Contata 5 / NEFilk 18

Christine Lavin will be joining us Friday night and Saturday to help us raise money for Tom Smith. She'll be chipping in at the benefit concert with the song There Will be Peace, which is the song Tom was trying to get on stage to sing when he had his fall. She's hoping to video tape it and send it to Tom.

She encourages people to learn the guitar chords, so we can do a really big work-up of the song. You can hear the song and see the words at http://www.rhapsody.com/tompaxton/yourshoesmyshoes/peacewillcome/lyrics.html.

Please spread the word and we'll try to send Tom a great big cheer-up video.

Shhhh. Don't tell Tom!

In other news, we've closed online registration -- if you haven't registered yet, you'll have to do so at the con. On the other hand, the online program is up! View it here (direct link in the Programming section).

From our Listener GOH, some useful notes on the Shape Note workship she'll be running! The non-news link to this is in the program section.

Carla Ulbrich has graciously agreed to help us fill the gap left in our programming by Tom Smith's untimely injury. Carla's X Healing Factor has kicked in since Contata 2005, leaving her in good voice and walking on both legs. We hope that some of that good karma will be passed along to Tom. Everyone on the Contata 2008 committee wishes Tom a speedy recovery. We hope to see him bouncing around at future cons.

Tom Smith tore his left quadriceps last night, and is currently in the hospital. He'll be having surgery in the next few days, and won't be able to travel for a few weeks. Unfortunately this means he will not be able to attend Contata 2008. Please watch this space for further updates on our programming.

You can now access the news section with RSS here!
Also, we've published one-day rates ($20 for Friday and Sunday, $30 for Saturday-only), and directions to the hotel.
Moreover, we now have an updated membership list available.
And if you haven't looked at PR1, it has lots of info that's not on the website -- like bios of our Guests! (yeah, I'll fix that when I have time -- JK).
Additionally, we need more songs for our songbook!
There were some issues with our paypal form -- no, don't worry, we have your money. But if you expressed interest in a concert or volunteered to help out the con through the registration form, that info was sadly lost in the great space between bits. If you can, email it to chair@contata.org.
Finally, I'd like to tell you a few of the things you'll get if you upgrade to Premier membership -- namely, a con-themed tote bag and some of our own Mike "Count Chocula" Browne's truffles (kosher, even!). There's more, but you'll have to find out later...but don't worry; if you forget, you can upgrade at the con!

Progress Report 1 (and only) is now up here

You can now register multiple people more than once on the website. And you can book a hotel room online! Just click on the link on the hotel page. And we've had a bunch of housefilks followed by concom meetings; the next one will be February 3.
For more frequent updates on such things, look on http://contata.livejournal.com

We have a hotel! We have guests! We have an updated website! Yay!