Last year I visited Retournac, France and met Bruno Ythier. Bruno Ythier is now poised to open what may be a really spectacular lace museum about lace. He contacted me and told me that he would like to have an electronic map that shows all the lace clubs in the world and asked if I could handle the part about providing all the US lace clubs. Of course, we have a list of IOLI clubs in our directory. I have referred the matter to better heads than mine about whether the information should be provided for his map. As former publicity director for the IOLI convention in New Jersey, I would like to observe that in some ways the lace world is a secret society. Because we mostly hold our meetings in private homes and there is a great deal of anxiety about providing private information, I would say that you really have to find a lacemaker and then have her give you the information personally. In a way, this serves as an informal vetting process. Presumably, if a person who you suspected of being a serial killer were to approach you and ask where the nearest lace meeting was, you might demure. On the other hand, I sometimes hear people say they have been looking for lace lessons and a contact with a lace group for 23 years in hopes of learning the craft, but are now too old to learn anything. Meanwhile, there have been 4 groups within driving distance all that time. Thus, we demonstrate like mad and try to make personal contact with prospective members and give them information in person, but people trying to break into the lace world without a personal contact have a very hard time. As lace publicity person at the Convention, I found that reporters repeatedly asked me, for purposes of publication, since we were, after all, trying to publicize our craft and expand our ranks, the address where club meetings were held and phone numbers that could be called by those hopeful to join us, but that our local clubs did not have actual addresses, since they were more of a floating banquet among different private homes and I had not previously cleared permission to give out personal phone numbers to the newspaper. Thus we had the rather hilarious situation where I was begging for coverage of our group but refusing to provide contact information. I am certain the reporters thought I was a lunatic. At one point they asked if they could print our logo with the article and I was told that I was not to grant permission for that because the logo could only be used after approval by a full vote of the board. (Note: some organizations have special press kits they develop with photography and information that are cleared extensively first and intended for use by the press. I would recommend this path except if I did, I would probably be put on the committee to make the press kit and I have enough grief in my life already :-)) Fortunately, the internet has provided a form of contact in that I note that those IOLI chapters, by no means a majority, that have websites have some modus by which they can be contacted by strangers. The others exist only as names and I do not know whether inquiries to the national group then produces the contact information. As far as I know, we don't have anyone at the IOLI whose specific job it is to reply to general inquiries. I really don't know what the answer to the worldwide problem of locating lace clubs is, unless, of course, Bruno gets this electronic map up and running, and even then, I do not know whether he will just have little illuminated dots on various cities or whether there will be any real way of contacting the clubs. However, during this period when we are all afraid that the craft may die out, it would be worthwhile to consider if there might be a better way of informing people of club locations other than personal word of mouth. One benefit of holding meetings in public places, like libraries, is that you can advertise them, but most clubs don't have the budget to pay for a place. Devon
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