Editor’s Page

SHEAR @ AHA

Proof positive that SHEAR throws a mean shindig was evident on the evening of Friday, January 4, 2008, at Ireland’s Four Fields on Connecti-cut Avenue in Washington, DC. In what is fast becoming the gala event of the AHA meeting, SHEARites tickled their palates with delicious comestibles and slaked their apparently prodigious thirsts with an assortment of alcoholic imbibibles (+ two glasses of seltzer that must have been ordered by an interloper from some other historians’ association). Presidents, past, present, and future partied hearty; Friends of SHEAR, including the inimitable Craig, mingled with the hoi polloi and the other assorted pollois in attendance. All in all a great evening with the collegiality and conviviality that SHEAR is all about on full display. But remember now, what happened in Four Fields stays in Four Fields. Rest assured, however, that we will be doing some more of it at next January’s AHA in New York. You’re all invited.

SHEAR @ Philly

Ah, yes, yet again ’tis the time to laud one of the benefits of membership—you are the programmatically advantaged! You can get a head start on booking the highlight event of your summer because, hermetically sealed along with this issue of the JER, is your copy of the program for this year’s SHEAR conference to be held from July 17 to 20 in my phair town of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Check it out. The prodigious efforts of Conference Coordinator Craig Friend, his Program Committee headed by Nancy Isenberg, and Local Arrangements Committee with Dan Richter at the helm have brought us an event to savor and to begin planning for now. And, by the way, the Local Arrangements Committee has some words to the wise. Philadelphia proved popular the last time SHEAR was in town. So popular, in fact, that hotel rooms and banquet tickets became scarcer than hen’s teeth! This year the Local Arrangements Committee has chosen a larger conference hotel (the Doubletree), and tried to centralize housing, sessions, and social events (including the not-to-be-missed Saturday banquet extravaganza at The Racquet Club). To take advantage of this improved scheduling, however, you also need to plan ahead. So book early—there are 200, and only 200, banquet tickets—the first come will be first served for the eating, drinking, and merriment; procrastinators face hunger, thirst, and sadness.