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Our invocation was offered by Josh and greeting us as we arrived at the meeting was Steve A. Bonnie Denzel talked to us about delivering dictionaries to seven third grade classrooms at Cleveland after our meeting and we learned that Kathy handled that duty at Hillcrest the day before. Bonnie also told us that she attended the scholarship recognition program at M State two weeks prior and that she met the Rotary Wes Waage Scholarship recipient, Joshua Donley from Crystal; he is in his second year at the school and is planning a career in computer science. President Zack told us that the Club's Board decided to make a $125 donation to the Rotary Rose Bowl Parade float, instead of passing the hat amongst Rotarians for a free-will offering as we have done in past years. Lisa said that United Way has enough volunteers to stuff and deliver back packs for a while, so we won't be helping out there in the near future. She also told us that we should be able to sign up for Salvation Army bell ringing at our meeting this coming week. Lisa also thanked Bonnie and Randy for their efforts in getting dictionaries and Andy & Elmer books distributed respectively. President Zack will be at the City Council meeting on Monday, November 20th, to present a check for over $85,000 to the City for the splash pad; the ceremony will be done at the beginning of the meeting; please attend to show yourr support if able. Brian told us about setting up GroupMe for our club members to use and I understand he will provide more information on how to get on and use it going forward (I just did it and took less than two minutes). Our Board is also looking at doing an event at the Center for the Arts featuring James Wedgwood, a ventriloquist/comedian who offers family friendly entertainment. This would be in lieu of the movie nights that we were talking about before. The entertainer is a big fan of Rotary so we can host him at a very reasonable cost; it has not been decided if we would host one or two performances, selling 400 tickets for each, with club members responsible for selling tickets and staffing the event (but not concessions). Brags and fines started out with Lisa contributing for missing several meetings and sharing her happiness about her daughter getting hired by Lake Region Healthcare to work in the hospital's lab. Steve A. enjoyed his trip to New York City and Washington D.C., while Deb Maertens told us about a youth exchange gathering in Fargo where they cooked meals for the Ronald McDonald House. Mark contributed for missing a couple meetings and to compliment this writer on some legal work and Josh for his comments that appeared in the Fargo Forum. Kathy, the keeper of all things administrative, rose to congratulate us for having 25 of 33 members present for the day's meeting. Wally reported he enjoyed a presentation of Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat that included two granddaughters and that he also enjoyed his birthday -- on the same day as son-in-law Zach's. President Zack followed by acknowledging his two daughters Wally referenced Randy introduced our speaker of the day, Lauren Eliason, who serves as a blind and rehabilitation specialist with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. Lauren grew up in Ashby, as she put it is "currently cooking a baby," and in her job works with people in 11 to 13 Minnesota counties. With that perspective, she told us that she can tell you where all the good and bad bathrooms are located in the area. Lauren has been in her current role for five and a half years; to train for the job she had to live in the Twin Cities for six weeks with her sight eliminated by artificial means. Her work is with individuals 55 years and older and the mission is to facilitate the achievement of vocational and personal independence by Minnesotans who are blind, visually impaired or deaf and blind -- keeping individuals visually impaired as independent and safe as possible. Overall, the state program works with any individuals older than 14. It has a business enterprise unit that has found a niche placing vending machines in rest stops, at colleges and in jails and prisons; it is also slowly getting into the VA system. The state has a communications center that has over 106,000 titles in stock as video books, converts textbooks into audiobooks and printed material into braille. In the 2022-23 fiscal year, the program served 3,617 people, second only to California (7000) in the country. There are 21 employees and Lauren serves about 290 people a year. Services include assistance on independent living skills and orientation and mobility training as well as providing assistive technology and low vision aids and devices. All services are free, and she said her job was a lot of fun, obvious by her enthusiastic presentation. She visits people in their homes (commenting it seems like 90% of those she visits are related to her in some way), knowing that vision loss to them is a very personal matter, feeling embarrassed about it and not wanting to ask for help. This means that most of her home visits are spent building repour, telling us recently she has a lengthy education about one of her client's chainsaw collection. If you want to contact Lauren with a referral you can reach her at Lauren.Eliason@state.mn.us or call her at (218) 395-0245. She receives referrals from eye doctors, families and neighbors, asking the person making the referral to tell the person who may need services of having done so to lessen any trepidation when she makes her first call. Once she gets a referral she usually is making contact with the person within one to two weeks. |
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