Today’s Greeter: Nate Sanel welcomed members and guests to Bow Rotary.
President Gale Kenison called the meeting to order at 7:44 AM.
Attendance:
42 Bow Rotarians
0 Visiting Rotarians
1 Guest
2 Guest speakers
Total of 44 (including 5 scooters)
Announcements:
President Gale noted that next week (Dec. 16) Dean Cascadden has responsibility for the program, Sandy Eldredge will be the greeter.
Mike Fortier let us know that there are just 8 Christmas trees left. We’ll sell the trees tonight (12/9) and tomorrow at the 10-1 shift, then we’re done and we’ll give any remaining trees away. We will pull the racks down Sunday (12/11) at 2 p.m., everyone’s welcome to join the fun.
Jeannie Gerulskis asked for help with gathering old materials (printed and photos) for the Vision/Historian Committee with which to build a Bow Rotary archive, noting that our 50th anniversary will be in 2020.
Secretary Eric Anderson heard from Tom Wilson (who, you may recall from last week’s minutes, just had a liver transplant). His wife won’t let him come to Rotary because we might contaminate him. He’d love to see us – but don’t visit yet. Instead please send a card to Tom at 19 Logging Hill Road, Grey House, Bow NH 03304; or email:
tom@wilsonandwilsonarchitects.com
Birthdays/New Member Inductions:
No birthdays or new members this week.
Sargent at Arms:
Fines: Steve DeStefano recklessly put his badge on the table instead of wearing it. At least he could find his, Noreen Christensen has no idea where hers is. Surprisingly, Jon Ruggles was sporting an outfit with his business logo on it.
Happy Bucks:
Judy Goodnow had fun selling trees, and loved Jeannie G’s bulletin (but claims that she won the fight). (Michelle Fortin said no, she did. Hair-pulling ensued.)
Tamar Roberts gave a happy $5 for her son Josh returning from Newfoundland tomorrow and because she just ran her first half-marathon. Chuck Rheinhardt called her a sissy for only running half a marathon so she sneaked outside and let the air out of his tires. (Or maybe I just imagined Chuck and the tires – ed).
David Stack saw Jeannie G on TV, speaking about the passing of John Glenn. Jeannie G paid a fine due to lack of a Rotary pin while on TV. David let us know that the Public Safety Building is so close to happening that they are picking out colors. Several Bow Rotarians were looking forward to bright, happy colors in the holding cells.
Ken Moulton was golfing in Arizona and met some old Red Sox players on the golf course, People who care about sports will remember what their names were. Their handicaps were 6 and minus 2.
Al Kanegsberg just came back from Florida, where it was 80 degrees. He is very excited about Dava Sobel’s newest book, The Glass Universe, all about the women who created Harvard’s astronomy program. He is the 1st person to check it out from our library.
Dave Gazaway gave $5 in memory of Pearl Harbor (12/7/1941) and what has been going on to recognize those who were lost in the attack. His brother Bret Seymour is head of the dive team for the Park service. Over the last 15 years, the team has been diving down to the USS Arizona to recover the servicemen’s remains for proper internment.
Ben Kiniry sold trees with Al Kanegsberg, and had fun discussing spirituality with Al. And he just read his first fun book since college. He’s been doing some work with the LaBoe and Tasker Law Firm, and they just made him an offer to come on board that he couldn’t refuse. He’s just started there and is pretty happy about it.
Speaking of books, Dean Cascadden’s college roommate just wrote a book on being happy. Dean has to buy it to see if he’s in it.
Sargent-at-Arms Gerry Carrier enjoyed Jeannie G’s minutes. He proceeded to auction off 4 tickets to A Christmas Carol for Dec. 18. Peter Imse urged someone else to bid on them. Jeannie G said Tiny Tim’s a whiner. Ben Kiniry got the tickets for $25. Gerry let us know that Donna McCann won the $500 prize for the auction, and gave the money back to Bow Rotary to be used for Polio Plus. Her husband Dennis is a polio survivor and they believe strongly in the work we do.
Raffle: Mike Fortier drew the joker and won the pot. However, pot is not yet legal, recreationally speaking, in NH, so Mike will be checking out the newly painted holding cells, where seeing fellow Rotarians there will count as a make-up.
Program:
Rotary member introducing speaker: Bob Couch
Program topic: "Using Media Effectively to Tell Your Story" with Scott Jones and Cindy Jepp-Jones
Scott and Cindy both have a considerable background in media. Scott worked for WNDS, NH PTV, and now for UNH, doing photo and video production for their hockey team. He has won a New England Emmy award for his work at NHPTV. Cindy is a senior producer at WMUR, where she has 30 years’ experience and has produced over 500 NH Chronicle stories.
[Chris Parkinson kindly took over the minutes here while Jeannie G popped out for a minute:]
Scott and Cindy urged the crowd to look for good stories with broad appeal and then bring the stories to life. They’ve both travelled to great heights and far-flung places to tell stories. Cindy likes the role of producer, being behind the scenes. Her productions take a whole team, even though you might only see one or two people on camera.
Cindy may move toward doing more documentaries. Right now, sometimes an hour and a half of footage gets boiled down into a 6-minute Chronicle episode. She has had lots of cool experiences and met famous people like Gene Wilder and Maggie Hassan. She worked with Ciao Italia, loved being part of this show for 26 years.
Scott told us what he sees as the elements of a good story: passion, action, character reveled, and some other things that will remain unrevealed because Chris Parkinson writes in hieroglyphics when he takes minutes. Scott said think about what is Bow’s story - Mary Baker Eddy? Dick Swett?
[Jeannie G returned here and took over the minutes:].
There are so many different perspectives, Scott noted, so much more about a person, town or business than a one-liner. Explore the details – that’s what makes the connection with your readers/listeners. We’re coming up on the 50th anniversary of the Bow Rotary Club – what stories do you have to tell? Pick the top five things, elaborate, dive in! Cindy noted that people are starved for good journalism. How can you sort through all the noise – Twitter, YouTube, etc. With the next generation, you have to be short, quick, hook them in. What got you excited about the subject? Focus on that. If you have a larger story, break it up into little segments. Scott says stay focused on the subject – it is very easy to go off on tangents, and that can dilute the story.
Using a segment she did on a master woodworker, Cindy advised us to #1 make sure we have a good story, and #2, tell the story in a unique way. The camera angle is key to drawing in the viewer. Put the speaker in an authoritative position, where you are not looking down on your subject but also not looking up into his/her nostrils. Get up on a ladder if you need to. Music and a voiceover are useful for smoothing things out if needed.
To get your story read/viewed, you need an anchor – a place to drive the viewer/reader. Drive them to your web page, use social media to amplify the message. Use social media strategically: think, where are we driving them, what action do we want them to take – and make social media do that for you. Twitter is big, Facebook is the granddaddy of them all, very effective. YouTube is the second largest search site in the world, after Google. As our society trends less toward reading, more toward watching, YouTube will be huge. Snapchat is also a good new tool to use.
More info from Cindy: "If anyone is interested in connecting with NH Chronicle with a story suggestion they should email
nhchronicle@hearst.com with a full description and compelling details of their idea. Don't be discouraged if they don't respond, just keep trying...every 3 months is a good window. Also, keep in mind the timeliness of the story, it must be in season, there needs to be interesting visuals and subject matter. They do many events and if they cover the event they will air the story again prior to the event the following year. Some stories I have done have re-aired five years in a row!"
After some Q&A, President Gale rang the bell to conclude the meeting at 8:36.
Respectfully Submitted,
Jeannie Gerulskis
