Mark Bring served as our greeter and Cody assisted with collecting the brags & fines. Katie stepped in to lead the meeting and appreciated the help from Joshua to get the Owl set up. Keith Olson kindly brought a new perch for the Owl to improve the viewing experience for our remote attendees, which today included Brian Tjaden. After reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, Katie offered an invocation and led us in the 4-Way Test. Announcements included Ken Harty asking members to see him after the meeting to pick up their Duck Derby tickets and posters to begin sales for this summer fundraiser. If you weren’t able to get them Wednesday, Ken will continue to make them available and seek you out if needed!
Brags and fines were abundant:
• Mary has a grandson who turned 16 on the weekend and she also paid in to promote bringing your kids/grandkids to the Trilogy Peter Cottontail event this past Saturday from 10 to Noon at their offices.
• Tim is going to visit his sister over Easter and he hasn’t see her for almost two years. He also corrected last week’s rounds saying he saw three FLOCKS of geese, not just three geese.
• Joshua paid a fine for missing last week when he was in the cities for a conference. He was able to have dinner with Anthony Nordan at the conference and brought back greetings to the club from Anthony..
• Keith paid for the 43-year anniversary of asking Kim on their first date (which he admitted he would have had no idea about had Kim not reminded him). He also paid in to honor our guest speaker and thanked him for his help delivering all four of the Olson kids, with special help making #2’s arrival a safe one. He expects to be bragging again next week about another new Olson grandbaby who is expected any moment now.
• Deb paid in for missing last week due to travels to Kentucky and to brag about her granddaughter in the skating show last weekend.
• Buzz bragged about today’s speaker being late today because he was trying to help pull a stuck vehicle out of a snowbank. A true Rotarian in service to his community.
• Wally shared how happy he was he didn’t have to drive to Sartell for a continuing education seminar and was able to attend virtually instead.
• Kathy paid a fine for missing last week while she was in Florida for a little bit of work and little bit of fun and sun.
Buzz introduced Dr. Rud Wasson as our guest speaker. A retired OB/GYN physician and long-time community member, Rud is also a member of the Sunrise Rotary club. His presentation was from the perspective of his role on the Friends of the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center (PWLC) Board. He has served the board for over 20 years, several as president. They recently learned that the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has slowly brought the PWLC to a point where after April 1st it will only have one employee, the maintenance professional. As PWLC educators and visiting services managers have all retired and have not been replaced, no budget has been allocated by USFWS to replace them. Rud called this The Crisis at the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center. It is important to note this is separate from the Fergus Falls School District program that operates at the PWLC. Those teachers are employed by the school district and the district leases space for those classes. They continue to operate. The crisis is in the absence of staff to operate public programs at the center. He shared two documents (which were emailed out yesterday) and talked through their contents, giving context to the past and the desired future. He and Molly Stoddard and Dave Sanderson have been working tirelessly to convince the USFWS to reinstate funding for staff and so far have succeeded in getting verbal commitment to fill two positions. The Friends of the PWLC feels strongly they need three more positions in order to bring back the full public use of the center, including inviting back the 72,000 students annually from area schools who used to come to the center for field trip learning days. One of the attachments includes instructions for anyone willing to be part of a letter writing campaign to our Minnesota U.S. Senators and Representative as well as the USFWS Regional Director. Rud answered many questions from the group and encouraged everyone who cares about preserving this unique community treasure to write letters and to offer up any additional ideas for solutions, including exploration of other funding models.
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