A regular companion appears now in a new format:AGU Transactions. It is our oldest publication. At one time it had only the purpose of recording faithfully the proceedings at AGU's annual meetings. It has long since outgrown this historical role. As a quarterly it served to print abstracts of papers to be presented at meetings. It also acquired a broad spectrum of miscellaneous departments: General articles, book reviews, bibliographies, reports on business meetings of the sections and the council, and news about members. All these are important for the internal life of a scientific society. But it had become clear for some time that quarterly issues too rarely offered an opportunity of communicating with the membership in order to be effective.