The 14th Annual NASS Conference will be held August 7-10, 2008 in St. Louis, MO. Full registration and fee information will be included with the June issue of The Compendium. Here is a progress report.

The conference will be held at the Crowne Plaza St. Louis – Clayton hotel (7750 Carondelet Avenue, St. Louis MO 63105 Reservations: 888-303-1746 http://www.cpclayton.com/). We have a block of rooms set aside for the special conference rate of $109/night (queen bed), $125/night (king or 2 double beds), or $139/night (executive tower room). See the hotel’s website to learn about the available amenities. The hotel offers complimentary transportation to and from the airport, which is 15 minutes away. You must make your reservations by July 1.

Our registration event with an array of door prizes will take place on Thursday Aug. 7th. The conference talks will be on Saturday the 9th and Sunday morning the 10th. We have 6 great talks already lined up and are looking for more. If you will be attending the conference and would like to give a talk, please contact Fred Sawyer now (fwsawyer@aya.yale.edu). We will also have plenty of display space – in the room where our meetings will be held. Plan to bring your projects to show.

Don Snyder, our local host, is working on a tour of St. Louis sundials for Friday the 8th. We’ve already uncovered a couple old American dials that will require security clearance again for us to see them (as was the case at NIST last year). One of these dials has its own complete suit of armor to protect it! We also hope to be able to show you a Forgotten Presidential Sundial – recently rediscovered by Don in the inventory in the basement of a local historical society. This is a dial that can be traced back to a sale of Thomas Jefferson’s estate following his death. We are trying to arrange for it to be displayed in conjunction with NASS’ arrival.

We will also see a number of sundials at the Missouri Botanical Gardens – including a reproduction Ottoman sundial designed by Roger Bailey for a new garden, and a new ‘scientific’ sundial to be donated by Ron Rinehart and dedicated at the garden as part of the NASS tour.

The tour will include several other dials, including a monumental Korean War Monument dial, and a number of vertical dials. We are also working on a possible cooperative arrangement with the St. Louis Academy of Science that may result in a tour bus of young students and their parents joining us for the day of the tour so that NASS can share its enjoyment of sundials with the younger generation.