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Lois Josefson Russell led us in prayer and Keith Olson was our song leader. Brags and Fines included Tim Hunt thankful for the prayer offered by Lois and getting his flu shot this week; Hal Leland told us his grandson, who is a medical resident in Salt Lake City, just got married the past Friday to a women from Valley City; Brian Tjaden reported the Krekelberg Law Firm donated $200 to our Splash Pad Fund; Keith Olson expressed his gratitude for Al Magnuson, who died last week; Al was instrumental in getting one of Keith's daughters through a terrible illness; Kathy Austvold paid a fine for leaving her badge at home; and visiting Rotarian Guy Olson was happy about his first grandchild being born, being back at one of our club meetings, and also just returning from a fly-in fishing expedition in Canada where his group caught 50 walleyes in their last hour of fishing. Our program was Deb Mertaens, a Rotarian in the Fargo-Moorhead P.M. Club, who said she got her start in Rotary when our club sponsored her daughter as an outbound Youth Exchange student to Spain in 2004-05. She always wanted to give back to Rotary as a result of that program and became a 2012 charter member of her "happy hour" club that she also described as the "little engine that could." By the way, her daughter, who had a bedroom window view of the Mediterranean Sea when she was in Spain, became so enamored with the setting that she moved to Seattle, finishing college and her masters degree out there. She is married and has a little boy and is a key person in an organization's food share program, with every Starbucks donating to it. The five clubs in Fargo-Moorhead, with a total of about 200 members, created the FM Rotary Foundation. Over the years it has built a "miracle field" and a fully accessible playground at Lindenwood Park. It also donated a van to an after school program for immigrant children. The current effort is to build a natural playground, for which they expect to start constructing in April of 2022. Studies indicate that children play longer and use their imagination more in such a setting. Nationwide, a recent study reported that children spend about six hours per day online, and another concluded inmates spend more time outside than children. The amount of time that children currently spend in unstructured physical play is estimate to have dropped to four to seven minutes a day. The budget for the playground is set at $600,000, and currently they have $160,000 in donations and pledges. Its location will be along the riverfront near the Hjemkomst Center. There will also be an area to develop bike skills included in the project. There is already plenty of parking in the area where the natural playground will be built, so the Board of the FM Rotary Foundation decided to reach out to Rotary clubs in the area and let them know of this coming attraction. Since Deb is on the FM Rotary Foundation's Board, lives in our community (she retired from NDSU in June, and may be looking to join a Fergus Falls Rotary club a little while from now), and has always appreciated our club sponsoring her daughter, she was glad to have the opportunity to talk to us. |
