Greetings Fellow Cougars,
As you may know, the Early 60's Hawthorne California Homepage has moved to it's new site at http://cougartown.com or http://www.cougartown.com whichever you prefer. If you haven't yet changed your bookmark, please do as we have closed the old site.
Also a new email address is in effect. If you, like me, are used to clicking on an old message and using that email address, it might not work down the line so my new email address is john14@cougartown.com. Please make the necessary changes.
This move is because frankly we needed more room for more pages and more accessibility. With the new site, we have a new "Keyword Search", so if you know you saw that certain Feedback or story on the site, but you don't remember where, then just type in a name, email address, or any key word and it will return every page on the site in which your query occurs. There are other things that will be added as time permits.

I just counted up the Alumni on our email list tonight and there are 404 on the list. Last November there were about 30 so you can see how things are growing. Right now, we are adding over 10 new people a week.

As we grow, I want to give each class there own space for there own pages. They can have their own class webmaster or committee to add to their piece of this site as they choose. Right now, we just need more alumni although the class of 68 has 34 people signed up and that must be about 10% of their class. They are well on there way to finding their whole class. Each class needs its own space on this site to plan not just "every ten year" reunions, but get togethers whenever they want. These functions are easy to plan when you can reach everyone simply through email. They will also be tied into all other classes by this website so they can plan multi-year get togethers or just find out what the other classes are doing and be able to add themselves to the activities.

I also know there are people out there that are not signed up on our email list because of privacy reasons or because they're afraid of being bombarded by tons of junk mail.

The junk mailers can not retrieve our email addresses unless they do it manually and they just aren't into "manual".

Many people do not have an email address, or Internet access and frankly don't need or want it. They won't be left out either. We're going to start collecting snail mail addresses from all class members. These addresses will not be directly accessible. They will be accessed on a strictly "need to know" basis and will be handled by the individual class committee people. I want to make this clear. We are collecting addresses strictly to keep people together. "This Site Is NOT A Mailing List House" nor will it sell or distribute any addresses it collects. These addresses (Email or Snail Mail) are for the use of this site, your reunion committee or class representative only. We also need to know where our Faculty members are located. These addresses will also be handled with the privacy of the Faculty member in mind.

As you can see, we're going to move on to the next level. The site will continue to bring you the memory floggers and the early stuff that makes it fun to tune into, but we really want to find our old friends and reunite them through the use of this network. Please help in any way you can by telling friends where they can find the site and encouraging them to add their name to our list. Whether we graduated in 54 or 98, we are all Cougars and are united that way for life.

Since I wrote the above, there've been many changes in the site, and my thinking. Right now I would like to start gathering snail mail addresses. We'll keep them all private. The main reason for the addresses are for the people without email addresses. I want to add a Newsletter to the site so people that don't have access via the Net, will have access via the Newsletter. Does anyone know how to write a Newsletter?? :O)

There will be printing costs and mailing costs too, but I know everyone will help out here. I'll look into these costs. HHS Print Shop? I will check. This is the plan. It will take a few bucks to get this ball rolling, but I do want to include everyone, and right now we just can't do that.

That's the plan. It is "bare bones" right now. I need your input. Please email me and tell me what you think. Remember, Cougartown belongs to all of us. Do not be afraid to say what you think.

Thanks, John B