Hello all,

For anyone who wasn't at practice tonight the news from Pittsburgh
is that Frank took a silver in the Vet 40 combined epee and I got
a bronze in the Vet60 epee. Abdul reminded me that it is my best
result at a National. Not sure if that's true for Frank as well.

A couple of items of news: Just in case anyone isn't aware, there is going
to be a BayCup event at EBFG on Jan 08. (I believe this is a sunday).
It will be a SDHME3 and SAWE3 (D and higher mens epee and all women's
epee?? I couldn't make out what the codes meant). And unless someone
raises an issue we'll have an EBFG party afterwards at my house to
celebrate the new year, having survived the day's tournaments and
look forward to the upcoming fencing events. We would have had a
party earlier in the festive season but it seems everyone is already
booked up or is out of town.

Another, less happy piece of news is that there is a recall petition
drive going on for the USFA president. Most of you probably aren't
particularly interested but I thought that those who are USFA members
ought to be aware. NOTE *** you have to be eighteen and a USFA member
to vote on this. Bottom line is that there is a lot of complaints
about USFA activities or lack there of in addition to our local
complaints about USFA impact on the Bay Cup.

This is all being phrased very politely at least for now. Complaints are that
the President has not been responsive and has not fulfilled promises
made. If you have interest in the details as I've learned them then give me
an e-mail. Obviously if this succeeds then it could affect all of us.
Bottom line is this is a wakeup call to the entrenched volunteer
bureaucracy of the USFA.

There is a Web site regarding this issue. The address is:
http://www.geocities.com/save_usfencing/
There's very little there yet but it may snowball in the
future. Attached is a copy of the petition if anyone has
strong feelings at this point.

And I personally feel that this sort of information should be shared
with the rest of the fencing community. So if you know of USFA members
who are out of the loop on this you might want to let them know.

Jonathan Jefferies