The newsletter is FINALLY going to print today! It took a while to get the first and second drafts around to the staff and members who wanted to give feedback, but we are emailing a PDF version of the final copy to the publisher today. We decided against renaming the newsletter after all. It is still "The Cub Reporter," but now the publication includes the tagline "Bringing History to Life!"
To bring you up to speed, I've been doing a lot of miscellaneous tasks in between working on the newsletter. I was asked to come up with 2 new designs for the gift shop: a "Future Piper Pilot" toddler t-shirt and a design for a tall tumbler glass. Several weeks ago I did a "speech to inform" on the museum as an assignment in my Advanced Public Speaking class. I wore a Piper Aviation Museum pin on my suit jacket and gave my fellow classmates about 7 minutes' worth of information regarding the history of Piper in Lock Haven, and reflected a bit on my volunteer experiences up to that point in time. I have also been interviewed by two classmates for two very different assignments. One girl used me as a source in her Fundamentals of Public Speaking "speech to inform" about the various exciting things you can do in small-town Lock Haven. Another classmate wrote a current piece about the museum for her Magazine Writing class.
I've also been randomly selling tickets to a spaghetti dinner that the Lock Haven Sons of Italy is having to benefit the museum on May 18th. I'm going to an aviation-related pancake breakfast in Lock Haven on Sunday, May 1st to try to sell more spaghetti dinner tickets, too.
Disappointingly, the fundraiser with LHU RHA fell through. There was a lot of miscommunication that ended up happening among the Residence Life staff and they were under the impression that I needed more participation from them than I really did. I received a rather unprofessional email from the RHA supervisor and, to avoid any more hassle, I have decided to just let the idea drop. On a fairly relevant note, I have created and distributed promotional museum flyers to each of the residence halls. They will be placed in a rack with other local brochures and remain there until next year, or until they are all gone. It's not the kind of publicity that I had originally wanted to use with the on-campus students, but I guess it's better than nothing. We have also created a student rate for the museum, $4.00 with a valid student ID.
Now that the newsletter is done, and I've basically completed the tasks that they had lined up for me, things are starting to slow down. I'm going to head back to archives again today to try to come up with a few items for the western PA I80 welcome center. The center has offered us a shelf, about 1.5ft x 3ft, to use at our discretion. We have already sent a small J-3 Cub model to hang in the welcome center and I have written up a little bit of J-3 information for a placard that will join the model as soon as we decide upon items for the shelf.
