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We met at the Salvation Army for the first time and the food was excellent. Wally Cole offered our invocation and President Ken presented a club banner to visiting Rotarian Courtney Fennell from the New Haven Connecticut Rotary Club. She was in Fergus for the holidays with "just her boyfriend", Kyle Sorkness, son of Schan and Shari Sorkness. During the Rotary Minute Plus Quiz, we learned she has been in her club for a little over six months, is its Public Image Chair and that there are 39 members in it. Questions about New Haven, Connecticut formed the subject matter of the quiz administered to club members and two out of three were answered correctly; the correct answer to what Ivy League school calls New Haven its home is Yale University.  Dean Monke reported we will resume having student guests next week. President Ken passed around a note of appreciation received by Jamie from our peach supplier, looking forward to 2023. It was also announced we will need volunteers for the Rotary Otter speech tournament on January 28th. Finally, Ryan Welle announced he believes he now has all the Rotary shirts that were ordered and just needs to get the last ones in the hands of the rightful owner. know Steve Andrews was the first to offer a brag, noting his recent acquisition of another Bentley, this time a 1934 model. Lisa McFarland remarked on her turning 50 years old and having ankle surgery, also telling us know that her 13-year-old son is going to be in the production of Annie. Pete Wasberg contributed for working with Kyle Sorkness' mother at Otter Tail Power and also because he had to leave the meeting early. Tim Hunt put forth funds for missing the last four meetings to enjoy his family over the holidays. Jamie Larson made a hefty contribution for meetings missed while Buzz Lundeen confessed he left his name badge at home. Keith Olson talked about a priest and a nun who both walked in their sleep, verifying they were roman' Catholics. Ryon Welle paid in for, among other things, our visiting guests. Brian Tjaden concluded our brags and added to our club coffers for both missing a meeting and being named branch manager of the Fergus Falls' Century 21 office. Anthony Nordan was our program and he started out by telling us about the origins of the red kettle. The annual fundraising campaign actually started out with crab traps in California and now the red shield and the red kettle have become part of Salvation Army's way to market itself. He also called our attention to a crest on a drum in the room, telling us that the Salvation Army split into two groups in the early 1900''s, with the other group becoming the Volunteers of America; it received the copyright to the crest. That copyright ran out in the 1970's, so Salvation Army began using the crest again. The building itself was constructed in 2002 and is sorely lacking in storage space and, with all the programming now in it, is more than full to capacity. They have an approved bid for an audio-visual upgrade in the chapel. Anthony noted that when the building was constructed, the Salvation Army was only serving bag lunches and now that has expanded to hot meals. We also learned that through the services offered at the Army, 1300 households (averaging 2.5 persons per household) completes and filed their tax returns last year. As to the 2022 kettle campaign, it came up about $19,000 short of its goal, raising approximately $86,000. This was mostly due to the snowy weather we experienced the last half of December. We thank Anthony and the Salvation Army staff for making their building available for our meetings. Two additional guests at our meeting last Wednesday who were extremely well-behaved. |
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