Rotary Rounds March 1, 2017

Rotary was rather excellent.  President-Elect Steve Leitte led the meeting in President Katie's absence.  Wally Cole checked us in, and I (Josh Heggem) handled the greeting duties.  Wally also volunteered to handle the invocation when nobody could remember who was scheduled to do it.  No piano player due to Lent, so there were no songs and President-Elect Steve began the meeting by leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance and recitation of the Four Way Test.

 

We had five student athletes joining us, who made up five of the six Otter boys swimming and diving team that is headed off to State: (1) Caleb Neubauer, son of Marnie and John, a sophomore diver; (2) Justin Mortenson, son of Dave and Tammy, a senior swimmer, (3) Tyler Hansen, son of Randy and Nicole, a sophomore swimmer, (4) Evan Erlandson, son of Alan and Sandy, a sophomore diver, and (5) Aaron Erlandson, also son of Alan and Sandy, a senior swimmer. President-Elect Steve wished them the best of luck at State, and told them he knows they will do well because the Otter swimming and diving team always does well at State.

 

President-Elect Steve announced that the Josh the Otter Books have been ordered and we will be reading and distributing them to area kindergartners sometime in April, on a specific date to be determined.  In addition, the Board meeting has been rescheduled to next Wednesday due to President Katie's absence.

 

Bob Russel's Rotary Minute consisted of a reminder that we have all now received the March edition of the Rotarian, so we need to read it because there will be questions coming next week.

 

During Brags and Fines, I pulled double duty and tried to take notes on my phone while also handling the bucket, so I hope I got these correct.  Dan left a couple of scooter bucks.  Bob bragged that he had previously worked with Evan and Aaron's mother and (aunt?) Sharon, and that they were great people to work with.  He encouraged them to tell their mother that, but not Sharon, "because it would just go to her head." 

 

Missi unfortunately informed us that do to some changes with her job, she would no longer be able to attend Noon Rotary meetings, and will need to resign from our club.  On the bright side, though, she intends to become a member of Sunrise Rotary instead (if she survives their rigorous application process)!

 

Randy bragged that his three-year-old son came home with a Canadian flag he made at school, and Randy sang the Canadian National Anthem for him with approximately 80% accuracy, for which he has his Rotary membership to thank.  His son was very impressed.

 

I bragged about my wife, Shauna, a high school English teacher at Battle Lake Schools.  She was selected as "Teacher of the Year" for her entire school district, which resulted in her nomination for the Minnesota Teacher of the Year.  She has now been selected as one of thirty-seven semifinalists (out of 132 nominated teachers).

 

Ryan Welle introduced our program, Dave Messenger from Flamingo Glass.  Dave used to be in the flower business, but now operates his glass business in the basement of the Flower Mill.  He works with a partner, and a few others.  They produce all kinds of different stained glass, and also do classes and workshops for kids and adults.  They recently did a night light class for a kid's birthday party.  They also do jewelry and ornament classes.

 

He walked us through the steps of making stained glass, and brought a sample board showing the different steps.  He also does mosaic work with different types of glass that are fused together in a kiln.  They use school glue to hold together the different pieces of glass, which simply burns away in the kiln because it is heated to 1500 degrees.

 

He has done a lot of large stained glass windows at area churches, but they create them in smaller sections because it would be impossible to get a large window out of their basement workshop in one piece.  He also did some glass at the hospital and cancer center, and they recently finished a project at the Grand Arbor Senior Center in Alexandria that consisted of six different 32 inch by 32 inch panels.  It took them a couple of months to complete that project.

 

They have three different kilns of various sizes, the largest being 4 feet by 22 inches.  They use electricity to heat up to extremely hot temperatures, but this surprisingly does not cause their electric bill to fluctuate much (much to the relief of Tim Rogelstad).

 

Dave is the designer of the business and his partner is the glass cutter.  The work is semi-dangerous because glass is sharp.  They have a box of band-aids available at every station.  The children they work with at birthday parties are very careful, however, it sounds like the adults are the ones injuring themselves on a regular basis.

 

They have a lot of leftover glass scraps that others will buy from them at either $2/pound or $6/pound, depending on the type of glass, and are used in mosaics.  They also use their glass scraps for their ornament classes and for smaller projects.