Salvation Army

 

I find it interesting how some folk always seem to gravitate to the table furthest from the speaker, the back of the room. You know them, they’re probably the same ones who grab the back seat on a bus.  Of late the pattern at Rotary meeting has been flipped around by moving the lectern and screen to what used to be the back of the room, and thereby making what was the President’s front table the new back of the room. Not that it matters of course, but perhaps it explains why our president was absent, you know - confused.  There were whispers along the line of Where’s Waldo? We got Jamie Edwards instead.

 

Anyway, as scribe, I was in the new back table, farthest from the lectern and microphone. Glenn Warnica leaned over to me and noted that as scribe you need to be able to hear well. He’s right of course, but sadly I don’t.  So, anything that follows may or may not be accurate. You have been warned.

 

We got through some business. Craig Macpherson from RCB North came to remind us that the Salvation Army can use our help attending the kettles in front of key locations. Specifically on December 14 and/or 24^th. A bit more on this later.

Also, Craig is collecting gently used hockey equipment to be reused by First Nations kids. Craig will pick it up if need be. You can email him at cmacpherson6@bell.net

 

Joe Watson did a masterful job of auctioning off dinner for two couples and managed to extract some $250 +/- per couple. Dinner, cooked by Yahel at Joe’s, will include generous servings of a 1997 Amarone which, according to a review on cellartracker.com, is “…absolutely stunning, wowzers, 96/100!” Sounds good, but my palate is about as discriminating as my hearing so it would be lost on me (and actually I prefer an IPA).

Director Bob Martin shared news with us that we’re being turfed from the golf club while they remodel. So, for the first half of next year, starting with the January 9^th meeting, we’re going to meet at the Holiday Inn on South Service Road. The manager, Jason Stoner, is bending over backwards to accommodate us – and, I think it’s worth noting, the Holiday Inn is a supporting restaurant at Lakeside a la Carte and has just placed a large poinsettia order. (two of our signature fund-raining projects) Anyway, we’ll have a room to ourselves and for the same weekly price will be able to help ourselves to the regular breakfast buffet which, it hardly goes without saying, opens up a whole new range of breakfast options with unlimited quantities.

 

Yahel did a quick review of some of her activities over the past two weeks. She attended the Remembrance Day meeting and, in an Aha! moment she made sense of something she’d seen in 2014 (?) at the Tower of London when the ground was thick with 888,246 ceramic poppies. Coming from a neutral country the symbolism of poppies was an unknown.

Yahel soon found she had a hard act to follow following so hot on the heels of Mana’s exchange year. Yahel’s a different girl of course but I think she is doing a masterful job of winning hearts. I’ve spent a bit of time with her and soon learned that she has an easy, natural warmth.

 

 

Our guest speaker was Major Doug Binney of the Salvation Army. Timely I suppose since the SA is most often associated with the Christmas kettles, but I think we all know there’s much more to it. Here’s a few bullet points.

P Scribe