Hal Dunn Literary Award

First I wish to congratulate Mr.Goe on being named the first recipient of the Hal Dunn Literary Award. He has provided numerous informative articles in The Chronicle, and deserves recognition for his contributions as editor of the publication. Will The Chronicle be publishing the results of all of the voting in an upcoming issue? I, for one, would like to see which articles/ writers the membership thought were noteworthy.



In speaking of the award I would like to open a discussion of the purpose of the award and perhaps look at expanding the scope of this honor. I know that there has been some discussion on the C4OA discussion board about trying to increase participation in both the content of The Chronicle and the discussion board. Might there be the possibility of having a distinction between those who are staff /professional writers and those who are rank and file members who contribute? In most awards that I have been associated there is such a distinction. This allows for recognition of staff/professional writers vs. hobbyists or occasional contributors. Just an idea to bounce around. This might encourage more members to write articles about their personal research or experiences.



Again, I take nothing away from the honor bestowed on Rusty, he is a phenomenal writer and has done a great deal to make The Chronicle the great publication that it is. I would just like to explore ideas to encourage more members to submit articles. Any discussion would be welcome.

Pmk700,

We all share your thoughts about Rusty being so deserving of this award. I know that he is honored that members stepped forward to vote for his article.

To answer your question, yes, all the results of the Hal V. Dunn Literary Award will be posted in the fall-winter 2010 issue of Curry's Chronicle. I don't know the stats off-hand, but I do know that 39 articles received votes from the membership.

Also, I really appreciate your suggestion of expanding the Hal V. Dunn Literary Award to include professional/staff writers as well as hobbiests. I will make sure to bring this suggestion up to the members at the regional meeting (at the Nevada State Museum's Carson City Coin Show--Friday, August 27, 2010 at 1:00 PM in the auditorium).

We're all really grateful to Rusty for bringing the "CC" community together. He puts many hours into each submitted article to make sure they are published as a wonderful representation of both their respective author and of the club. And, he's always been #1 in encouraging new (and even seasoned) members to share their thoughts and experiences by writing articles.

Thanks for inputting your suggestion,

Maya

Ms. Maya

Thank you! I appreciate the attendees discussing this issue at the upcoming regional meeting. In the past I have had the pleasure of being the chair of several award committees in all of those cases the sitting editor, committee members and staff have been precluded from being receipients of the awards. That does not mean that there should not or could not be additional ways to acknowledge the excellence of their contributions, but it allows more for recognition of the at large members and contributors.

I look forward to hearing the thoughts of others. Thank you again.

PMK,

I enjoyed reading your well thought out comments and Maya's reply. You clearly have experience with these sorts of matters.

I would like to make a point about your suggestion concerning the separation of rewards between "staff and, or professional writers" versus "amateur writers" and regular club members. With the exception of Rusty Goe, the club's President/Editor, and Marie Goe, the Secretary/Treasurer, there are no other staff members in the C4OA! There is no question that Rusty and Marie could really use the help and would dearly love to have other C4OA members step up to take over one or more of these official roles. As you know, every issue of Currys invites members to do just that.

Maya could certainly be considered Rusty and Maries "right arm" so to speak, though she is actually a Southgate Coins employee. Maya is not renumerated in any way by the C4OA for the help she regularly provides the club. Instead, whatever time she spends assisting Rusty with club matters, is generously underwritten by Southgate Coins, not the C4OA.

There are certainly a few well known numismatists in the C4OA, though I am not qualified to say whether they are "professional writers" or not. To my knowledge, only Rusty , Weimar White and John Mcloskey are published authors.

I understand and fully appreciate your point concerning the separation of professional vs amateur writers,. At the end of the day, I think these professionals would feel the same way. However, rather than splitting the Hal Dunn award into professional and amateur categories, I suspect that the few professional writers in this club who contribute to Currys Chronicle would be pleased to have their names excluded from future voting anyway...but that is just my opinion.

I know that Rusty was honored to be named the first recipient of this award, especially as Hal Dunn and he were very close friends. Heck...I voted for him myself! But, I also suspect that this took him by complete surprise as he was not considering that anyone would include him in the voting. He was thinking along the same lines as you PMK, that this is for the regular members.

Perhaps Dan McCarty would voice his thoughts on this matter since this award was his idea and he has done such a fine job of making it a reality.

Belay Off

"Back to the drawing board".

Garryn

I dont think much redrawing is needed however. PMK's thoughts about separating out the professionals should be fairly easy.

What do you think?

Belay Off