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DJMA Annual General Meetings... [home] |
DJMA AGM #1 - 1994/95
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| DJMA AGM #2 - 1995/96 |
Highlights of the year included visits from four John Muir enthusiasts from the USA:
Millie Stanley came from Wisconsin, where she lives near the Muirs' first farm. She signed copies of her new book, The Heart of John Muir's World, which sold rapidly in the DJMA shop.
Steve Pauly from Dunbar's twin town, Martinez, re-enacted in the Corn Exchange one of the 'evenings with John Muir' which he and his wife perform every week in the Muir homestead.
Dale J Cook, President of the John Muir Memorial Association in Martinez, came for 23 hours to photograph the birthplace and meet his counterpart, Fred Last, other members of DJMA, the President of the Dunbar Town Twinning Association, children in Dunbar Primary School working on the first John Muir Award, and the Senior Ranger of the John Muir Country Park.
Bill Ritch from Wisconsin who, after his experiences in Vietnam has adopted the role of the ageing John Muir in Lee Stetson's play, Conversation with a Tramp. A gripping performance was the climax of DJMA's 2nd Birthday Celebration Thereafter the performance went on to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe where Bill was introduced by our President. The event, produced by Stewart Friendship, was rated with five stars by the critic of The Scotsman.
A younger Muir impersonator also visited us. Gary Hollywood, actor in STV productions Take the High Road and Taggart came, by a UNICEF contact, to prepare for his part, as the teenage John Muir, in a film to be made in Massachusetts. He was enthralled with Dunbar, and came back for intensive voice-training in the East Lothian way of speech. He became so authentic that he ended up being cast as the older John Muir too.
We are grateful to these and all our other visitors for their interest and willingness to help our young Association.
New members continue to join the Association. We were pleased to welcome Dunpender Community Council as an affiliate member. Dunpender is the historic name for the district around Traprain Law, near East Linton. Like the Dunbar and West Barns Community Councils already in affiliate membership, Dunpender's area includes part of the John Muir Country Park.
Once again we held a winter exhibition in Dunbar Library -- this time with our own stands and information panels, thanks to a substantial grant from Scottish Natural Heritage. Eleven colourful panels about John Muir, his life, his work and his importance today, had their first airing on 9th January. Declaring the exhibition open Stephen Bunyan, at that time District Councillor for Dunbar, outlined the increasing awareness of John Muir in the district and the world-wide relevance of his ideas for the present and future times. Christopher Badenoch, Area Manager of SNH, also spoke (see Newsletter 5 for more details). Since then, the panels have been on display at 138 High Street. A duplicate set has been touring schools in the area, and was on show at the AGM of the John Muir Trust in April.
Graham White, who produced the display panels, has given talks to pupils at schools in Dunbar, in his dual role as a DJMA council member and as a member of the John Muir Trust Education and Information Committee. It was in the latter capacity that he arranged a major event in Dunbar, when the American Consul and East Lothian's Director of Education took part in the presentation of the first John Muir Awards to pupils of Dunbar Primary School. Graham also forged closer links with people who shard our interests when he attended the John Muir Conference this year in Martinez and Stockton in California.
A summary of the proposals for the John Muir Centre was sent to a number of organisations and individuals during autumn 1995 with a request to send a letter of support for our application for Millennium funding. Over 40 enthusiastic replies were received from a wide spectrum of interests and a wide geographic spread. Copies of these letters were on display in the January (1996) exhibition (see Annex A for some quotations). A copy of our application document was also on display, and the Scoping Report by the ASH Consultancy Group has a permanent place in Dunbar Library.
Thanks to the generosity of local industries, we have been able to pay the expenses associated with 138 High Street for the full year. The end of August 1996, however, will see the end of our occupation because the shop has been sold. During the height of the 1995 tourist season about a hundred people were counted in a single afternoon stopping to examine the window display. More than 20 of them came inside to see the photographs on show, and to buy books or T-shirts.
Since the winter our stock of 'Kittiwake' T-shirts and sweat-shirts has had to be replenished several times. A new design, 'Shelduck', was very generously donated by John Busby, ARSA, and has been printed above the Association's logo and quotation from John Muir "Around my native town of Dunbar there was no lack of wildness...". We have acted as an outlet for a range of other high quality T-shirts produced by our supplier, Gardner Systems of North Berwick, with designs of seabirds, seals and dolphins created by well-known artists. Our own T-shirts are now on sale in the recently opened Coffee Shop in Tyninghame village.
Frequently-changed window displays in No 138 provided us with a continuous advertisement; members manned the shop nearly every Saturday morning and on many other occasions, and it was the scene of a Christmas coffee morning and an April 'cybercafe'. We are particularly grateful to Richard Weller and Andrew Miller for their frequent attendance, and to Audrey Weller, Michael and Elizabeth Kirwan, Jim and Betty Comfort, Susan Panton, Margery Clinton, Paula Bridges, David Brown and Daniel Smith.
In line with our aim of providing a showcase for other environmental organisations, we have used our window to publicise the monthly programmes of the Edinburgh Natural History Society and of the East Lothian Countryside Rangers.
John Muir Trust diaries were again on sale, as were a number of books on which we shared commission with the Trust. We purchased a stock of the new Canongate printing of Muir's Five Wilderness Books with a preface by Graham White, and these have also been selling fast. The first book in the volume, My Boyhood and Youth, had been out of print for some years; a great pity, for it was a worthwhile souvenir of Dunbar. We hope to maintain a mail-order facility for books and T-shirts even after No 138 is closed.
An invitation to speak to the Committee of Dunbar Golf Club was accepted by the President and Convener, and the Club has offered us a regular paragraph in the newsletter they send quarterly to their members.
Three Newsletters, numbers 4, 5 and 6, were sent to members and to supporters during the year. Please send a large stamped addressed envelope with your request if you need copies, to:
DJMA c/o Brooke & Brown WS,
42 High Street,
Dunbar,
EH42 1JH.
The DJMA Newsletters can also be found on Internet using the URL:
http://www.cs.strath.ac.uk/Contrib/JMC/DJMA/Newsletters
[Update: now http://www.muir-birthplace.org/djma/newsletters/]
The Association's first AGM was held on 22nd September. Draft Minutes are sent to members with this Report.
A Burns Supper, this time cooked by members, took place on 26th January in the hall of Our Lady of the Waves, about 60 attending.
A 'guided bird-watch' to listen to the dawn chorus in the woodland at West Barns was arranged by Hugh Ouston for 12th June, but the weather was wretchedly unkind.
About 60 members and guests enjoyed DJMA's second birthday party in the hall of Dunbar Primary School. The President proposed a toast to the Association coupled with 'the people of Dunbar', and Duncan Smeed gave a vote of thanks to Bill Ritch and his producer for bringing Conversation with a Tramp to Dunbar.
Dunbar Primary School, another affiliate member, contributed a colourful group of paintings and models for display in the January 1996 exhibition. A further selection, by older children, was loaned for the visit of the Earl of Dalkeith on 26th April 1996.
The John Muir Birthday Party on 21st April in the function room at Dunbar Leisure Pool again had environmental entertainment by Malcolm le Maistre. Members of Dunbar Trades' Association once more were generous in their gifts of food. That only 60 children attended was put down to the fact that it was a Sunday afternoon. Next year we shall revert to Saturday morning! The older children made a photographic survey of part of Pressmennan Wood South, a few miles from Dunbar, and prepared notes for transcription to the John Muir Centre on Internet, before joining in the Party.
Three days of conservation work were undertaken in the John Muir Country Park, under the guidance of Senior Countryside Ranger Bobbie Anderson. About eight members, ranging widely in age and including some juniors, attended on each occasion. During National Tree Week in November, trees were planted at Winterfield. In spring 1996 signs were erected in the car park at Linkfield, and at the frog pool. Dune heathland conservation and sea buckthorn management work was carried out north of the Tyne (for those members who are unfamiliar with the area, this Tyne flows from the western part of the Lammermuirs, through Haddington and East Linton, into the sea at Tyninghame in the Country Park just north of Dunbar).
DJMA could not fail to be concerned when a controversy arose over the proposed seemingly indiscriminate felling of trees on the north side of Pressmennan Lake. The Association was represented at a site visit, and expressed its concerns in writing to the various parties involved. A copy of a letter setting out our corporate view is attached as Annex B to this report. The Association's concern had been heightened by an earlier event near Dunbar when the terms of a licence to thin seemed to have been seriously misinterpreted.
In June, two members of Council attended a conference organised by East Lothian Community Woodland Trust, A Forest Strategy for East Lothian. Concerned that habitat fragmentation and isolation has been the biggest threat to wildlife in the 20th century, the Trust and the Farming & Wildlife Advisory Group have now initiated the Lammermuir Woods Project. This aims to secure Millennium Forest for Scotland funding to create links between new and existing small areas of native woodland all along the north face of the Lammermuir Hills.
The photocopied version of the booklet prepared last year has been in great demand, and two further runs of 100 copies have been on sale in 138, in the Stefany Hawryluk Studio at 126 High Street, and in the Tourist Information Centre.
David Anderson has taken parties and individuals round the Town Trail on five occasions, but it has not yet been possible to arrange training sessions for other guides.
Following the feat of achieving B-listing in the first round of applications to the Millennium Commission, we were able to commission a Scoping Report in October 1995 to add substance to our further application submitted in November. Officials of the Commission visited in January 1996 and met members and supporters in Dunbar Library where a DJMA exhibition was in place.
Two days earlier a John Muir Centre Management Group (JMCMG) had been set up, comprising representatives of DJMA, Scottish Natural Heritage, East Lothian Council and Lothian & Edinburgh Enterprise Limited to tackle the many problems that will have to be overcome before the Centre is realised. This group had a useful discussion with Millennium Commissioner, the Earl of Dalkeith, when he visited us at the end of April 1996 (a report of this visit is given in Newsletter 6).
Although we not given a signal to progress further in the first round of Millennium applications, the Management Group decided that it would be wrong to allow our intention to lapse. Carole Ross, our very hard-working representative on a small group of the JMCMG, helped to draw up a brief for a two-phase Feasibility Study/Pre-Development Phase. Part of the detailed brief for Phase One is reproduced here:
DETAILED BRIEF
The consultancy team will be required to complete the following tasks.
Prepare a concept for the Centre which achieves the objectives of a quality visitor attraction which aspires to achieve a centre of global significance in environmental education. The Centre will be not only a place to visit, but also the source of action and participation. It will have the potential of putting Dunbar on the map, and of becoming a major site of influence in environmental education.
The two main themes of the Centre are to
The Centre aims to
To enhance its reputation and long-term future, the Centre also aims to
The concept will build on previous statements and the proposals made to the Millennium Commission [these were listed and copies of the documents enclosed].
Based on this concept, prepare a full feasibility study for the project which will include an outline of space requirements, an initial market analysis, outline capital and revenue funding structure, and the management structure of the completed Centre.
There is a break clause between the two phases to enable a realistic assessment by the Management Group as to whether the recommendations of the study (i) fulfil the objectives of the contributing organisations and (ii) suggest that it would be worthwhile to press ahead to the second phase, which would be costly. At the time of writing, we await the report on Phase One from the consultants awarded the contract, Environmental Resources Management.
Our application to the Heritage Lottery Fund did not succeed. Fortunately for us, however, ownership has not yet changed and we are very grateful for the vast amount of good work which Daisy and Stefany Hawryluk have continued to put into answering visitors' questions about Muir and about the Association, and into helping to arrange activities in 138.
The top-floor Birthplace Museum in the John Muir House is on a long lease to the Local Authority. With the changes in local government, it has come under the control of the Museums Service, and two part-time curators have been in attendance there since June.
New flags now fly from the Museum -- they were presented by the American Consul (Stars & Stripes) and the Scottish Office (a Saltire) as part of the ceremony to mark the first John Muir Award. made by the John Muir Trust.
Council meetings have been held monthly throughout the year to review policy, plan Association events and assign tasks. Financial affairs have been reviewed by a Finance Committee consisting of Honorary Treasurer Duncan Smeed, Ian Marrian, and the Convener of Council.
It was a great blow that Alaine Walters had to resign, for personal reasons, the post of Honorary Secretary. Her good-humoured competence and refreshing wit are greatly missed.
Following a recent appeal to members in the Dunbar area to volunteer help in whatever way they could, we received a generous offer from Brooke & Brown WS, Solicitors, to undertake some of the secretarial work of the Association. In addition, they will provide a basic information service about the Association during office hours including Saturday mornings. Members wishing to renew their subscriptions may find it more convenient to call in at 42 High Street than to post a cheque.
Another welcome volunteer was Ann Burns, a founder member who has recently moved into Belhaven. Ann has experience in both administration and conservation, and she has been co-opted to Council.
Professor Aubrey Manning has had to resign from Council, owing to pressure of other commitments, but he has offered to help with individual events and has taken out Life Membership of the Association. We are grateful to him for his enthusiastic encouragement from the very start of DJMA.
Professor F T Last is no mere figurehead, but a very hard-working President whose expertise, like Aubrey's, is always freely available to the Association. With 11 years at Rothamsted Experimental Station, two years as Chief Plant Pathologist to the Government of Sudan, eight as Head of Mycology & Bacteriology at the Glasshouse Crops Research Institute, and a year as Visiting Professor at Pennsylvania State University behind him, Fred came to the Chair of Forestry & Natural resources in Edinburgh in 1970. There, one of his first acts was to organise a survey of the Edinburgh urban forest which yielded the surprising figure of over 2 million trees growing within the bounds of the City. Two years later he moved on to become Head of the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology Station at Bush, but retained his title of Honorary Professor at Edinburgh. Since 1986 when he 'retired', Fred has been Visiting Professor, Agriculture and Environmental Science, Newcastle-upon-Tyne University. From 1992 he was Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Sites of Special Scientific Interest until 1996 when he was appointed to the Board of Scottish Natural Heritage. He became Chairman of the Tree Advice Trust in 1993, and is currently Meetings Convener of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.. Fred remains President of DJMA for one more year. Members should be immensely grateful that he is, in his own words, a glutton for punishment
Members of the current Council are listed on the inside back cover. Of these, 15 were elected at the Inaugural Meeting in 1994; one was nominated by the John Muir Trust, 4 were elected at the 1995 AGM, and one is co-opted.
Council will make two nominations at the 1996 AGM: Ann Burns (Dunbar) and Alastair Mackie, WS (Dunbar). Both nominees have agreed to serve if elected. Further nominations from members should be sent to the Convener, with a written statement from the nominee accepting the nomination, no later than 16 September, 1996.
Extract from constitution:
6.1. The affairs of the Association shall be managed and its functions discharged by a Council.
6.2. The Council shall consist of the following, all of whom shall be members of the Association:
(a) The Office-bearers who shall with the exception of the President, the Convener of Council and the Treasurer, be either ordinary, appointed or co-opted members of the Council;
(b) Ordinary members who shall be elected at an annual meeting of the Association and shall retire at the end of the third annual meeting after their election, but shall be eligible for re-election at that meeting;
(c) Appointed members, not exceeding five in number and one of whom shall be nominated by the John Muir Trust, who may be appointed by the Council to serve for such period, not exceeding three years, as the Council may think fit, and shall be eligible for re-appointment;
(d) Co-opted members who may be co-opted by the Council to fill casual vacancies until the next annual general meeting.
6.3. The number of Ordinary and Co-opted Members together with Office-bearers (but excluding Appointed Members) shall not exceed twentyfive.
6.4. The Council shall have power
(a) to appoint committees, and the Conveners thereof, and to delegate such of its own power as it thinks fit to a committee to perform executive functions of the Council. A committee may include persons who are not members of the Council provided that the majority of members of the committee shall be members of the Council;
(b) to appoint members of the Council to discharge specific responsibilities on behalf of the Council;
(c) to appoint panels of skilled persons (who need not be members of Council) and the Conveners thereof (who shall be members of Council) to make detailed studies of particular matters referred to them by the Council, and to make recommendations and reports to the Council thereon.
6.5. Members of panels and committees shall be appointed for a period not exceeding three years, but may be reappointed from time to time.
7.1. The honorary Office-bearers shall be the President, the Convener of Council, the Treasurer, none of whom may be co-opted members, and holders of such other offices as the Council shall from time to time determine.
7.2. The Council may elect a President for a period of three years.
7.3. The other Office-bearers shall be elected by the Council for periods of three years, which shall expire at the end of the third annual general meeting after their election, subject to earlier termination in the event of their ceasing to be a member of the Council.
Registered Scottish Charity No. SC 022857
INCOME & EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT FOR THE YEAR TO 31ST JULY 1996
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![[DJMA Home]](../../images/jmclogo.gif)
INCOME
Surplus brought forward from 1994/95 £ 71.84
Membership subscriptions + donations 2273.50
Donations and Grants 5434.38
Fund Raising: Including DJMA Shops Sales 1877.12
Bank Interest Received 38.09
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£9694.93
LESS: EXPENDITURE
John Muir Exhibit (SNH Funded) £2221.48
John Muir Shop: Stock and Overheads 2148.17
Fund Raising Costs 546.16
Professional fees, insurance, etc. 3285.79
Printing, photocopying and postage 274.74
Miscellaneous Expenses 204.25
Bank/VISA Charges 1.00
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8681.59
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SURPLUS FOR YEAR £1013.34
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Represented by:
Bank Account £772.89
Cash/cheques with Treasurer 160.94
Shop cash box 79.51
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£1013.34
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INCOME & EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT FOR THE YEAR TO 31ST JULY 1996
DJMA House A/C
INCOME
Surplus brought forward from 1994/95 £350.38
Donations 157.00
Bank Interest Received 4.62
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£512.00
LESS: EXPENDITURE
Valuations £251.75
Repayment of loan 100.00
Photocopying and postage 8.71
Miscellaneous Expenses 204.25
Bank/VISA Charges 1.00
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360.46
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SURPLUS FOR YEAR £154.54
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Represented by:
Bank Account £151.54
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£151.54
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The above Income & Expenditure Account for the year to
31st July 1996 have been produced from the books and
vouchers provided together with explanations received.
I hereby certify that these financial statements are
in accordance therewith.
W M DEMPSTER CA
DUNBAR
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