The Beanery Writers Group convened at the Coffee bean Cafe for their March 23rd meeting. Copies of the newspaper articles from the Latrobe Bulletin and Ligonier Echo were passed out to attendees. Joe had come over to my house to pose for the Ligonier Echo picture with George Shuman. A thank you card for George Shuman and a sympathy card for Tim Landy were passed out to be signed. Two copies of Shuman's book, "18 Seconds" were purchased and signed by the author. One will be donated to the Indiana County (PA) Library and one was requested by Mustang Sally, who missed this meeting. She was skiing in Utah. Sally Shirey agreed to act as “treasurer” of our huge budget. Our income (from passing the hat) to date is $37.37. Our expenses are $13.78. Balance is $23.59. Expenses: $5.00 to Beanery Café for room use (Feb. 14); $5.28 for a copy of “18 Seconds;” $3.00 to print 20 copies of newspaper articles @ 0.15 each and $.50 for a thank you card. No one volunteered to be a historian for the group. The blog is up to a total of 18,266 (will we break 20,000 by next meeting?). The highest daily hit rate thus far is 265 hits. Our average is 167 hits a day, up from 62 in December 31; 96.6 in January 31 and 135.5 in February. We are ahead of the immediate two sites behind us by 4667 and 4709 hits, so we are holding a strong first place lead on the ProBlogs hosting site. There are several upcoming writers conferences. The Ligonier Valley Writers group is sponsoring a police procedures for writers workshop from 3:00-5:00 p.m. at Michael’s Church in Rector this Sunday. St. David’s Christian Writers are sponsoring a one-day conference in Stoneboro April 28 and a one-week conference in June. Info on these conferences, plus the Seton Hill University writers conference: I suggested we write a group story on the Lincoln Highway. It was agreed to try this, to start with about 20 minutes of our meeting time each week. Since it is teeming rain, I didn’t bring the chalkboard. I suggested we try writing a poem in two voices, and the group decided to try it next meeting when I will bring the chalkboard to make it easier. We moved on to critiquing for the following members: Joanne (6 pgs); Sally(2.5 pgs); Joe (2.5 pgs) and Carolyn, two devotions. Carolyn asked a vote on which one would be best to submit to the St. David’s Conference devotional writing and it was a split decision. The meeting time ended without time to do a prompt. Next meeting is scheduled for April 13. Carolyn | 
