| Preparing For A Show - A Labour of Love by Fred C. Hill Garden State African Violet Club of Mercerville, NJ 2004 show: Violets! "A Novel Idea". Court of Honor designed by Luanne Arico. An African Violet Show -- what fun! That's what we may think, but here's a behind the scenes look at the work involved in getting ready for a Show as reported by Fred C. Hill. This is surely a labour of love! "Many of us work like 'dogs' when we go to African Violet Shows. As an example for my local club, the Garden State African Violet Club, I have the job(s) of making changes to the schedule and putting it into the final form. I make new class cards for the show every year with descriptions of the class on each card so the judges do not always have to refer to their schedules. I have made up flyers and other odds and ends to hand out to the public. Thankfully this year a new member is making a few signs so I don't have to do that.
I am judges chairman which entails sending out invitations to judges, making up a gift packet, including directions to the show, sending thank you notes and anything else that involves the judges. I am entries and sometime classification chairman also. For our show that means I am there to receive all the entries -- many times checking and classifying them as well. We begin entering plants on Thursday at 3 PM and run till 8. Friday, entries are accepted from 12 to 8 PM. I have previously entered all the show information into the program at home on my desktop computer and transfer it to my laptop. After all plants are entered and laid out on the tables, a final check is made. Since I use the entries program for the show I have to print out all the class sheets and perform a final check as well as the entry cards. The program does most of the work. I remember the days when it was done by hand -- all the writing of entry cards and writing into the entry book. Now all I have to do is push a key and it's all printed out neatly and legibly. |  Fred's Winner "Ness'Candy Pink" | Our show is judged on Saturday morning and the judges arrive at 9 AM. We are there to greet them and take them for a light breakfast. During the breakfast I give the judges their assignments and go over the show schedule with them. As the show is judged I distribute the class sheets to the clerks and enter the awards into the program. When it is finished the judges are taken to lunch while I check everything and print out the SSA (Standard Show Award) information. Finally about 2 PM my entries job is finished and the judges have left. All that remains is to be charming and smile and answer questions from the public who view our show in the mall. I generally take off about 4 or 5 PM and go home and relax only to come back the next day to help relieve some of the members who have been working the long hours also. At 4 PM we close down the show, pack up our plants, clean up our mess and go home only to start thinking about a theme for our next year's show!" Things don't always go as planned, however. Fred had a few more comments to add, "This year's show had lots of problems for me! When I went to use the printer, the ink cartridge went dry so I had to run to the store and get a new one. Then my laptop crashed and I had to drag my old desktop down the flight of stairs from my loft and take that monster to the show. Of course I had to install the printer on it and found that it wouldn't line up with the entry cards. I called the printer company and got a run around from them. I had the printer for 3 years and even though I had never asked for any type of support they wanted $15.00 to help me. All in all it was a bit stressful but the show went well and the judges gave us a green rosette. Our score on the SSA was 91.25 which I felt was excellent considering we only had one AVSA collection entered." Our thanks go out to Fred and all those 'working like dogs' to put on an AV Show. The beautiful Shows we all enjoy could not take place without the combined efforts of our hard working volunteers. page setup & editing by Alana | 
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