60 people attended the Oct 23rd Bound for the Future event. Here a third of them are pictured listening to Cathy Strobel describe the project.
by Susan Gust
Neighbors, friends, advertisers, writers, cartoonists, delivery people, volunteers, young and old, new and well-heeled,—–gathered at the Cultural Wellness Center for a terrific Annual Meeting celebrating 34 years of The Alley Newspaper. This important event also served as a fundraiser for our Bound for the Future Project.
Cathy Strobel, President of Alley Communications”' Board of Directors announced at the meeting that the Hennepin County Library has generously decided to contribute the cost of printing and binding two sets of the 17 volumes holding 30 years worth of history, photos and stories contained in over 4,000 pages of The Alley Newspaper. One of these two sets will be located at the Downtown Library and the other set will be available in our own community at the Franklin Library. The Board and volunteers of Alley Communications, the community owned, non-profit publisher of The Alley Newspaper, are so very grateful for the efforts of the staff of the Hennepin County Library and Commissioner Peter McLaughlin”'s office that helped to make this project successful.
The printing of these two sets has been completed and now the volumes are being bound. We will make an announcement in an upcoming issue of The Alley Newspaper as to when this project has been completed and delivered to each of the libraries.
Alley Communications especially wants to thank the organizational contributors to the Bound for the Future Project: Franklin Avenue Business Association (FABA), Chicago Lake Florist, the Cultural Wellness Center and Hennepin County Library. Our Annual Meeting and fundraiser was made possible through the in-kind contributions of May Day Café, May Day Book Store, Jonathan Miller, Leon Oman, Helen Pound, Cathy Strobel, Jane Thomson, Sue Hunter Weir, and Joyce Wisdom. We especially want to commend the Cultural Wellness Center for making this event possible with their generous commitment of valuable staff time, food and consistent encouragement and help in hosting this event on October 23.
The evening”'s program culminated with a time of tributes to Leon Oman upon his retirement after 28years as Coordinator of Community Education at Andersen Elementary School. The Alley Board was pleased to hear and announce that Leon will stay on the Alley Board and as our bookkeeper. Thank you, Leon.
Thank you, Thank you to all of our neighbors for being our neighbors. Thank you to those neighbors, our readers, who have thus far contributed a total of $1,715
For those who haven”'t contributed yet, please know that any amount is appreciated. Every dollar raised has helped to contribute to this tremendous effort to get 30 years of The Alley Newspapers gathered together, organized, transported, printed and bound.
We”'re excited now to anticipate going beyond just the hard copy sets at the libraries by increasing the access with microfilms of past Alleys through the Minnesota Historical Society, digital access of past issues, and finally indexing so names, events, and articles may be found quickly.
The January issue of The Alley will have a report on the finances and progress of the bound for the future project and an Annual Report to the Community of your paper, The Alley.
Each of the contributions, large and small, helped the community members governing this endeavor to truly feel a vote of confidence of the importance of keeping The Alley bound for the future! As Phillips Community namesake, Wendell Phillips said: “When great newspapers don”'t say much”¦see what little independent ones say. We came into this world to give truth a little jog onward; we came into the world to help our neighbor”'s rights.”
