Amanda Gookin, is serving as the Interim Office Manager during Amy Fix’s maternity leave through March 15, 2010.
Amanda, a life-long cellist, is a member of Local 802.

Local 1000 is teaming up with Sound Health Care to provide an additional option for health care for our membership.

Find out more here: http://ahcpsales.com/SoundHealthcare/AFM1000.html

The health insurance plan offered by Local 802 in New York is still available for people in the New York area.

The Local 1000 Executive Board will meet in conjunction with the Folk Alliance at the Downtown Marriott in Memphis, TN Fri-Sat, Feb 19-20.

The Spring annual Membership Meeting will be held at 4 pm on Saturday, Feb 20, at the Downtown Marriott in Memphis.

Local 1000 will also host a Showcase Free Zone with Song Circles on Friday and Saturday nights. The schedule will be posted here.

Local 1000 members can get a significant discount on registration. Contact Membership Committee Chair, Steve Eulberg (seulberg at steveeulberg.com) for details. The deadline to get your name in the program book has been extended through Tuesday, January 19th, 2010.

Office manager Amy Fix and Tim and Roxy welcome Zachary Blue, born Dec 30, 2009, 8lbs 6oz.

Amy will be home with him on maternity leave until March 15, 2010. Congratulations!

(Amanda is our Interim Office Manager and is availabe during regular office hours.)

John O’Connor, Local 1000’s Secretary-Treasurer and New Deal editor, was elected to the Vice Presidency of the AFM’s largest local, 802 in their December 2009 election.

“You should have seen the looks on the faces of the musicians who realized that they had regained control of their union!” O’Connor noted, remembering the evening when the vote tallies were announced. “This marks a new era.”

O’Connor will continue to serve as Secretary-Treasurer of Local 1000 through the rest of his term.

In the Fall, Local 1000 was represented by Executive Board members at OCFF (Ken Whiteley), FARM (Sandy Andina, Deb Cowan), FARWEST (Steve Eulberg) regional gatherings of the Folk Alliance.

John McCutcheon and Dave Hawkins were also present at IBMA (International Bluegrass Musicians Assoc.).

The Executive Board met for its Fall Retreat at NERFA in Kerhonkson, NY and re-elected Steve Eulberg as Western Regional Board Rep, and Deb Cowan as Eastern Regional Board Rep.

We bid a grateful farewell to Dave Hawkins as the final At-Large Board position to end with the expiration of his term. (This was a decision was made by the Fall 2009 Membership Meeting as a cost-cutting strategy.)

The Board agreed to accept a proposal to offer an additional Health Insurance Plan to our members through Sound Health in Nashville. Look for more details.

The Board also decided to contact and check in with all of our membership before the Folk Alliance Gathering in February.

The Board also agreed that our Skype Board Check-ins every 6 weeks have helped us have a very productive year and agreed to continue them.

Once again, Local 1000 organized a visit to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis while at the Folk Alliance. Don Shorock was able to capture some video of the sing-a-long in the atrium of the festival hotel, led by Guy and Candie Carawan of the Highlander Center in Tennessee, Lifetime Achievement honorees of the Folk Alliance for 2009.

A distant and diverse population are we, and we continue to utilize current technology and opportunities to get connected with each other in our non-geographical local.

Thanks to Debra Cowan, our new Eastern Regional Board Representative and Communications chairperson, we have a facebook group. To join go here.

Debra has also set up a myspace page for us, so cruise on by and become friends with your local.

In Memphis, at the February Meeting of the Executive Board, 2 resignations were accepted and a new member was appointed.

Alice Gerrard, formerly the Eastern Regional Representative resigned her term in deference to a university teaching position she accepted. (Congratulations, Alice!)

Debra Cowan, from Massachussetts, was appointed to fill the remainder of her term. Debra has also assumed the chair of the Communications Committee.

We also bid farewell to Joe Uehlein, formerly the Member-At-Large #2, who resigned his term, but not his commitment to the work of Local 1000.

Proposed By-Laws to shrink the size of the Executive Board were also adopted at the Membership Meeting on Saturday, February 21st. In accordance with these changes, the Member-At-Large #2 slot will not be filled because it has been eliminated by attrition.

You can view the current list of Executive Board members on the Executive Board page in the “About Us” link above.

(PLEASE NOTE CHANGE ANNOUNCED BY AFM at the end of this post)

President John McCutcheon’s lead article on the resiliency of the AFM Pension Plan in a time when 401K and IRA retirement plans have lost 30-40% of their investments has proved timely.

He quotes a financial advisor, “It is rare to find pensions plans that are still in place that are as rich as this one is. For anyone in the industry, contributions to this pension plan should be a core part of their retirement planning.”

Another AFM Local has requested permission to reprint it in their newsletter. Read it here: (NewDealWinter09pp1-3.pdf)

It’s still a great time to join Local 1000 and start contributing to YOUR AFM pension plan!

NOTE (3/08/09): The AFM has just announced a change in the multiplier for pension payouts that will begin with amounts collected after May 1, 2009. Read more about it here. While this change adjusts the multiplier down, the money that has been collected up until the change will still pay out at the current rate. This is the benefit of a “defined benefit” pension plan.