LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (06/16/02)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

About those UNA elections...

Dear Editor:

If I'm not elected president, vice-president, secretary or treasurer of the Ukrainian National Association, I might as well place my name on the ballot for the position of groundskeeper/custodian! Several candidates had their names on up to three ballots! Were they qualified for those positions/offices? Is there no shame?

In any case, congratulations to the newly elected board.

Zenon Izak
Warminister, Pa.

EDITOR'S NOTE: As pointed out in our coverage of the UNA Convention, the primary vote is a write-in process. As a result, delegates can write in any person's name for any slot, whether that person had declared himself/herself a candidate or not, and regardless of which position that person was interested in running for. For example, of the "candidates" written in for the position of president in the primary balloting, only one, Stefan Kaczaraj, had declared his candidacy for that position. That is also why the name of Christine Kozak, who had declared her intention to run for national secretary, was written in for the positions of not only national secretary but also second vice-president, treasurer and director for Canada (although she is not from Canada). The good news is that on the final ballot a candidate's name could appear in only one slot.

Soyuzivka needs volunteers' help

Dear Editor:

In response to Chris Szpak's article "What will you do next summer...if there is no Soyuzivka?" (May 26) I can only ask the following: Where is the management?! And why hasn't the management taken the issues directly to UNA members? How? By simply getting the members involved. Create a large committee (for lack of a better word) with multiple working subcommittees.

Depending on the level of expertise, each subcommittee or group can concentrate on a variety of functions such as painting, carpentry, plumbing or grounds maintenance. Still other groups, with business or law professionals can assist with various business practices, such as vendor contract negotiations, or other activities aimed at increasing the resort's utilization. Obviously, functions such as the resort's daily operational duties would not be an objective of the committee. However, with proper supervision, by targeting these working groups for specific projects, many quality improvements can be made - and at a substantial savings to Soyuzivka.

With proper commitment, the UNA would get not dozens but hundreds of responses from members to join and occasionally assist in a multitude of projects. Through these working groups, Manager John A. Flis would have, at his disposal and under his supervision, virtually unlimited help for various projects throughout the year.

Another, even more important, topic worthy of action is patronage - a campaign endorsed by the UNA to obtain donations for the preservation of Soyuzivka. I'm not referring to a conventional attempt at raising a few bucks, but to a royal effort on the same grand scale as that demonstrated by The Ukrainian Museum.

The UNA, above any other Ukrainian American organization, has the manpower and the marketing/advertising capabilities to pull this off. Soyuzivka can hold gala affairs, festivals and other numerous fund-raising events. Gifts, contributions, donations, whatever you call it, these funds will bail out Soyuzivka.

These are just two ideas that, I say without hesitation, would quickly garner both the human and financial resources necessary for further action. In fact, there were many good suggestions submitted by UNA members throughout the years. Few, if any, of these have been acted upon. Possibly with new leadership, the Ukrainian National Association will have the vision to implement some of these ideas.

I strongly encourage all UNA members, now more than ever, to make their voices heard. Soyuzivka was acquired for UNA members and guests - with whom the ultimate fate of Soyuzivka should rest.

Myron Krywulych
Westfield, N.J.

More on Microsoft's Ukrainian program

Dear Editor:

As you surely know, The Ukrainian Weekly arrives here with considerable delay in these parts, hence my late reaction.

It is with considerable interest that I read Roman Woronowycz's article about the Ukrainian version of Windows XP (The Ukrainian Weekly, April 14). Being equipped with unicode, this platform makes it possible to write in numerous languages that use the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets (and many others as well), and among the available pre-programmed keyboards is a Ukrainian one. I recently bought a computer equipped with Windows XP and was very much looking forward to using it for Ukrainian word processing.

Since the intended users are primarily in Ukraine, the key layout is close to the one of traditional Ukrainian keyboards. But the nerds from Microsoft struck out again. On the positive side, it is a Ukrainian keyboard and not, as in Soviet times, a Russian one with the Ukrainian letters added on the right as an afterthought. However, it has two major drawbacks. First there is no letter "¢", at least not on the surface. One has to go into insert symbol mode and paste it in. Was there no room for the letter? Hardly, for under the "~" key one finds the Belarusian or Russian "ë," which is not used in Ukrainian.

Furthermore, the period is located at the "/" while the comma is at the "?". Having these two punctuation marks, one in lowercase and one in uppercase on the same key is inconvenient at best, but having the comma - which is used much more frequently in Ukrainian than in English - in the upper case while the period is in the lower case shows very poor planning indeed.

Last but not least, Windows XP seems to have no built-in way to modify the keyboard to the user's preference, an option that was available in earlier versions of Windows. Back to the drawing board, boys.

Dr. Andrij Hornjatkevyc
Edmonton

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