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Mary Pettit offered our invocation while Keith Olson was our song leader. For our Rotary Minute, Lulie was asked questions about going out for volleyball and also indicated she would appreciate it if anyone had some warm clothes to lend her. Dan Johnson was in charge of the meeting in President Lori's absence and he reminded us of the social on the 17th at AmericInn and the School Board candidate forum on October 22nd. Bonnie Denzel talked about the dictionary distribution that was going to be made after the meeting. Those who took advantage of doing a little bragging included Dave Johnson talking about the ditch clean-up the week before with the assistance of Stan Carignan, Keith Olson, Lori Larson and her husband Randy and son Logan, and Lulie, enjoying pizza afterwards at PizzaRanch. (Lulie really loves pizza.) Ryan Welle acknowledged his and Janelle's 15th wedding anniversary the next day, saying something about not remembering a lot about the first five years except to put the toilet seat down. Tim Hunt contributed $5 for being gone the next five weeks seeing children and grandchildren. Keith Olson stood to acknowledge Dave Johnson and the rest of the crew who did the ditch clean-up. Ben Durbin introduced Jesse Thorstad who talked about the Fergus Falls Mowing Club he organized this past summer. He told us they are a lot more fun than the shoveling club, but by the end of the presentation I sensed there really isn't one of those. He got it going using Facebook, with three volunteers showing up to do the first yard; on the second outing, the volunteers included six children under age 17. The homeowners who benefitted from the third cutting were dealing with the husband being at the Mayo Clinic for five weeks and it ended up that a neighbor of Jesse's and his two sons took on doing the yard for the rest of the summer. The volunteers to draw from eventually grew to 75 people, of which Jesse saw 20-25 of them when he participated, which appeared to be most but not all the time. People started donating mowers for people who did not have one, with former Rotarian Carrie Brimhall and her husband Matt donating one and our own Randy Kempfer and Tara donating another; eight were donated by Fergus Falls Home & Hardware. Before the summer was out, nine lawn mowers were given away. WDAY came and did a story on the mowing club. On a Saturday in July they had a mowing flash mob, mowing five or six yards and leaving two lawn mowers. Four yards were done on a regular basis. On the day of the terrible abduction Fergus Falls experienced this summer, 35 volunteers went to the family's farm with three riding lawn mowers, two push mowers, eight weed trimmers, and chain saws, and completed all the yard work in four hours. The group is trying to identify people who need this kind of help, and, where appropriate, encouraging the homeowners to take on the responsibility after the initial volunteer effort or going back and repeating the effort where the circumstances require it. They are not trying to take part-time work away from students but just trying to instill a spirit of community for both those participating and those receiving. A raking effort is planned for October 21st, with volunteers meeting in the Kmart parking lot at 1:00 p.m. to break up in groups and head out. What a great idea and effort by all those involved; thank you to Jesse for bringing this program to us. |
