New Member!
T h e P r e s i d e n T’ s r e P o r T
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reach Director at livingsky7 @ gmail. com.
Last November, OPA held its most successful retreat to date. Though it is yet another year away, we have begun working on our 9th annual retreat, scheduled for March 21-24, 2013. Once again it will be in lovely Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Mark your calendars now! It is a most inspiring and rewarding experience, both personally and professionally.
This summer, OPA will be offering our Certification Program for Professional Astrologers at MAC( Mid-west Astrology Conference). Particularly for those of you living in the mid-west, please note that MAC will be hosting its gathering in Ann Arbor, MI August 2-5, 2012. More information will be available about this special event soon, so keep posted.
On Wednesday, May 24, 2012 we will be offering our trademark small peer group work during UAC’ s All-Org Day. In the morning there will be a short series of inspired presentations followed by peer group work in the afternoon. This promises to be an enriching and enjoyable day. We hope you will be able to join us!
I would like to end by mentioning an excellent commentary by Roxana Muise, published in ISAR’ s March 11, 2012 e-zine, entitled Astrology and Prosperity Consciousness. She clearly articulates what it means to be a professional astrologer and how important it is to contribute individually as well as collectively to our beloved and honorable profession. The manner in which we present and conduct ourselves publicly is as important as the choices we make regarding the use of our resources. Let’ s walk our talk and support our colleagues and allied organizations. As we prosper and sustain ourselves we can nurture and promote our profession. Let us celebrate each other’ s success!
In closing, I look forward to seeing you at UAC. With the Sun, Mercury, and Venus all in Gemini it suggests a time ripe for rich and progressive exchange. Meanwhile, may you all be well!
Warmly, Alexandra Karacostas, OPA President www. opaastrology. com 530-520-9992 www. WisdomAstrology. com
New Member!
Our new Russian Member, Dmitry Paramonov hails from the city of Izhevsk, which is about 1200 km from Moscow. He is a practicing professional astrologer with students in four different cities: Moscow, Izhevsk, Omsk, and Sochi. He wants to start a chapter of OPA in Russia and is translating articles from our Career Astrologer into Russian. He and Bob Mulligan skype frequently and his English keeps improving( he always has a translator with him when they talk). His enthusiasm for professional astrology and his dedication to the field has interested several other Russian astrologers in joining our organization; we will doubtless see more of his work in the near future. Dmitry’ s students are very interested in OPA’ s certification program and we will welcome them into our organization. Perhaps we can get some of Dmitry’ s thoughts on astrology translated into English so we can start to understand their culture and the way that professionals live and work in his country.
BY DONNA WOODWELL, MA
I
' m always on the lookout for ways to make my work life more efficient. Since I ' ve recently started on a research project, I ' ve wondered how I can make my note taking easier. This led me on a journey into the world of speech recognition software.
While investigating my options, I discovered that Windows 7 has speech recognition software built into the operating system. It ' s easy to enable the software: just follow the instructions on the Windows website, take a simple tutorial, reboot your computer, and your computer will respond to voice commands as well as take dictation.
If you want to write blog posts or newsletters, or make notes about your clients, but have not learned touch typing, speech recognition software may be exactly what you need. In fact, I ' ve written this entire post using the speech recognition software on Windows 7. Just open a document in your word processor, and start talking. I ' ve found the software to be quite accurate in transcription, though a little slow.
If you are using Windows 7, and speech recognition software sounds intriguing, it ' s worth playing with-especially since it ' s free! P. S. For iPhone and Blackberry users there ' s also a free application from Dragon Naturally Speaking which turns your phone into a dictation machine. You could take notes on a client on your phone, e- mail the notes to yourself, and save them in a client folder.
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