American country and from the late nineteenth century to the thirties or forties. This really did not impact the arc of the story line much. Of course, gypsies were rare in Latin America, but it was not that hard to suspend disbelief. The famous Anvil Chorus did not seem anachronistic in this environment.

All performances of Carmen were sold out, but the two seats next to me were empty and at least one woman seated near us left after the first act.

I don’t remember whether I enjoyed the performance or not. The only detail that I remember was that one guy in the audience wore shorts. If it had been the dialogue version I feel certain that I would have mentioned it. The review in my notes was terse: “Liked Micaela. Good chorus. Great acoustics.”

It took a very long time to maneuver the HHR out of the parking garage. That’s often part of the price one pays for attending one of the ABC operas.

Back at the Hampton we enjoyed a late supper of leftovers consisting of moo shu pork and combination #1.

Wednesday March 29: When I traveled to the West Coast on business, I always returned on an overnight (“red-eye”) flight. The times of our return flights were not specified in the notes, but we obviously spent most of the day getting from San Diego to Enfield.

I woke up with quite a bit of energy and decided to go for a run. After a few minutes it started to sprinkle, and I returned to the hotel.

Since getting food is always somewhat dicey on airplanes and in airports we decided to treat ourselves to a full breakfast at the Spice House Café.⁹ It was less than a mile from the hotel. We had veggie frittatas and “gyros meat”, which I presume was lamb The portions were enormous. The very nice waitress, whose name I did not record, kept the coffee flowing. It rained quite hard during breakfast, but then it cleared up.

We returned to our room at the Hampton Inn, packed our things into the HHR, and checked out. Sue, needless to say, brought leftovers.

I stopped for gas at an Arco station. The pump wouldn’t accept my ATM card¹⁰ for some reason. I went to a nearby Chevron station that accepted the card. We then drove to the airport and returned the HHR to Avis. Either they did not notice the ding, or they didn’t care.

The notes said, “Raining in Salt Lake City.” So, we evidently changed planes there. I had been in that airport at least once before, but it is the only place in Utah that I have visited. The other states that I have missed (as of 2023) are Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, and Alaska.

We ate leftovers from breakfast on the flight from Salt Lake City to Bradley. There was plenty of time for Sue to watch a movie. She did not ordinarily like science fiction, but maybe “Aeon Flux” with Charlize Theron was the only thing that was available. I worked on sorting and editing my photos, the B4 deck¹¹, the notes, and playing bridge on Bridge Baron.¹²

Both our bodies and our luggage arrived at Bradley International intact. It was probably pretty late; we lost three hours in the air. I called Executive Valet, and they sent their bus to bring us to their lot.

As always, my Saturn¹³ was running and parked near the door of the office. It was a little disconcerting that the “Service engine soon” light was on.

No trip was over until we verified that the cats were OK. As the Saturn entered the driveway we saw a grey tiger-striped cat in the yard. This was not a good sign; he was not one of ours. Woodrow, as expected, greeted us as soon as we went through the door. He showed me that there was no cat food left in the gravity dispenser. I poured some into the metal plate that the cats ate from.

Giacomo made an appearance the next morning. The entertaining and exciting trip to San Diego was officially completed.

1. Sue was married (but estranged) when I met her in 1972. Her father-in-law, Chick Comparetto, lived in Enfield about a mile from our house. He looked after our cats on most of our big trips. His obituary can be found here.

2. At the height of its popularity AirTran operated 700 flights per day, many of them passing through Atlanta. It was acquired in 2011 by Southwest Airlines.

3. The park was renamed San Diego Zoo Safari Park in 2010.

4. In 2010 the monorail was replaced by a set of wheeled vehicles with similar capacity.

5. The restaurant closed in 2019 after twenty years in business.

6. Give the kid a break. His parents could not find the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.

7. Are you surprised to learn that he was pardoned in the waning moments of the Trump administration?

8. You do not need to go to San Diego to be entertained by the zoo’s polar bears. You can watch them on polar-cam.

9. The Spice House Café closed its doors for good in December of 2018. It had been in business for twenty-six years.

10. Perhaps the most puzzling thing in all of the notes is the fact that I used an ATM card to buy gas rather than a credit card. By that time I paid for everything with credit cards in order to amass points. I had separate American Express Cards for Hilton and Delta. I had used them to earn enough points to cover most of the costs of this trip.

11. I can’t be certain, but this probably refers to a deck of flash cards that I created for quizzing myself on Italian vocabulary. The English words were sorted alphabetically, one card per word; the Italian word or words were on the back. The B meant that deck contained English words that started with the letter B. They were sorted alphabetically. The 4 meant that this was the fourth deck. There were at least ten thousand cards in total. I went through the entire set of decks more than ten times.

12. Bridge Baron was a terrific software product that facilitated the learning of bridge, both play and conventions. I had Bridge Baron15 on my laptop. The last version of the software that could be installed on your computer and run without the Internet was Bridge Baron29. In 2023 the app Bridge Baron Gold is still for sale.

13. The Saturn lasted until the end of the year. I traded it in for a beautiful sapphire-blue 2007 Honda Accord coupe.

2023 Bridge: Limited Sectional at the HBC on 3/26

Posted on June 29, 2023 by Mike

57 Tables! Continue reading →

The details of the event, its planning, the first email, and the brouhaha that followed are described in the excruciating long blog entry that is posted here. You almost certainly won’t want to read the entire entry, but the first few paragraphs are rather essential to the understanding of this one.

If you refuse to use the link, you should at least know that the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) was planning a Limited Section on Sunday, March 26. The details were handled by Linda Starr, but Donna Feir, the club manager, oversaw the project. Two flights were planned—0-299 and 0-750 non-Life Masters. A free lunch would be served between the two sessions.

While engaged in the back-and-forth concerning the scandalous Tonto email, I cobbled together a similar one for the people in Westchester County, NY, the wealthy suburban area that is west of southeastern Connecticut. You can view a sample of this email here. Before I sent it out, I showed this to the officers of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA). They liked it, probably because I removed the toxic character who featured in the first one. This version went out on January 31.

201 people eventually opened the email, most of them repeatedly. Ten clicked on the link to the flyer to get more information. Not great, but most of these people were facing a two-hour drive to the HBC.

The second set of emails was sent on February 23. It used some obscure facts that I unearthed on the Internet. They highlighted the dearth of silver in southern New England. A sample is posted here. Just as I had sent it out, Linda Starr asked me via email:

Did you send out the latest email about the March 26 sectional? I haven’t gotten even one new registration since the few days after the first email went out and I only have 6 tables at this point. So if you get a chance, any additional publicity would be helpful!!! I have been announcing it at the Friday afternoon games and have asked to have it announced at all the other games. Any suggestions on what else I can do to promote it?

We had decided to ask people to register early so that we would know how many lunches to buy. Peter had told us that ACBL rules prohibited excluding players who failed to register.

I replied that I had just sent out the first part of the second batch. I also reported some statistics:

As of 5pm 1305 deliveries, 521 opened, 17 clicked (one twice), 19 bounced, 3 unsubscribed. I will send to Westchester tomorrow.
I will work on a third email over the weekend emphasizing that the HBC is a nice place to play. It should go out on March 12. I am open to other suggestions.

There was one small issue that Linda had to address. A page on Unit 126’s website, CTBridge.org, advertised that those playing in their first tournament would get a free game. There was also something about people who joined the ACBL. The concern was whether either of these policies, which were put in place years earlier, would apply to a tournament run by a club. The webmaster planned to take down the notice as soon as the HBC’s Limited Sectional was over. Linda wrote,

I emailed Peter this morning asking if he wanted us to promote the free game for first time tournament players or just give it to those who asked. Haven’t heard back yet but depending on his reply, that might be something else to promote.

I had made no mention of this in any previous emails. I needed to know whether to emphasize it in the last email. I wrote “Since everyone in my database is a current or former ACBL member, it would have to be a request for people to ask others who are not members.”

On March 6 Linda wrote “So far it appears that no one knows the answer. So just go ahead and send out the reminder without the info about the free sessions. If any non members show up, I’ll deal with it then.”

As I was almost ready to send the emails, Linda received an answer from Peter Marcus, the President of the CBA.

I will admit, I tend not to be too concerned with these kind of freebies. If no one takes them, it costs nothing. If a lot of people take them, while that could amount to some money, it means we are getting a lot of new players that, over time, will more than cover the costs. So, I tend to be open to being very liberal about things like this,
I don’t totally understand the guest membership program of the ACBL. But, from my understanding, guest memberships get all the information to “add someone to our database” so we can contact them. To me, that alone is worth a free play, let alone the possibility of them becoming a full, recurring ACBL member.

An email in praise of the HBC’s outstanding facility, a sample of which is posted here, was sent in two batches: one (sent on March 5) for players having between 200 and 750 masterpoints, the other (released on March 8) for those with less than 200 points.

Meanwhile, a signup sheet had been posted on the club’s bulletin board. People were needed to help setting up the tables and chairs, to run the two registration tables, to organize and set out the lunch, and to clean up. I volunteered to take photos and to help out in the morning. Seventeen other members of the club signed up.

By the middle of March it was clear from the number of registrations that the tournament would be a success. More people signed up for the 0-200 flight than for the 0-750 NLM flight.

On the morning of March 9 Linda sent me this email:

I thought I’d see if you know the answers to the questions below rather than take up a lot of time — and look stupid : ) — at the Zoom meeting tonight.
In the paperwork you gave me, you said there’s a $50 sanction fee for the tournament, an $8/session charge for boards, and a $2 or less per table charge (not sure what that is). Can you tell me who these fees are paid to? the ACBL? the unit? Will we be billed in some way?
Also, do you know how I get the files for the hands? Are they emailed to the club automatically because we have a sanction or do I need to request them? I assume we’ll make our own boards? Is there anything else you think I should know? (Assume I know nothing!)

I had read everything that I could find on Limited Sectionals, but I was certainly not an expert. I replied as follows.

My understanding is that the unit charges us nothing. I don’t know how/when the ACBL gets its pound of flesh.
I assume that someone will send pbn files, but that is just guessing.
Everything that I know I told you. Bill Watson may know more since he did essentially the same thing for a few years.

Hours later Linda received an email from the ACBL. A guidebook for the directors of IN (Intermediate/Novice) tournaments was attached. I have posted it here.

The event: The first session of the tournament was scheduled to begin at 10:00. I arrived before 9:00, but many of the volunteers and a few of the players were already there. Because more than half of those who had registered were 199ers, Linda had placed the 199ers in the main room of the club. She was expecting fifteen tables. I wandered around and took a few photos.

John Willoughby & Linda in the 199er Room

I don’t remember what was in the SWAG bags.

By 9:30 quite a few players who had not previously registered for the event appeared. The great majority of them were in the 0-750 flight. A few more tables in the backroom were provided with bidding boxes and BridgeMates. At about 9:45 more tables needed to be set up, but there were no additional bidding boxes. Fortunately, I had a suitcase filled with bidding boxes in my car. I brought them into the club.

Both sections had fifteen tables, about what was expected for the 199ers. The 0-750 section had a lot more than predicted. At the last minute two tables were moved from the very crowded backroom to the main room. Thirty tables! This was so far off of the chart for post-pandemic attendance that no one could believe it.

By a few minutes after 10 both rooms were packed.

The only tables that were not used in the first session were the two that were set up for registration. I told Linda that if more people came, I would pull my Honda into a handicapped space, and they could play on the hood. The weather was nice enough for it.

After the first session I took photos of the winners. Then I went home after advising Linda that someone else should take photos of the winners in the afternoon sessions.

As My dad used to say, “The winners laughed and told jokes; the losers just said, ‘Deal the damned cards.'”

Bill Segraves, the eager-beaver webmaster of the CBA asked how the event went. Linda replied,

It was a great day! The worst part was wondering if we were going to run out of tables. We had 57 tables in total for both sessions. And lots of excellent feedback! Mike has lots of pictures too!! We’re happy to do it again any time.

The next morning Linda sent the following email to the volunteers and directors:

Thank you all SO much for volunteering at yesterday’s tournament! The “powers that be” think the tournament was a success because we had 57 tables over the course of the two sessions. But those of us who were there know that the tournament was a success because of all of you! If we’d had 57 tables of unhappy players, the tournament would have been a huge failure. Thanks to you, that didn’t happen. Susan, Donna and I received many, many comments from players unfamiliar with the club about how friendly the club was and how much they enjoyed their time there.
So thank you all for decorating, greeting, cleaning up, baking cookies, answering questions, taking pictures, pitching in wherever it was needed — for everything you did to make every player who attended feel comfortable and welcome and at home. Each and every one of you was the secret to the success of the tournament and on a bigger scale, of course, you are the secret behind the success of HBC. Hopefully many of those who attended will, because of their experience yesterday, continue to play and help regrow the game we love.

Betty Kerber and Peggy Arseneaux counting the 199er receipts.

The event earned the HBC a few thousand dollars, which just about matched what it had been losing each month from its day-to-day operations since reopening in July 2021.

Plans were immediately made for a second event in the fall.

2022 Bridge: District 25 Events

Posted on June 26, 2023 by Mike

Three tournaments. Continue reading →

After the Covid-19 vaccinations became readily available in the late spring of 2021 competitive bridge¹ started a very slow return in New England. The Hartford Bridge Club reopened in August of 2021, but attendance was disappointing. The Simsbury Bridge Club’s first game was a five-table gathering on September 18. The only sectional held in New England in the entire year was an EMBA event in Watertown on December 10-12. It drew 133 tables, exactly half of the attendance at the equivalent tournament in 2019.

The Executive Committee (EC) of District 25 planned to hold a tournament in Warwick, RI, at the end of August. I had publicized it rather heavily.² However, it—and every other regional event scheduled for August—was canceled by the ACBL. A regional tournament that was also planned for November in Mansfield, MA, was canceled by a vote at a Zoom meeting of the EC.

District 25’s Tournament Scheduling Committee (TSC) held a couple of Zoom meetings in late 2021 in which it decided to change the 2022 schedule drastically. Peter Marcus, the district’s Director-in-Chief, had been arguing—with some degree of seriousness—that the district should schedule no tournaments at all for 2022 rather than play by the ACBL’s rules. Instead the TSC decided to shelve the plans for three events:

The Presidential Regional that had traditionally been held in February in Connecticut.
The intermediate/novice event scheduled for April that had been called the Rainbow Weekend or Gold Mine.
The Senior Regional/Cape Cod Sectional that was also planned for April.

Although I was a voting member of both committees, I was unable to attend either Zoom meeting and was shocked when the TSC proposed this at the Zoom meeting of the EC in early 2022. I voted loudly against the recommendations, but no one else did.

Instead, a four-day tournament called the Gala Regional was scheduled for May 19-22 in Marlborough³, MA, in a hotel that had never before been used for a tournament. The flyer for the event has been posted here. I had a long streak of attendance at regional events, but I could not attend this one because of a European cruise that had been scheduled many months earlier (for a period in which D25 had never run a tournament) and had already been postponed twice. That adventure has been described here.

On April 14 I sent out the first promotional email for the Gala to over 2,000 players in Districts 3, 24, and 25 who had less than 300 master points. A copy is posted here. 61% of the recipients opened the email, but only 51 of them clicked on the link to the flyer.

On the same day I sent a slightly different version to the players in the same districts with between 300 and 750 masterpoints. A copy is posted here. This group was about half the size of the previous one. Again, about 61 percent opened the email; 48 clicked on the link to the flyer.

The third version was sent to “Gold Rush Grads”, those with 750-2000 masterpoints, about 1,000 players. A copy was posted here. 58.2 percent opened it, and 46 clicked on the link.

The fourth version went to players with over 2,000 masterpoints. A copy was posted here. 56+ percent opened it, but only 20 clicked on the link.

So, only a total of 165 players clicked on the link to the flyer. I haven’t checked every email, but I suspect that this was the worst rate of any set of emails promoting tournaments that I had ever sent. People were either still scared of Covid-19, or they were upset about the vaccination requirement. Or maybe my emails were less effective because it was difficult for me to be enthusiastic and creative about the promotion of an event that I could not attend.

I sent a second email a week later to emphasize the convenience and quality of the hotel, which I had never seen. Only people with less than 50 masterpoints were excluded from this email (copy posted here). Nearly 59 percent opened it, and 127 clicked on the link to the flyer. There was no link to the hotel; reservations needed to be made by telephone.

On April 29 I sent a set of three emails that Sue Miguel composed. Her style was much different from mine. A sample of one is posted here. A total of 120 people clicked on the link to the flyer. No further marketing was done.

The schedule placed a lot more emphasis on the party element than the bridge.

Sue Wavada attended the Gala, and when she picked me up at Logan Airport after the tournament was over, she reported that she enjoyed it. She also was allowed to take home some balloons.

The Grand National Teams (GNT) was one of the events scheduled to be held at the eleven-day Summer NABC to be held in Providence in July. Both the qualifying tournament in District 25 and the finals of the event had been held online in 2021. Although I hated playing online I played with my partner, Ken Leopold, on Bridge Base Online (BBO) as often as I could. We teamed up with our long-time teammates, Trevor Reeves and Felix Springer.

On October 25 of 2021 I sent an email to all three about the 2022 qualifying tournament for D25:

My total masterpoints went over 2500 yesterday. However, I just checked the ACBL’s Conditions of Contest for the GNT for 2021-2022 (http://web2.acbl.org/documentLibrary/play/coc/gnt/GNT2021-22.pdf). The cutoff date for the GNT is the roster of August 6, 2021. So, I will still be eligible for one more GNT. The finals will be at the summer NABC, which is scheduled for Providence. The date for the qualifying tournament has not been finalized, but it will probably be in April or May.
I hope that you guys will be willing to play with me again in my final opportunity for this tournament.

All three responded positively to this request. On April 28, 2022, I wrote the following email to all three in order to confirm our plans.

The GNT qualifier for Flight B is on April 30 and May 1. I have read the Conditions of Contest. It will be held online under approximately the same conditions as last year. Two teams will qualify if more than eight participate. The cost is $15 per session
The finals in Providence start on Wednesday, July 13.
Is everyone still up for this? If so, I will register us.

Felix responded within an hour or so with this disheartening message: “Dan Morgenstern asked Trevor and me a while back to play in the GNTs with him and his partner and we accepted. Another time.”

This was soul-crushing news. I really wanted to compete in this event with a team that I trusted and could plan strategy with. I forwarded to them a copy six months earlier of their positive responses to my invitation, but neither of them responded to that email.

Ken suggested that we should look for other teammates, but I told him that I did not want to do so. We had played with inferior teammates in this event in 2019, and I had not enjoyed it at all. In that case the event was face-to-face. This would be online, which I could scarcely tolerate even with good teammates.

Felix and Trevor’s team qualified in the second team from D25 and got to play in Providence.

I was heavily involved in the promotion of the Providence NABC, helped with the partnership desk a couple of times, and played bridge almost every day. The beginning of the description of my involvement has been posted here. Felix and Trevor’s team made it to the semifinals, where they lost to the eventual champions.

The first regional tournament that I was able to attend was the Ocean State Regional in Warwick, RI, which ran from August 30-September 5. The flyer has been posted here.

The first promotional email was what I would call a postcard. Sue Miguel designed it. I sent it on July 27, about five weeks before the tournament began, to everyone in D3, D24, and D25, as well as the people who attended in Providence. 41.3 percent of the 15,000 recipients opened the email. 340 clicked on the link to the “schedule”. There was a mistake on it. I sent out a correction the same day. The correction, which has been posted here, had an additional 500 clicks.

I wrote and sent out the second email on August 18 to everyone in D3, D24, and D25. 184 people clicked on the link to the flyer. It has been posted here.

Sue designed an email for 3,000 players in D25 with less than 750 masterpoints. It was sent on August 22. The email, which was posted here, did not contain any links. She also had me send one for the 824 “Gold Rush Graduates” (750-2000).

The less said about the actual tournament the better. On Tuesday Sohail Hassan⁴, whom I had met at the partnership desk at a tournament before the pandemic, and I did poorly in the Open Pairs. Sohail showed up at the last minute for both sessions. Since there were a few things on our convention card that I was shaky about, this distressed me.

We intended to play in the Wednesday-Thursday knockout, but we were unable to find teammates. Since the schedule had been pared back to save on director’s fees, our only other choice was to play in Wednesday morning’s Side Game⁵. It was a horrendous experience. Sohail again appeared at the last minute for both sessions, and in the morning he got into a boisterous argument with one of our opponents. The director had to be called to calm them down. I made several mistakes; our scored was miserable. Nevertheless, we had a 58.71 percent game in the afternoon Side Game.

On Thursday we played in the Open Swiss. We teamed up with two guys from Rhode Island, Don Rankin and Bob Potvin. I had played against both of them before. We somehow finished third in B and sixth overall. This was not that great an accomplishment. Most of the participants were teams that had been eliminated from the knockout on the previous day.

I confided to Don that playing with Sohail had been a miserable experience. He replied, “Maybe we should play together.”

On Friday I had scheduled a new partner, Abhi Dutta⁶, for the knockout. Our teammates were Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider. Although the four of us were fresh from a victory in the sectional in Great Barrington, MA (described here), we could not get any traction in our five-team group. We were eliminated and forced to play in the Open Swiss on Saturday. I remember a general feeling of great frustration, but no details.

The Executive Committee met on Friday. I was in no mood to participate. This version of the Warwick tournament, which had always been the jewel in the district’s crown, seemed pitiful to me. Even though we did not even rent the other ballroom, the main room was not nearly full. The rotunda was used for both the side games and the 299ers, and there was still room to spare. The attendance, by historical standards, was alarmingly low.

We learned that we had taken a financial bath at the Gala, and Warwick was probably worse. The only good news was that, as I for one had come to expect, Joe Brouillard, the treasurer, had turned water into wine with the district’s finances. We still had a lot of money in the bank.

I could hardly believe that the roles of tournament chairman and partnership chairman were no longer going to be handled locally. Sue Miguel was going to do the former, and Denise Bahosh had volunteered for the latter. The problem was that the two new sites, Southbridge and Marlborough, had no natural constituencies. Who would take the responsibilities for them? Nevertheless, I considered it a mistake not to use local people in future tournaments in Warwick.

The decision was made to raise the table fees to $20 and to use the projected revenue to turn the Spectacle Regional into a very enjoyable event. I voted for it and even spoke in favor of the move, but I would have liked to see more details about how Sue Miguel intended to spend all of that extra money.

Mark Aquino, the Regional Director, made a depressing presentation that included the statement, “The ACBL is broken.” I left the meeting with the strong feeling that our best efforts might not be enough to save bridge as we knew it.

The Saturday Open Swiss once again was dominated by teams that had been eliminated in the knockout. We finished fourth in B and won a few gold points for a performance that was not worthy of any recognition.

The Ocean State Regional was the most disappointing tournament that I had ever attended. I had no fun in any event in which I played, and I found the EC meeting depressing in the extreme. The Crowne Plaza was not a disappointment, but only because I had also stayed there during the NABC event in July (description begins here) and no longer expected my room to be cleaned after I used it.

The last D25 tournament of 2022 was the Spectacle Regional, held in Southbridge, MA. It began on Tuesday, November 15, and ended on Saturday, November 19. I had been asked to prepare a Bulletin for this event. I therefore joined Curtis Barton (president), Carolyn Weiser (secretary), Sally Kirtley (tournament manager), and Denise Bahosh (partnership) in a “walk-around” inspection of the facility. Sue Miguel was also expected, but for some reason she was unable to attend.

The hotel/conference center was a nice modern place, but the rooms in which we would be playing were much smaller than the ballrooms in which we usually held regional events. The plan for this event was to provide exceptional hospitality, which meant free food and something new (and free) for newer players. Sue Miguel devised that approach, which she called Fest.

I sent out the first promotional piece on September 9. It was composed by Sue Miguel in the postcard format that she preferred. The message was that a lot of gold would be dispensed in Southbridge. I have posted it here.

Sue designed the piece sent on September 12 as well. It was directed to 2,000 players with less than 150 masterpoints. It provided an introduction to the concept of Fest. It has been posted here

On September 15 I sent a different email that Sue created. It was also in postcard format, but it also contained a link to the schedule that had by then been posted on NEBridge.org. The target audience was everyone in District 3, 24, or 25. It can be viewed here.

On October 19 I sent an email to the same audience. This one was in the format that I ordinarily used, but I emphasized the convenience and uniqueness of the site, not the bridge schedule. I considered the latter very meager. I have posted it here.

On October 25 I sent out another solicitation to those with less than 150 points. This one included the 9/15 postcard, but it also had text that Sue had written to explain the Fest concept. It has been posted here.

The next day I emailed to the rest of the players a message that I had written. This one has been posted here. This was the last email that was sent to promote this event, and it was also the last email that I composed for the district. Sue Miguel took over the creation of the emails more or less by default. I don’t think that they tried to find anyone else to do it.

I intended to promote the “Knock-in Knockout” event because it was the only imaginative offering on the schedule for players with more than 2,250 points. The district had also enjoyed great success at attracting players at all levels to bracketed events like this. However, I had been warned by Sue Miguel and Peter Marcus to avoid any explanation of the event or to use the Kiko abbreviation. Apparently they feared that the ACBL might come down on us. I don’t know why.

I decided to commute from my house in Enfield to the hotel. The drive was less than forty-five minutes each way. Sue planned to drive up on Friday morning, play on Friday, attend the Board of Delegates (BoD) meeting on Saturday, and see what she felt like doing on Saturday.

On Tuesday I played with Sally Kirtley in the Open Pairs. Attendance at all events was meager. Sally and I had not played together often, and we were definitely out of our depth in the open event. Playing with Sally at regional tournaments is always challenging. She was interrupted to deal with some sort of problem fairly often in her role as tournament manager.

On Wednesday Eric Vogel and I teamed up with Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider in the Kiko. There were only three brackets! My recollection is that there were only five teams in our bracket. At any rate, we were eliminated on Wednesday. On Thursday, however, the same foursome finished first in the Y strat of the Open Swiss. It did not seem like much of an accomplishment.

On Friday I played with Abhi Dutta, at least that is what my calendar said. The only game that I was eligible for was the Open Pairs. Abhi should have found a partner with fewer points so that he could play in the Gold Rush Graduate event.

On Friday there was a free lunch consisting of a couple of a couple of pieces of pizza. The hotel was poorly prepared for this. Although the total attendance was not very good, the lines for pizza were very long. I had to rush back for the second session.

While I was in line Pete Matthews and Gary Schwartz complained to me about the fact that the only pairs games available on Wednesday and Thursday were side games. They asked me why no Open Pairs games were scheduled. I said that I did not know. I was not on the Tournament Scheduling Committee any more, but I would bring up up at the EC meeting that night. Previously Robin Hillyard had sent me an email asking why the Sunday games had been eliminated. This was hard on the players who were still gainfully employed. I told him that I would bring that up as well.

I found the attitudes displayed at the EC meeting rather shocking. People were raving about how successful the Fest—a combination of education, free lunch and other goodies, and a short bridge session (also free)—had been. The yardstick for this was that a good number of the forty-four participants had approached the organizers and presenters to offer thanks and praise. Sue Miguel said that it was the best thing that the district had done in twenty-five years. Give me a break.

I, frankly, was much more concerned about the turnout of the people who were willing to pay to play. The attendance in the Gold Rush (0-750 masterpoints) events was shockingly low. My wife Sue had driven up on Friday to play in the Gold Rush pairs. When it did not make, she had to play in an event in which she had little chance of success.

Another surprise at the meeting the report by Mark Oettinger (vice-president). It brought up the possibility of getting more pro teams to come to our tournaments. Evidently Adam Grossack agreed to help with this effort. I wondered if anything would come from this. How would they find them to offer enticements to attend?

My wife Sue and I attended the BoD meeting on Saturday morning. There was no coffee, and the hotel served only breakfast sandwiches that were improperly marked. The only attendees from CT were Paul Burnham, Peter Marcus, Sue and me. That meant that nine delegates from Unit 108 were absent. Curtis announced that the Fest was the greatest thing ever. He insisted that the people attending the meeting were responsible for doing whatever it would take to increase attendance at future tournaments. It was not inspiring.

Sue surprised me by making a little speech complaining about the lack of events for people like her. She got tearful when describing her frustration about the fact that the Gold Rush event on Friday had been canceled. Mark Aquino offered to play with her one day in the Presidential Regional in the same facility in February of 2023. She was happy (and a little nervous) about that.

1. When I write “bridge” I usually mean face-to-face bridge. The online game is, in my opinion, not worthy of the appellation of “bridge”.

2. As soon as I heard that the tournament was canceled, I sent emails to that effect to the same email addresses that I had sent promotional mailings. I also posted a notice on the website. However, one couple from New Jersey read the initial email, but for some reason they did not receive the second one. They drove all the way to Warwick and were shocked to discover that no tournament was in process. I sent them a personal email apologizing for this.

3. Sometimes it is spelled without the final “ugh”.

4. Sohail was retired from a job on Wall Street. He had a house in the NYC area and another on Cape Cod. I could not find his LinkedIn page on the Internet. His name was much more common than I imagined.

5. This was the first time that the district scheduled side games during the daylight hours. I do not know what the TSC was thinking of when it drew up this schedule. I was not a party to it. I had resigned after I had to miss the first three meetings because of scheduling conflicts.

6. Abhi lived in Walpole, MA. I met him when he played with my wife several years earlier. I had teamed up with him once in the Grand National Teams qualifying tournament in 2019. His LinkedIn page has been posted here.

2021-2023 Bridge: Trying to Resign

Posted on June 18, 2023 by Mike

Eighteen months of torture. Continue reading →

This entry, like the process that it describes, is absurdly long. In fact, it is much longer than it looks because it has links to a large number of documents that have more details. I don’t expect anyone to read this entry. I did it out of a combination of determination to leave nothing out and a sense of catharsis.

I really loved my job as webmaster for District 25 and all of the other functions that I had added (as described here). The only aspect of it that I found tiresome was the assembling of photos for the Winners Boards. I had decided unilaterally that I would no longer do that in 2020, but I was still enthusiastic about everything else that I did.

The pandemic struck New England in March of 2020. The game that I loved that involved card tables, chairs, playing cards, bidding boxes, human beings, and conversation vanished almost overnight. Some people enjoyed, or at least tolerated, playing on the Internet, but I did not like it at all. It did not seem like bridge to me.

At first I enjoyed my new life of leisure. As I described here, I started walking a lot, occasionally traversing as much as ten miles per day. I also read books much more frequently than I had previously, and I invented a method for the people who had played together in Simsbury to describe what they were doing in the new world of isolation. I discovered that a very large number of operas were available free on YouTube. I downloaded a free program, MP3Studio, to make mp3 files that I could download to my mp3 player. So, I could carry forty or fifty operas in my pocket.

In June of 2020 my schedule changed dramatically. I undertook the gargantuan 1948 Project that is described here. From that point on I sat in front of the computer for several hours per day writing and researching, and the more time that I spent on the project the larger that it grew.

In the summer of 2021 my friend and boss in District 25, Bob Bertoni, died after a long and debilitating illness. At that point almost all of the people with whom I had enjoyed working for so many years were no longer involved in the district’s leadership. Moreover, the ACBL had taken strong measures to promote online play as an alternative to real bridge. It seemed almost certain to me that the game that I knew was doomed.

The Hartford Bridge Club tentatively reopened in the summer of 2021, and Sally Kirtley and I figured out a way to schedule games of the Simsbury Bridge Club. However, no tournaments were held in New England except the poorly attended sectional in December sponsored by the Eastern Mass Bridge Association (EMBA). At the time I was a member of both the district’s Executive Committee and the Tournament Scheduling Committee. Both held occasional Zoom meetings. I wrote this about the decision-making:

I have been on the scheduling committee for a few years, but two crucial online meetings were held in the winter on Wednesday evening, the one time that I am committed to play at a very small club. Evidently a lot of decisions about the three tournaments in 2022 were made at those meetings or at the one in May, during which I was in Europe.

In the last quarter of 2021 I notified the Executive Committee that I intended to resign my positions tied to the webmaster job at the end of 2022. I modeled my decision on this with how Helen Pawlowski handled the termination of her long tenure as the district’s tournament manager. She had given a year’s notice that she was leaving. A committee was promptly formed, people applied for the job, Sally Kirtley was chosen, and Helen showed her the ropes at several tournaments.

After I resigned not much happened for several months. When I had started in 2013, absolutely nothing was documented in writing. By contrast, I had already produced on NEBridge.org about forty web pages that documented everything that I did in every area. Thereafter, I spent an enormous amount of time making sure that each of these pages was up to date. They can all be reached from here.

The oldest email that I could find about the subject of the transition was dated November 30, 2021. In It Curtis Barton, the president, asked me, “Do you have a candidate to replace you?”

The one thing that I did not want to do was to become an active participant in the search for my replacement(s). I thought that it was incumbent upon the people who would be running the district going forward to determine which of those functions was still important and to find people who were willing and able to perform them. I did not want to prejudice this effort with my own ideas.

I felt that I had done everything that I could to smooth the process. When I was chosen to be the webmaster, Bob Bertoni had assumed the responsibility of finding someone for the job, mostly because he was the only person who knew how the site worked, and there was no documentation whatsoever. In the intervening years had thoroughly documented how my various functions were performed.

So, on December 31 I sent the following reply with four attachments.

As promised, I have produced and attached documents that outline the duties of four functions that I currently perform:
• Webmaster
• Database Manager
• Email Manager (MailChimp)
• Bulletin Editor (printed, online, and Day 1).
Someone needs to decide on who, if anyone, should perform these functions in 2023 and following. The Database Manager and Email Manager are not official positions.
I am not sure if the Communications Committee still officially exists, but I formerly set the agenda for and presided over its meetings.
I also have been composing a high percentage of the emails used to promote tournaments. Whoever assumes that function in 2023 and following will need to work with the Database Manager on the selection criteria to be used and the Email Manager on the format to be used for text and images.

The four attachments to the email have been posted on Wavada.org: Webmaster, Database, Email, Bulletin.

At some point Gary Peterson, who was a Tournament Director for the ACBL, expressed an interest in becoming the webmaster. He negotiated with Curtis about how he would be compensated for his efforts. I was not privy to those exchanges. My assumption was that he would be responsible only for maintaining the website. I suspect that Curtis expected him to do much more than that. It is also possible that Curtis only glanced at my write-up.

In April of 2022 I sent all the members of the Executive Committee an email that detailed open issues in areas that I was involved. I attached to this email a spreadsheet that served as the index to the documentation pages.

It has been a long time since I made a report, but I have been keeping a list of developments and issues.
Website: 1) I removed four items from the main menu in the left column that appears on every page of the site. Three of them I moved to the “Archive” tab: District Director Info, District Director Report, and Learn from the Experts. The other one was a link to the ACBL’s Partnership Desk, which the ACBL’s webmaster told me is no longer supported.
2) There are three issues. The Tournament Location option is a custom program that uses a list of the district’s tournaments to create a map. For a while it was broken, but Megahertz fixed it. I removed Cromwell and Sturbridge. I added Providence and Marlborough. I left Mansfield and Hyannis on, but added notes that they were canceled for 2022. This will need to be maintained (using the “Clubs” option in the admin section) when the 2023 schedule is set.
The second issue is the banner, which currently says “Exciting New Event Schedules for 0-2500 –Click Here for Tournaments”. It links the NEBridge.org calendar. I don’t know how to change it. Bob always did this. We should probably be highlighting Providence. After that, I don’t know.
The third issue involves reports from the Regional Director. The DD reports had their own custom option. Should I add the RD reports to this program (and bring it back from the Archive)? Should I create a new tab for RD reports? They are now emailed to members; posting them on the website is less critical than it was ten years ago.
3) The list of winners of NABC and NABC+ events has not been updated since 2019. The source of data was lists provided by the DD. I have not received any such lists since December 2019. What should the policy be for the future?
4) I have decided not to post Winners Boards (photos) for the 2022 tournaments. It is a lot of work, and I won’t be attending one of the three events. If someone else wants to take the photos of winners and solicit photos from the ones that were missed, I will post them. However, I don’t want to do this if the percentage of missing photos is high.
I also decided not to award the Best in Class prizes in 2022. With only three events, all in the eastern half of the district, it did not seem worthwhile to me.
5) Someone should check the conditions of contest on the website. I don’t think that the first five documents on the Conditions of Contest tab have been checked in a long time.
Database: 1) A decision should be made about whether the MySQL database, which I maintain on both my iPower account and my local server, will be used in 2023. If not, a suitable substitute to be used as the basis for emails should be found. The current database includes all ACBL members–active and inactive, living and dead–since 2014. It also contains pretty good records of who attended D25 and NABC tournaments since then. It also has a history of achievement of ranks of D25 members and points by month of everyone.
2) In the past I have received .LZH files from Keith Wells at the ACBL to use as the basis for the attendance (at tournaments) table. He did not respond to my last request. Does anyone know if he still works for the ACBL? If not, from whom could I get these files. I used the attendance tables both for targeted emails and for the attendance breakdowns after tournaments.
Email: I currently create the emails by using a text editor on my PC to write HTML statements. I then use the “Code your own” method to paste the code into MailChimp. As I was writing up the documentation for this process it occurred to me that it will probably be very difficult to find someone is who is both willing and able to do this. MailChimp has a lot of templates for emailing that would presumably be much easier to use, but I have never investigated them because I already knew how to make the emails look exactly as I wanted them to.
If templates are used exclusively, it will affect Sue Miguel’s emails. She sends me an email that looks the way she wants it. I extract the HTML from it and then post it using the “Code your own” method.
Bulletins: I was told that there will be neither a printed nor an online bulletin for the Gala. Eventually decisions should be made about the other two tournaments in 2022.
Documentation: I have documented almost everything that I do in “pages” on NEBridge.org. I have created a spreadsheet that serves as an index to these pages. I have attached a pdf of it to this document. I am confident that by later in the year it will be complete and as accurate as I can make it. I suspect that the person or persons who do these tasks will want to simplify the processes, but whatever process is used, it should be documented, and I think that the format that I chose is optimal, since anyone can see the most current version.
The starting page is 342. It can be accessed with the URL NEBridge.org/pages/342. All pages can be reached from there, but if you want to look at a particular page, the easiest way is to key in NEBridge.org/pages/ppp in your browser, where ppp is the three-digit page number on the spreadsheet for the index.
Communications Committee: I think that consideration should be given to restarting the CommComm in 2023 or maybe sooner. I am willing to serve on it, but I don’t want to be chairman in 2023.

Two regional bridge tournaments in New England in 2021 had been canceled because of the pandemic. The Presidential Regional that was scheduled for February 2022 was also canceled because no suitable site in the southwestern part of the district was available. A new event, which was called the Gala, was scheduled for late May, which was the time that my wife Sue and I had planned to take a cruise in Europe¹. We had deliberately chosen the second half of May because, in all the years that I had been going to tournaments, the district had never held an event then.

Meanwhile Curtis was trying to figure out if, as an ACBL Employee, Gary would be allowed to be both webmaster for the district. Curtis finally determined that he could. In early July he asked me to set up a Zoom meeting with Gary, Peter Marcus², and himself. I told him that I had no idea how to set up a Zoom meeting, and that I was very busy at the time.

The second half of July was dominated by the Summer NABC that was held in Providence. Curtis decided that he needed two people to replace me. He offered one of the jobs to Gary in this email sent on August 10.

The other candidate wasn’t interested. That puts you (Gary) back where you’ve been – my choice for NEBC Database and NEBridge.org Webmaster. If you accept the position we will discuss compensation (Mike gets free plays and some other stuff – not too valuable for you) on a per tournament basis.
I suggest you contact Mike for his write-ups on the efforts. If you accept I will also begin the search for a Communications lead to supplement (not replace) existing efforts.
Communications Lead:
• Voting member of the TSC
• Cannot be an ACBL employee
• Essentially a volunteer position; may, in the future be compensated with free plays or similar consideration.
• This primarily a marketing function with technical considerations as agreed with the NEBC Database/NEBridge.org Webmaster
• Coordinates the electronic aspects of tournament advertising and execution
• Works with the Database/Webmaster
• Edits the Tournament Bulletin as required
• May use MailChimp email system to create messages as required.
NEBC Database/NEBridge.org Webmaster
• Does not and cannot be a voting member of any NEBC Committee
• Can be an ACBL employee
• This is a compensated position on a “per tournament” basis
• Maintains the NEBC website
• Maintains the NEBridge.org database
• Works with the Communications Lead and Tournament Coordinator to maintain Calendar

This was by far the longest communication that I had ever received from Curtis. It appeared that some progress was being made. The fact that he was conflating the webmaster and database jobs was, of course, disconcerting. The webmaster job had gotten easier over the years. The database job was quite another matter.

This missive pretty much confirmed my notion that no one wanted to revive the Communication Committee. The “as required” appellation applied to the bulletin position was also ominous.

An email from Peter asserted about the database that “It might be work, it might cost money, but I think we really don’t want to abandon it.” Nobody ventured a different opinion. The question then became where the database would be kept. I did not want other people with administrative authority to sign on to Wavada.org.

I am not sure that my next contribution was helpful, but I did not want anyone to claim that I was not forthcoming about the difficulties.

Now that I think about it, iPower is not a critical element. Assuming that two copies of the database (one live and one for testing/backup/disaster recovery) are used, what are needed are two installations of WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, php) or the equivalent. I used iPower for the live version because I already was using its server for other projects on my personal website, and there was a lot of capacity. WAMP is available as a free download for windows-based computers. iPower uses a UNIX version of the three products, but they do not charge extra for MySQL and php.

Mark Oettinger, the newly elected (sort of) vice-president of the district, suggested that Sue Miguel could do some of the work of the Communications Lead. No one objected.

Gary officially accepted the job of webmaster and indicated that he and I might be able to meet together at the Ocean State Regional in Warwick, RI, (documented here) scheduled for the end of the month. I responded with the following:

I have created a user profile for you for the admin section of NEBridge.org. The user ID is GaryP. After I send this email, I will send the password in a separate email.
I will be in Warwick for all five days. I will be attending the meetings of the Tournament Scheduling Committee and the Executive Committee. I will have the other evenings free. I will be pretty busy until then.
I have documented almost everything that I do on numbered pages (the ones that have the green menu on the left) within the NEBridge.org website. The starting page for all communications functions is #342. The starting page for webmaster functions is #85. The full URL’s are https://nebridge.org/pages/342/ and https://nebridge.org/pages/85/, respectively. The easiest way to get to them is to go to NEBridge.org, click on “Tournament Results” and change the /3/ to the page that you want. I have attached a spreadsheet that has all the page numbers.
There are wysiwyg tools for editing the numbered web page. It is also possible to enter HTML code. I resort to the latter when the former doesn’t provide what I want. The concepts are pretty straightforward. When I started in 2013 there was no documentation, and Bob Bertoni’s training session only lasted thirty minutes.
I am looking forward to meeting you in Warwick.

I introduced myself to Gary when I played in the side game, but I never met with him in the evening. I did meet Steve Ackerman, a player from Vermont. Mark Oettinger had recommended that I get him involved in the transition. I sent him essentially the same email.

In September Curtis sent Gary and me a short email asking whether I could teach them to use MailChimp. I did not envision either of them using it much, but here is what I responded.

MailChimp is not hard. I will set up a user ID for NEBPres and for NEBWeb. I will send the passwords in a separate email. The steps for using MailChimp are documented on NEBridge.org. I will provide training if necessary. I know nothing about using Zoom for training.
The big issue is what is going to happen to the MySQL database that is used for, among other things, populating the lists on MailChimp. The database currently resides on an iPower server on which I have leased space for about ten years. I am willing to give the php scripts that I have written to maintain the files to the district, but the database and the scripts somehow need to be copied to a server owned or leased by the district. That is unlikely to be an easy task. However, there is a great deal of other stuff on my website on iPower, and I don’t really want anyone else to have read/write access to it.
The other big issue is that Keith Wells, who is now a contractor for not an employee of the ACBL, has not answered any of my emails in five months. His last one said that he was still the person that I should contact in order to obtain the .LZH files used by the scripts that update the attendance table. On the advice of Tim Hill I sent an email in September to tournaments@acbl.org. The unsigned response, with a cc to Keith, said that Keith was still “at the ACBL”.
So, I have been unable to maintain the attendance table by my usual methods. Someone needs to decide whether it is still necessary for the district to maintain the attendance table, on which I formerly recorded who attended each regional and sectional in New England and each NABC. If not, it might not be worth the effort to continue using the MySQL database to keep a comprehensive roster of players, their advancement, their attendance, and a few other things. In that case the whole emailing strategy may need to be rethought. Maybe it could be done with spreadsheets or some other method. To my knowledge no other district goes to so much trouble to target emails.
It is possible to update the attendance table without the LZH files. The alternative method uses the “Master Point Winners” report in the posted results on the ACBL tournament schedule. However, 1) It is both kludgy and very time-consuming because there are no ACBL numbers, and 2) there is no way that I know of to account for people who earned no points at the tournament. So, I have been reluctant to resort to that method.
I am doing what I can to help the transition, but I don’t want to be the one who makes important decisions that affect how the mailings are done in 2023 and following.

The first sentence was a mistake. The way that new user profiles are created in MailChimp is to “invite” other people through an option in MailChimp. They then are sent an email from MailChimp that explains how new users can create their own profiles.

As of this writing in June of 2023, I have still not been able to gain access to the LZH files.

Shortly thereafter someone brought up the possibility of using the Pianola software that a third party had customized for the ACBL When the product was introduced several years earlier, I had looked into this and shared my low opinion of it with the members of the Executive Committee. I repeated those points for Curtis and Gary.

Addendum: The ACBL allows direct but very limited access to its active player database for emails, but there are several limitations that render this approach less effective in targeting. I have not investigated this approach recently, but the limitations that I remember are:
1) You must use Pianola. My understanding is that it does not support images, tables, font changes, and other tricks that I sometimes have used within messages. Both Sue and I use a lot of embedded images.
2) You can only access the records for a limited number of districts/units.
3) The format is, to say the least, unimaginative. It is black on grey.
4) I am uncertain of how much targeting can be done. I seriously doubt that one can target (as I did for NAP) based on the May 6 ACBL roster. I also feel certain that targeting based on attendance or zip code (Cape, for instance) is not possible.
5) The rate charged U126 is four times what we paid, and the last time I looked that rate is still available.
6) Access to the database can only be for the purpose of emailing. If you want to use it for some other purpose, you must keep your own files somehow.
7) I am not sure that Pianola has all the reporting tools that MailChimp offers. People who have complained to me about not receiving an email are sometimes surprised that MailChimp knows whether each email was delivered, whether it was opened, and whether any links were clicked on.
8) A small number of people have provided me, but not the ACBL with their email addresses.
9) I think that if someone unsubscribes on Pianola, they can no longer be reached. MailChimp has the same rule, but because we have lots of lists, we can control the effect. For example, if a club manager unsubscribed to the recent club mailing, he/she would still receive emails about tournaments, letters from the president, surveys, and other types of emails. On the other hand Pianola does support attachments, and MailChimp doesn’t. I have not found this to be much of a limitation, but if we did not have a website on which to post the attachment so that we could link to it, it would be.

Nobody mentioned Pianola for quite a while after that. Somehow someone got the idea that I would host the database for the district. On October 28 I wrote the following to Curtis:

I don’t host the database now. I pay $200 per year to iPower to host it. I know very little about hosting databases. The district could get an account with iPower or some other hosting service that supports MySQL and php and has a way to import databases and programming files. I contracted with iPower a long time ago. I don’t remember why I picked them.
I will help with migrating the database and the scripts over. I don’t really want to support the php scripts, but if you cannot find anyone who knows php, well … I would have to think about it.
If you are really asking me if I would agree to set up user ID’s for others on my iPower account, the answer is no. I have a great deal of other stuff on my account, and I have spent hundreds of hours on it.
So, the first decision is whether it is worth the effort to maintain a relational database. If the district cannot find a reliable source for getting the lzh files, I would be inclined to doubt it. The roster files, which are the source for most of my selections, can easily be downloaded from ACBL.org and then opened in Excel. Someone who is a wiz at spreadsheets could probably do the selections from the spreadsheets. The uploads to MailChimp require csv files, and spreadsheets could–after some slicing and dicing–be saved as csv files for that purpose.
When the above issue has been addressed, one other remains: How many lists on MailChimp will be used and reused? I suggest at least one for presidential communications, one for regional tournaments, one for NAP/GNT, one for clubs, and one for I/N. We now have a very large number of lists–one for every email (as Bob recommended). This has been feasible because the database has a field to flag players who have unsubscribed. I never select these people for any mailing promoting a tournament. Without that field I would need to reuse lists, as I sometimes do now for other types of emails.
If you decide to reuse the lists, you should add fields for masterpoints and rank description so that you can “segment” the lists as required for the email. This is the way that I handled the five emails promoting the 2022 NAP. The only problem is that someone would need to decide whether people who unsubscribed in response to those emails should also be unsubscribed from one of the other lists.

Curtis put the burden on Gary and Steve with a short reply: “We need someone to host our data base, and we need that someone now. You guys are the experts. Figure out what we need to do, and let’s get it done. “

Gary said that he was not a database engineer, but he was an “Excel weenie.” Steve set up a Dropbox for me and asked me to put the database and the php scripts in it. It took me most of a day to do this because a great deal of what is on Wavada.org is related to my blogs, journals, and other projects. Even after I culled those out, the remainder barely fit in the Dropbox, and the company that sponsored it kept sending me emails that I should upgrade my subscription.

Not much else happened until I wrote up the following summary on November 28:

General: All of the tasks have been documented on pages of NEBridge.org. The appearance of a few MailChimp screens has changed, but the work flow has not. All the documentation pages can be reached from https://nebridge.org/pages/342/.
Webmaster: I have given the credentials for the email redirecting to Gary Peterson. I have also set the emails for webmaster to redirect to his email account.
                Action item: The ad on NEBridge.org for the ACBL online regional was still there today.
Database: Peter said that LZH files should now be available from ACBL somehow. If so, it is still probably a good idea to keep up the database if someone can learn how to maintain it. Those files can help with both targeted mailings and analysis of attendance at tournaments.
                Action item: I will communicate with Peter about how to get the LZH files from the ACBL. When I do, I plan to upload all of the files for D25 sectionals and regionals in 2022 as well as the Providence NABC. I will then submit attendance reports for the Providence and Southbridge regionals and the Providence NABC to the Executive Committee members via email.
The current database is MySQL. The scripting language php is used for maintenance and reporting. I will create a copy of the database, the php scripts (including the Javascript and CSS), and a file of the SQL statements that I have used for lists and other purposes. I will then send them to wherever the new home is. I will also help with the migration as much as I can.
                Action items: If the database is to be continued, 1) Who will maintain it and use SQL to select lists for mailings? 2) Where will the data and programs be stored? The system can actually be run on any Windows or Unix computer that has the free download WAMP or XAMP, but I chose to run it somewhere that provided support, which I have used four or five times per year. 3) Will the person who manages the database also manage MailChimp?
MailChimp: Policy decisions need to be made about how many lists will be used. The issue is how to handle “unsubscribes”. If a person unsubscribes from one list, should they simultaneously be unsubscribed from all? This will not happen automatically on MailChimp, but there is an “OK to email?” field on the database. The “actives” view of the players table, which I often used for selections for email lists, eliminates players with an N in this field or any other disqualifying information.
                Action items: Who will manage the site? What will the workflow for new emails be? Will there be any reporting?
Email composition: Sue Miguel.
Bulletin Editor: I have copies of all the ones that I have done. I can send in odt or word format.
                Action items: Is this worth doing? Who will do it? Will we resume using online bulletins?

This email generated a lengthy thread of responses. Curtis established the parameters:

Mike has done his usual great job in laying out the tasks ahead. I will take the Bulletin Editor³ task for Southbridge 2 (Mike: please send me the last Bulletin in Word format, please.)
Who will take on the rest of the effort? Please advise soonest.

I sent a copy of the Bulletin that I had created for the Optical Regional in 2022 to Curtis.

Curtis sent the following to Steve Ackerman and Neil Montague, who had expressed some interest in handling the emails:

We need a Mailchimp email expert (or maybe two!) to do the email parts of Mike’s current job. You both are great candidates for this. Any interest? Note: this will, in effect, make you a part of Sue’s marketing campaigns. It’s fun.⁴

Neil told Curtis that someone would need to show him how MailChimp worked. I invited him to create his own account and wrote:

MailChimp is not difficult. I have documented everything that I do in it on the NEBridge.org website, and the MailChimp site has very good FAQ’s and support when one needs it. I figured it out with no training whatever.
The bigger issue is whether to continue using the MySQL database as the source for creation of lists, and, if so, where it will reside.

Curtis wrote that Neil would officially become the MailChimp person and that Sue Miguel would compose the emails. Steve attempted to address the database issue.

As far as the database goes, I’ve taken a look at the LZH files that ACBLScor uses to update its database. Unfortunately, it only ACBL numbers and Points, not names and addresses. We would need more information than that to maintain the database. Another option is Pianola. I understand they are pricey, but it might be possible to work out a deal with them. https://www.pianola.net

I could not let that go unanswered.

I use four sources of information for the database: 1) Once a month (on about the 7th) I download the entire ACBL roster, which has almost all the census information on all active ACBL members; 2) The ACBL sends Webmaster@NEBridge.org a list of the players who advanced in rank during the previous month; 3) The LZH files for attendance at tournaments; 4) Individual maintenance when I learn something such as a nickname, a new email address, or an unsubscribe. Here is what I have for each player:

I described the problems with using the ACBL’s program that uses Pianola on a previous email. I will look for it and resend it if necessary.

This exchange generated an overly optimistic assessment by Mark Oettinger that showed praise on all the participants. No emails were exchanged in December except one from Curtis that asked me how much I would charge to continue to send out the emails “for one more month”. I said that I would certainly continue to do it if it was necessary. In actuality I sent out all of the emails in the first five months of 2023.

In January Neil wrote this to me: “I think I am supposed to send out the e-mails to the district via MailChimp. I have an account but since I’ve never really used it before, some quick help from you would be appreciated.” Neil was referring to the computer-generated emails sent by BridgeFinesse.com to players who had advanced in rank. I explained to him that he did not need to get involved in this process.

On February 11 Curtis notified me and the other participants that there would be a Zoom meeting to discuss the succession issues. He then wrote that Peter would send the invitation. At some point it was changed to an in-person meeting at the Presidential Regional in Southbridge. That gathering was never canceled, but it did not happen.

An email that I received from Sue Miguel got my goat. Here is what I sent to everyone on the Executive Committee.

In November of 2021 I gave notice that I did not want to be involved in precisely this type of thing–promotion of online gold point events, which I am convinced will be the death of regional tournaments. I have not seen one inch of progress in removing this responsibility.
I will send this out, but I AM PLEADING that the district relieve me of this responsibility. It makes me furious to be promoting this sort of thing.
Mike Wavada
From: Susan Miguel <suemiguel@cox.net>
Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2023 3:01 PM
To: Mike Wavada <Mike@Wavada.org>
Cc: Bussink-Jenkins <bussink-jenkins@comcast.net>; Peter Marcus <marcusp@att.net>; Gary Peterson <gspeterson7@gmail.com>
Subject: Save the GOLDEN DATE: April 16
Mike: Please send to the world under 500
Gary: Please post on the homepage above Nashua

This image was embedded in the above email.

Curtis sent me an email that said that Sue should have sent the email to Neil instead of me. I sent out this email and several more over the course of the next few months.

Neil sent me an email on March 8 concerning an email that he had received from Paul Harris, the president of EMBA. He wanted to know the details of the district’s contract with MailChimp. I answered the inquiry with the following.

MailChimp charges D25 by the number of emails sent. Back in 2015 or 2016 Bob Bertoni negotiated the purchase of 2 million email credits for $2500 in a “pay as you go” plan. We had to purchase that many to get that rate. At the time we had no limits on the number of lists or the total number of contacts. We have about ninety lists (but they won’t let us create any new ones) and a very large number of contacts. In the old days I built a new list for each version of each email, and I had roughly seven or eight versions for each tournament.
808,020 credits remain. I am not sure that MailChimp still allows pay-as-you-go plans. It appears to me that it now sells four or five tiers of plans that require a monthly fee based on the total number of contacts. Each has other limitations as well.
In my opinion MailChimp’s best feature is that it allows you to “code your own” emails in HTML. It is much more time-consuming to do it that way, but you can–with a few small exceptions–make the email look exactly the way that you want it to. Of course, you have to be familiar with HTML and how email clients (as opposed to browsers) interpret various tags. The only thing that I have never been able to do is to get Outlook to show correctly a caption for an image.
Without the “code your own’ feature I do not know how anyone will be able to create the kind of emails that Sue Miguel likes to send. She creates the emails using a program on her Mac and sends me the finished product. I extract the HTML and make a few changes to fit MailChimp’s requirements.
By the way, MailChimp is now owned by Intuit, the QuickBooks company.
I know nothing about Constant Contact.
I have been promised that I will not be required to send any more emails, but the meeting that was scheduled for Southbridge to determine who would do it and (more importantly) how was never held. Then there was supposed to be a Zoom meeting about it, but it never occurred either. At this point I do not know whose responsibility it is to find a way to continue. I am pretty sure that Curtis does not want to hear any more about it.

Another Zoom meeting was scheduled for March 30 at 8 p.m. Peter sent out the following email at 6:56 a.m. on that day to the people scheduled to attend the 8:00 meeting and a few people from the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA).

I just attended a webinar (not sure if any of you did, but I did see Ken there) about their new marketing program, sending out emails, and using Pianola. I don’t know enough to know if this is any good, but, unlike a lot of what ACBL does, it actually looked at least presentable.
One obvious benefit is an immediate access to ACBL data (email addresses, masterpoint holdings, etc.) without having to update them ourselves. A downside, to the extent we do it, is that it doesn’t seem to include information about tournaments attended though they said that could be added.
The tools for developing emails did seem reasonable and it does have the ability to include attachments, like a flyer.
Obviously, one issue is cost. I know, when Bob Bertoni investigated this, we ran from Pianola because of cost. They addressed this and said they are cheaper than MailChimp (what they compared themselves to), though they talked about buying 10K or 25K Mailchimp credits. If I remember correctly, D25 bought something like 250K, which was an upfront cost (almost like a capital cost, buying new equipment) and then it lasts for years.
Anyway, I do not have the technical expertise to make comparisons. So, my questions are
1) They recorded the webinar and are offering a masterclass in developing emails/marketing next Tuesday (for about an hour). I will forward the link to the recording and the masterclass if anyone wants to hear it or sign up for the class. I will not sign up, I don’t have the background to make an informed decision.
2) Where are we with MailChimp credits, i.e., are they about to run out or do we have years to go?
3) They are setting up credits for each unit and district and accounts to send emails will be done individually, i.e., a unit or district says who should have access and they will get their own login, not done with everyone in one organization sharing the login. But, is there any rationale to considering setting up credits for the units and district to share, as a way of lowering costs, particularly for smaller units?
I am not looking for answers, since I wouldn’t know how to evaluate them, just asking questions. We can discuss more tomorrow on the ZOOM call.
Will send out the info from them when I get it.

I watched the webinar later, but I wanted to provide answers to Peter’s questions before the Zoom meeting.

I could not attend the webinar because of a medical appointment. Incidentally, the message announcing the webinar was composed using the new tools. The last word or two of every line on the message was cut off when I opened it in Outlook. I tried changing the width of the window, but it did not help.
D25 bought 2 million credits from MailChimp. Over 800,000 still remain. Attachments, especially ones with images, use up a lot of band width. Requiring links rather than attachments is the main reason that MailChimp delivery is so fast.
I have never used Pianola, but I know where I ran into problems with MailChimp. Some of my questions are:
1) How are unsubscribes handled? If someone unsubscribes to an email sent by one user will other users still be able to reach them?
2) To which districts would we be allowed to send email?
3) Can pre-formatted emails like Sue’s be sent or must they be redone in Pianola’s tools?

Curtis took notes at the 8:00 meeting and sent them to the participants. I have posted them here. It is worth discussing his three “Takeaways”.

“Peter will transfer Mike’s data to a new source.” In fact, I sent an up-to-date copy of the database to Steve. Peter had nothing to do with it.
“Henceforth we will use Mike’s data from Peter’s source for emails and the like.” It was not until May that Steve’s copy of the database was available. In actual fact, the audience that I had been using on MailChimp was still used through the end of June. However, Neil did successfully process a couple of Sue Miguel’s emails in May and June.
“Peter and Steve will attend the Pianola Master Class to determine whether we can easily port the current system and data to that (ACBL) system.” I don’t think that anyone involved in the transition process ever attended the Pianola Master Class.

Peter, with whom I had a bizarre contretemps (described here) earlier in the year, recognized the crux of the problem in a friendly email:

I understand that Mike, who has been so good to do all this for us since forever, and had announced his departure as of the beginning of 2023, is still involved and really, really “wants out.”
If we need help to actually move this to final migration, I think we should consider actually getting a professional in this kind of work to help/do it for us. Even if this group has the skill (and I don’t), finding the time can be a much bigger problem, and, if we have to pay for it, so be it. We could speak first to Megahertz⁵, to hire them, and, failing that, find someone who could get it done. I don’t think their geography matters though, unlike the ACBL, I would suggest we don’t save money by using IT contractors from Poland.

Curtis favored a different approach:

Here’s what we can do to get Mike OUT of the loop, at least formally.
1) Neil: if you can take Mike’s stuff for storage, please do so.
2) Gary/Steve/Neil: please discuss this among yourselves, and determine whether we should take Peter’s suggestion and hire Megahertz to set things up. Let me know what you decide, and I’ll get it approved.
Then let’s finish this.

Steve immediately reported that he had a copy of the database, and he would find a place to put it. His email on May 3 listed the progress that he had made.

I have uploaded Mike’s database to a server on google as I had some issues attempting to sign up at Oracle.
I’ve created user accounts for everyone on this list. To log in, use your username portion of your email, and the number you enter into the bridgemates (so no letters).
You can access it via this link, https://d25.vtbridge.org and clicking on the “Admin” button
I have updated the masterpoints based on the April version of the MP file available to ACBLScor. I understand that in the past we were able to get a more complete database listing from ACBL, but I don’t know who to contact for that.
Neil & Gary, let me know if you need help generating the queries to populate your mailchimp lists.

A few thing that he wrote were not quite accurate. Here is what I replied:

On your MyACBL page do you have a tab called “Member Rosters”? It should be right below “Ribbon”. If not, I think that either Curtis or Mark Aquino can designate you to have access to that feature from the ACBL.
A new roster will come out on 5/7 or maybe 5/8 since 5/7 is a Sunday. I have a list of email addresses that have unsubscribed in the last year or so. The “OK to email” field for all of them should be set to N. Should I send this to you, or is there some way that I can do it?

After I sent another email for Sue, a player replied with a request to change her email address. I forwarded it to Steve. He replied with some good questions.

Does the normal procedure include asking the player to make sure they also update their email with ACBL? I suspect that when I update next week from the roster this email address may be incorrect if the player doesn’t also notify ACBL.
In addition, I updated the player database to flag not to email the addresses you sent me. However, I found about 20% of the addresses were not in our database. I’m assuming these addresses may not be active ACBL members, or they are for some other list than D25? I’m attaching them for your review.

I was happy to respond to this. It indicated that someone was finally getting into the nitty gritty of the database.

When they give me a new address I also change the “email source” to Player. I should have told you this. My program for processing the the new roster does not change the email address unless the email source is ACBL.
Either the addresses were changed, or the players were added to the database after I sent it to you, most likely the latter. So, after the database is next updated, the update of the “ok to email?” field should be run again. Should I change the email that receives messages about unsubscribes to some other account? I received notice of one more yesterday.
This is only important if a different audience is used for a future email. As long as the audience that I have been using is employed, the fact that they unsubscribed from that audience will prevent them from getting any more emails.

A few days later I sent the following to all of the people involved in the transition.

1. A new roster came out over the weekend. Is there a plan for updating Steve’s copy of the database?
2. One more player has unsubscribed, carl_palmer@yahoo.com. Should I change the owner of all of the audiences (Mailchimp word for mailing lists) so that someone else gets the emails that indicate such changes?
3. Neil, when Sue has another email to send out, do you want to try to do it? NAP qualifiers and Nashua will probably be promoted soon. Since we have not gotten access to the .LZH files, they can all be sent from the audience that I have been using (2209_Southbridge_D3_D24_D25) for the last year, but a new selection should be made from the database to update it. Then already defined “segments” of the audience can be used in the definition of the mailing. If necessary, it is easy to define new segments. That audience includes fields for rank description, masterpoints, and district.
4. I have a folder of files with SQL statements that I have used in the past. I would be happy to share it.

Neil said that he would try to send out Sue’s next email, which arrived in my Inbox that same day. Most of my subsequent conversations were with Neil, who had told me that he was very familiar with SQL and had extracted HTML from emails.

Sue has just sent me an email that she wants sent to potential players in Flight B of the NAP.
I will forward it to you. It contains formatted text and an image with a link on it. It does not have a width, but I always set the width to 600px. The link she provided should work, but the image must be uploaded to MailChimp. Sue does not like her emails to have the masthead, but this one is signed by Peter Marcus. So, I would add the masthead at the top. I have enclosed an HTML file that has the width and masthead set. You should be able to paste the text (after removing the instructions in red) into the HTML file. Then find the image (<img) tag and whatever divs or spans are around it. After the physical image (which I get by using Prt Scr and then cropping in an image editor) has been saved as a file and uploaded to MailChimp. The “src=” in the image tag must be changed to the URL on MalChimp. An alternative is to ask Sue to send you the image in a jpg and then upload it.
I almost forgot: the image tag has style=”float: right” in it. Since Microsoft Outlook does not recognize that, I always add align=”right”, which it does recognize. Incidentally, the width in the HTML is set in a table because that was the only way that I could get Outlook to recognize a fixed width.
This is all described in the instructions in detail with pictures on NEBridge.org. The instructions begin on https://nebridge.org/pages/345/. You may very well be able to do all of this using one of MailChimp’s many templates. I have never tried that.
This afternoon I updated the audience (2209_Southbridge_D3_D24_D25) with the data from the latest roster. The SQL statement that I used was:
select familiar_name, last_name, email, name_town_key, rank_desc, masterpoints, district from actives where district in(3,24,25) and ytdpoints >= 1 order by last_name, first_name
It will be necessary to define a segment of the audience that is limited to records in which the district is 25 and masterpoints are less than 2800 or 2900. The limit is 2500, but the check is made against the database as of last August. It would be tricky to get that because there might be people who were not on that roster (late with dues or other reason) but are now eligible. It seems better to annoy people like me who are not actually eligible than to miss some who are.
I should be in most of the day.

Neil, who was still gainfully employed, said that he would work on it over the weekend. He did. He wanted to do the project from scratch, which began by making sure the list (“audience” in MailChimp) was up to date. I was happy to explain MailChimp’s concepts of audiences and segments.

In olden days I created audiences for each email. That made sense when other people (president, I/N director, and district director) were also using MailChimp. If they unsubscribed because of one of their emails, I did not want them to have automatically unsubscribed from mine. In addition I was sometimes using MailChimp for other purposes than event promotion (emails to clubs and for the Best-in-class competition). Furthermore, I also sent to people who had attended New England or NABC events, and the selection was too complicated for segments.
In the last year all of the emails have been composed by Sue, I no longer have access to the tournament attendance data, I did not contact the clubs, and I stopped doing the Best in Class. So, I have been using the 2209 audience for every event. It includes all active players in D3. D24, and D25, and I have updated it every month with the SQL statement that I sent to you. I had previously added the masterpoints, rank description, and district fields so that I could use simple segments to select from this audience for emails for both regional tournaments and Grass Roots qualifiers.
Peter is still, at least in theory, working on getting access from the ACBL to the LZH files again. If we had them, we could update the attendance table as before. This would allow us both to send emails to more people with some likelihood of attending and to evaluate our tournaments better. It would, however, necessitate recycling some of our previous audiences, of which there are 89. MailChimp no longer allows us to create new audiences.

I sent the following to Steve and Neil:

All the “unsubscribes” that I sent to Steve had unsubscribed from the 2209 … audience that I have been using for the last year. When I updated the audience last Monday I selected from the actives view, which excludes anyone with N in the OK to email field. It would not matter for the current email project because they would all be excluded by MailChimp anyway. It is not possible (as far as I know) to send an email in MailChimp to someone who has unsubscribed from the audience used in the campaign.
I got the list of unsubscribes by taking the “export” function in the audience section of MailChimp. It sent to my download folder a zip file that contained three csv files: subscribers, unsubscribeds, and cleaned. The last had email addresses that had repeatedly bounced back. These files all have a large number of fields. I deleted all of the columns except the email address from the unsubscribed file and sent it to Steve. Since I have been using this audience for many emails, and I have previously run this procedure to change the ok to email fields, I am sure that a good number of those on the unsubscribed file already had the ok to email field set to N.
My phone number is 860 930 8784. I am scheduled to play bridge at the Hartford BC on Saturday. I will leave my house at noon and return a little before 5. I have no plans for Sunday, but I wake up early in the morning and then take naps during the day.

I was actually a little excited about Neil taking on this project. It would have been much better if I had been next to him when he did it, as I usually was when I installed a new AdDept system at a client’s. He wasted a lot of time trying to clean up the HTML that had been generated by the software product that Sue used, and some of the things that he did made it worse. He sent me a test copy and an email with the following questions.

I think I have completed the work necessary to send out Sue’s e-mail but I have a few questions:
(1) I thought I put the code into centering the image at the top but it’s not centered. My HTML experience is minimal and from a few years ago, although I did successfully embed the link that Sue wanted in the image. The instructions talk about having text appear when someone is using an e-mail client that doesn’t support images, but when I did it, the text always appeared which isn’t what we want. Do I need to worry about this? If so, let me know what to change.
(2) I followed your instructions of pasting your e-mail into Outlook and saving the source and pasting that into Mailchimp. There are a lot of tags that probably don’t need to be there but probably some of them do. Should I not worry about this or should I eliminate the ones that don’t really belong. As both you and the instructions mention, different e-mail clients require different tags so I can’t really go by how it looks on my machine.
(3) The next e-mail you receive is the test e-mail. I sent it to myself first and verified that I did the href tag correctly (I have experience doing that as we convert statutory references in the law to links to the legislature’s web pages when the Massachusetts budget gets signed so I actually have done this before.
(4) Finally, can you verify that I did this all correctly? The segment should be fine and you shouldn’t have any trouble finding this new campaign.

I looked it over and then sent Neil what I had discovered.

1) The image at the top should be the banner, which was in the HTML that I sent you. It should NOT link to the flyer. The Chicago image should be where Sue placed it. I separated it out on its own line in the HTML editing screen. There is already a link around it. I am not sure if it works. You must change the src= on that image to that of the one that you used at the top. Don’t change any of the other attributes, but add align=”right”.
Also take out lines 8 and 9.
2) The tool that Sue uses inserts a lot of extraneous tags, but I never worry about them. I am worried about the extra line feeds. We need to figure out where they came from.
3) Make the above changes and send me another test. When I say that it looks OK, send a test to Sue.

Neil made some changes and sent me another test along with the following email.

I think I made all of the changes and I eliminated the “excess” html code – at least I think it is excess. I put <br> tags in to force line breaks in the right place. I’m getting three errors (code turns red) but it doesn’t seem to be causing a problem. If I remove the body tag, then the text only goes half way across the page. Please take a look. I also am sending you the test e-mail now.

His remark that “the text only goes halfway across the page” was a reaction to the code that set the width of the email to 600. I looked at the entire campaign more thoroughly this time. Here was my reply.

I had not checked the segment before. I noticed this morning that the total number selected was roughly twice what I expected. D25 has about 6,000 members. The audience also includes D3 and D24. Here is how it currently is defined:

2. From section: As it is,the replies will go to Gary (webmaster@nebridge.org). That should probably be changed to inchair, but Sue may want the replies to go to Peter. It is her call.
3. Subject section: I always have copied the subject from Sue’s emails and pasted it directly into the subject line. That would put it in all upper case. I don’t know if it would increase or decrease the number of people who open the email, but she gets to make decisions like this now.
4. Content: I removed the <html, <meta and the second <body tag. I put “Folks,” inside a <p tag.
On the second <img tag:
I removed align=center and replaced it with align=right. I know that was what she wanted because her original source said style=”float: right;”. I also replaced width=500 with width=400. I also added a ) at the end that she forgot.
After this I expected the test email to look like what Sue sent me, but it doesn’t. This is because you removed all of her <font tags.
You did a lot more work than was necessary. I am sorry that I did not describe this to you very well. Basically, Sue’s email was fine. It was not necessary to remove all of the extra stuff that her program puts in, and, in fact, those font statements were necessary to make it look the way that she wanted.
The only changes that I usually make are:
1) Start with my frame.html
2) Add the banner if necessary
3) Find all of her <img tags: upload the physical image or find the URL if it is already uploaded, change the src= parameter to the location on MailChimp, and add align=”right” if she used <style=”float: right”. By the way, it would make things easier if she sent the image as a .jpg file in addition to the one that is embedded in the message.
In this case the image itself is no longer showing up in my copy of the email that she sent. We may need to have her send it again. I decided to replicate the campaign you made, and show how I would have done the content. The campaign I created is titled 2023 Flight B GNT (Mike’s content). I hope that this makes things a little clearer. I do not understand why Sue’s original image is no longer showing up in the email that she originally sent. I would like to see what her image looked like in Outlook.

Neil replied in detail:

1. Sorry about that with the segment. I have added the criteria that the players have to be from district 25 and now there will be 5466 recipients which is about what you expect.
2. I’ll ask Sue who she wants the from to be. I guess Gary is the default but obviously we can put whatever we want in that box.
3. I’ll ask Sue whether she wants the subject in all upper case. I was taught that all upper case is “yelling” although it probably doesn’t make a difference whether it is all caps or not. I agree with you to defer to Sue on this.
4. There still were some red tags (errors) when I opened my version of this which you edited for me. However, I added a few more tags and close tags at the top and that seem to fix the problem without changing anything.
5. I added back the font tag towards the top. The font appearing on my computer is Helvetica 11 when I put the tab back and when I look at the original e-mail you sent me which was Sue’s e-mail. Yesterday, my version was sending it in Helvetica 10. As you know, fonts are at the mercy of what is on the users computer so what you are seeing might not match what I am seeing. I am looking at these in Chrome.
6. Your version of the e-mail is doing what some of my previous versions did which is only going half way across the page for the image at the top and all of the text. My version has the image at the top the same as yours but the text goes across the page entirely. I think that’s what we want, right? Your change to the Chicago image pushed it to the right and has the text wrap to the left. That’s not what came across in the original from you but I think it looks good your way. I guess I’ll find out how much Sue wants these e-mails to reflect “exactly” what she sends. Not sure what you mean when you say the image from her e-mail disappeared? So we can proceed one of two ways. First, I am sending you my updated campaign test e-mail. If that looks good to you, I will send it to Sue with the question for her from above. If it is still problematic, I guess we can use your version but I will ask Sue about the width issue since it looks weird only going half way across. If it is easier to talk, my phone number is 617-771-2527 if that is how you would like to next proceed. Looks like we’ll get this done today which is what I told Sue.

Our conversation ended with my reply:

3. I am virtually certain that Sue wants the subject in uppercase. When you talk with her, I would not mention about “yelling”. I was taught the same as you. I avoided all-upper case when I wrote emails or anything else. You also should probably ask her about the banner. She did not like it on the ones that she composed, but this one was mostly written by and signed by Peter.
4. The width of the email that I composed was 600 pixels, the standard size of an email window and also the size of the banner. If your window is wider than that, it might have seemed strange that everything everything wrapped at that spot. The 600 px setting was set in both the body and the table. Some email clients respect the one in the body, but Outlook only respects the table. So, if you closed the <body or <table at the top, it would be wider than 600, as it was in Outlook on the test you sent me.
5. On Outlook the font is now Calibri 11. On my version it was Arial 16, which was what was specified in Sue’s. Maybe my eyes were deceiving me, but this morning Sue’s original email had the word image001 where the second image was before. The computer on which her image was stored must have been down; the image is back now. It is smaller and has slightly different writing on it than the one whose URL I gave to you. If I had this to do over, I would try to use it or at least set the width to around 320.
What you sent me is, in my opinion, perfectly fine. You should see if Sue agrees.
Going forward (if you are still game) I advise using the method that I proposed in the replica. I can do one of her emails in about a half hour, and it always maintains her fonts and positions her images where she wants them. Sometimes in the middle of an email she likes to change the font size, color or even the font itself. The only mistake that I have made is failing to find an image that was down at the bottom of an email. If the src= parameter is not changed, it does not appear in the MailChimp version.
You also might want to investigate using a template. When I started, I had several years experience at writing emails in HTML, and I hated the restrictions of the templates.

A few security issues still remained, but the email went out on time. In a few days the security issues were resolved. I had to change the owner of the audience. That will probably need to be redone every time that a new audience is used, but since Neil has been designated as the owner of the account, that should not be difficult.

At the end of the Executive Committee meeting on June 24 in Nashua Neil button-holed me to assure me that he would handle Sue’s emails the way that I recommended. He seemed to enjoy telling me about how he had dealt with the issues. I did not voice my primary thought, which was, “Better you than me.”

After the email went out Neil asked me about the fourteen bounce-backs that were reported. I explained how MailChimp handles them:

The ones that have bounced will have a status of “cleaned”. I generally do not worry about them. They will no longer be sent emails by any campaigns in this audience. If you recycle an old audience for new emails and select them, they will be set to subscribed unless they were already unsubscribed or cleaned on the audience that you archived or deleted. If the first mailing bounces, they will be set to cleaned forever.
Just a reminder: the audience has one record per email address. The database has one record per ACBL number. A lot of players share email addresses.
There is a field on the players table called email_rejected. I have not kept this up, but if you wanted to, you could export the audience. One of the csv files in the zip that it produces will contain all of the cleaned ones. That could be used to make the database more accurate. However, if they later provide the ACBL with a new valid address, that one will appear after the next monthly update. The email_rejected fields are NOT currently automatically reset by the monthly update program. So, the email_rejected field would not be accurate.

The last issue (so far) was that Sue wanted an NEBridge account for TheFairyGOLDMother. I turned this request over to Gary Peterson, to whom I had provided the credentials for the software that redirected the emails. He had lost the password. I sent it to him again.

1. This trip did not come off as planned. However, I did go on a cruise, as is thoroughly documented here.

2. I am not sure why Peter Marcus, who was the principal tournament director for the district was involved at all. Perhaps Curtis thought that because Peter had worked for DEC, he would understand what I did.

3. No Bulletin was produced for the Presidential Regional, the tournament to which Curtis referred. I had produced the Bulletin for the Optical Regional in November. Thereafter the Bulletin, which cost to district $100 per tournament, was considered too expensive to continue after an informal email poll of members of the Tournament Scheduling Committee.

4. Over the years I sent out perhaps twenty email messages for Sue Miguel. I do not remember that any of those experiences was what I would call fun.

5. Megahertz Computer was Bob Bertoni’s company. In theory they supported the district’s website, but it was difficult to get them to respond to problems and questions.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Author Archives: Mike

2023 Bridge: The Weiss-Bertoni Award

2006 March: Sue and Mike Spend a Week in San Diego

2023 Bridge: Limited Sectional at the HBC on 3/26

2022 Bridge: District 25 Events

2021-2023 Bridge: Trying to Resign