Editor's note: This is not a shameless self-plug for Lew - we made him write this!

I was an active amateur from 1976-1983, observing meteors from 1978 on. I found encouragement through the Southern Cross Astronomical Society in Miami (long before WSP got started), and had the chance to learn meteor observing with one of the most prolific, long-enduring meteor observers in history, Norman W McLeod III. In 1983, I was accepted to MIT, moved from rural Homestead FL to big, bad Boston, and took a long hiatus from astronomy.

I finally got back into the hobby in 1995, joining the North Shore Amateur Astronomy Club in 1996 and then the ATMs of Boston and NHAS in 1997. However I reestablished contacts in the meteor-observing community more rapidly, thanks to the Internet! I joined the North American Meteor Network in early 1996, then created their mailing list for them (which later become the global 'meteorobs' forum) that May. In the same year, I got involved (through 'meteorobs' and its Web site, and my own observing) with both the International Meteor Organization and the newly renascent American Meteor Society.

Since then, I have been privileged to observe with colleagues from around the world in the mountains of West Virginia, the high deserts of the South West, the Downs of England, the volcanoes of Hawai'i, and even the ancient Observatories of China! But I still remember most fondly, the nights spent at Burns Lake in the Everglades, and Bahia Honda bridgehead down in the Florida Keys, as a young man...

Lew Gramer maintains two email lists related to amateur observing: http://www.visualdeepsky.org (devoted to observing logs of deep-sky objects from amateurs) and: http://www.meteorobs.org (devoted to amateur meteor observing)