The "Roads of Arabia" exhibit at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts closed earlier this month.  We hope many of you were able to see it.  It was truly an incredible collection of artifacts!  We would have loved to have had more detailed maps of where some of the artifacts were found, particularly those pieces labeled "Dhahran!" Allow at least 3 hours to take it all in.

Has it really been 10 years already?!  A decade since we last hosted the reunion at the epicenter of Bratdom? We are pleased to announce that our 15th biennial reunion, May 21-25, 2015, will be returning to Houston, TX! Houston is easy to get to, has lots to offer activity-wise, and, best of all, is home to a ton of Brats and annuitants. The last reunion hosted in Houston (2005) was one of our largest. We expect this one to be a big draw as well.

The 15th in '15 will be hosted by an '80s kind of crew, chaired by Staci Husted-Hosford (DH'84). Sandra Acuna-Klein (DH'86), Laura Bissell-Comtois (DH'83),  Diana Cameron-Keller (DH'84), Liz Germani (RT'84), Carol Goff-Hlavaty (DH'82), Del Husted (DH'82), and Susan Husted-Cowles (Parent) round out the rest of the committee. Shukran for volunteering your time and energy to transform Memorial Day weekend 2015 into the best Brat party on the planet!

Get started now on your holiday shopping for those special Brat friends and family on your list. We have some great new items in the online suq that will be sure to put a smile on someone's face: Aramco Brat (in English and Arabic) coffee mugs, new lapel pins, reunion t-shirts, ghutra print hats and Tucson 2013 logo pitchers!

Planning a Brat party or large family get-together? We have the perfect party favor: ghutra hat party packs! Order in quantities of 10 or the variety 12-pack (4 visors, 4 baseball caps, 4 fisherman hats). Best. Party favor. Ever.

Please order soon to ensure delivery before Christmas!  Happy shopping!

As of midnight tonight, another ABI Board term will come to a close, and your newly elected officers will take the helm: Hirath Ghori (DH '75), President; Duane Hopple (RT '79), Vice President; Tom Littlejohn (DH '84), Treasurer; Gina Hess Tanner (AB '76), Secretary.  

I would like to take this opportunity to say "shukran" to this term's board members for their service and camaraderie for the past 2 years.  It would seem like much more work without all of the smiles and laughs.  It has truly been a pleasure to work as a team with ABI's seasoned veterans, Penny Dougharty-Maher (DH '72), Andrew Bobb (DH '74), Tom Littlejohn (DH '84), Diane Knipfel-Slingluff (AB '75), Diana Ryrholm-Geerdes (RT '62), Duane Hopple (RT '79), Robin Payne-White (DH '59), Dawn Kolb (DH '92), and first-timers, Annie Oskam (DH '74) and Gina Hess-Tanner (AB '76).

There are two ladies who will not be serving as board members this coming term but deserve a special thank you for their many, consecutive years of service to the organization - Diane Knipfel-Slingluff (Reunion Oversight Director) and Diana Ryrholm-Geerdes (Director at Large).  Known to us affectionately as DiK and DiRy, they have served on the Board in various capacities since 1997 and 1995, respectively.  Both have also served as Reunion Chairs (San Diego '93, Chandler '97).  I won't even attempt to guestimate the number of hours of personal time they have donated to our organization, but they have both had a huge influence on the shape and success of our organization and reunions and have more than earned an opportunity to kick back and relax at the next reunion.  Love, BEO's, RFP's, hotel bathrobes, and raffle tickets to you, ladies!

Lastly, thank you to our fellow brats for your support, kind words, generosity and smiles.  You are why we do this.  A sea of smiling, laughing brats at the reunions makes it all worthwhile!

See you in 2015, location TBA!,

Marie Littlejohn Dunn (DH '77)

President

As many of you are now aware, we had a blatant violation of our directory usage policy.  We would like to apologize for this annoyance and assure everyone that we take this matter and the integrity of our contact information very seriously.

Firstly, we have determined that one of our members did, indeed, violate (a), (b) and (c) of our directory usage terms as well as the bylaws of our organization and continued to do so after we sent a reminder of our policy to everyone.  We have reason to believe the individual used the latest directory CD to accomplish this, not the online database.

As a result, we are taking the following actions:

• The individual's online directory privileges have been suspended indefinitely. We have informed him in writing of his violation and resulting suspension and requested he cease using directory contact information for commercial purposes and destroy any derivatives from computers.
• ABI will no longer issue biennial "publications" of our directory.  Both CD and paper versions pose the highest risk for "email harvesting" and this sort of wholesale abuse.
• ABI will review the website to make sure we are using what is available to us to protect against email address harvesting from web pages.  We have endeavored to set up our web page access such that any contact information, including email addresses, is not exposed to public view.  You may have noticed that news items and forum posts show the author as "anonymous" unless you are logged into the site. Any pages that might contain visible member contact information have been placed behind the members-only firewall.  (This is why you had to log into the site to see the Tucson Reunion Attendance List.)

The board may take further action to prevent this from recurring.  In the meantime, there are some actions we can all take with regard to SPAM mails in general:

• Reduce SPAM:
• • Most email applications allow you to filter out or even delete incoming emails from specific addresses (someone@example.com) or entire domains (@example.com).  It is best to check your email application's documentation for instructions on how to do this. For your convenience, here are instructions for some of the more common ones:
  • • Outlook instructions for blocking email senders and domains 
    • Mac OS X instructions for blocking email
    • Gmail: blocking mail from certain senders
    • Yahoo: blocking email addresses
  • OnGuardOnline has some other strategies for reducing your overall exposure to SPAM.

• Report SPAM: If you feel you have received a SPAM email that violates U.S. CAN-SPAM Act, report the violation.  The U.S. CAN-SPAM Act has very specific requirements governing all commercial emails and origin of email address lists. Noncompliance can result in penalties up to $16,000 per individual email. (Full text of CAN-SPAM Act)

Again, we apologize for the unwelcome solicitations you may have received and will keep everyone apprised of any further actions. Please contact us if you have any concerns related to this matter.

Sincerely,

ABI Board of Directors

It has been brought to our attention twice in the past month that some individuals may be using ABI's directory inappropriately by using contact information for their own commercial purposes.  We, therefore, feel it is necessary to remind everyone of our directory usage terms.  This applies to all forms of the directory, both online and on CD.

Article 4, Section 1 of our bylaws states the following:

Further, on the directory page, the usage terms are very clearly stated: 

We have made directory CDs available upon request again this term because a number of people said they do occasionally use them even though they are out-of-date as soon as they are published. (The directory CD contains a formatted PDF version of the online directory on a particular date.) If we determine that these are the source of violations, we will discontinue issuing.

If you have received solicitations that you suspect are in violation of these usage terms, we encourage you to contact us, so we can take appropriate action.

If you think you may be violating these terms but are not sure, please contact us. We will be happy to review the policy as it applies to your situation.  There may be other ways you can use ABI's web site or Facebook page to accomplish the same thing without violating usage terms. 

The "Roads of Arabia" exhibit, currently at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, offers a rare chance to tour ancient Arabia through a remarkable collection of over 300 historical and archaeological artifacts, many of which have only recently been unearthed.  The collection features pieces spanning the entire Arabian Peninsula and thousands of years (4th millennium B.C. to the early 20th century).

In addition to Islamic era relics, such as ancient funerary steles from the region around Mecca, an old door from the Ka'ba, the exhibit includes archaeological finds from Tarut, now thought to have been the center of Dilmun at one time, as well as from Thaj (~80 km west of Jubail) where archaeologists recently discovered an ancient, Hellenistic burial chamber with solid gold jewelry, masks, and the remains of a young girl.  Artifacts from the ruins of Dedan (modern-day al-Ula near Mada'in Saleh) are windows into the ancient kingdom of Lihyan which predated the Nabataeans and covered much of the same area.  The list is impressive, especially when you consider how relatively young the field of archaeology is in Saudi Arabia!

If you would like to plan a trip or learn more about the exhibit, visit the official site.  Some other great sources of information on the exhibit:

Roads of Arabia Documentary from Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities.

If you took advantage of the photo booth at the Tucson reunion, download your photos while the "Aramco Brats Reunion" gallery is still live on Desert Photo Booth's site.  If you weren't able to join us in Tucson and take part in the photo fun, it's still worth a browse. Everyone had so much fun with it!

Downloading your photos is simple and, best of all, it's FREE!

The gallery expires July 15, 2013, so don't wait too long to download your photos!  Enjoy!

The results of our 2013 election are in!  Of over 6,000 ballots sent out in the mail to Brats all over the world, we received a total of 134 by mail, email and at the reunion. Our slate of officers were elected:

Reunion Oversight Director

Publications Director

Database Director

Nominations Director

Website Director

Yes - 105

No - 11

Did Not Vote- 18

Yes - 115

No - 1

Did Not Vote- 18

Yes - 114

No - 0

Did Not Vote- 20