Today’s Greeter: Sandy Eldredge welcomed members and guests to Bow Rotary Club, and urged them to try Sandy Bartlett’s good grub.

 

President Gale Kenison hit the bell as her warning, to call the meeting to order at 7:46 in the morning

37 Bow Rotarians, both women and men

1 Visiting Rotarian, Guest Steve Christensen

0 Guest speaker(s) since school started too late

The total attendance reached 38

 

 

Sandy Bartlett came out of the kitchen with elation, as club members gave her a standing ovation. Sandy gave a shout-out to the crew in the kitchen, and noted that her gift, the new car, is just really bitchin’. (You know as I write this that I am a’winking, she didn’t say that but it’s what she was thinking).

 

Tom Wilson’s returned to Mass General for some healing. Keep just sending cards, visits still aren’t appealing.

 

There will be no meeting December 23. Instead you can go on a Christmas shopping spree.

 

There will be no speaker December 30 lest we lend Karen Wadsworth a hand, she cannot find a speaker anywhere in the land.

 

Mike Fortier reported on the Christmas trees; we were told: Of 75 regular and 48 birdseed wreaths, 100% were sold. 200 trees were bought, 190 sold, 4 given away, but 6 seems to wander and end up astray. We made $3950, all hail – this is a pretty respectable sale. A wreath made of lottery tickets was raffled, the purpose of which some club members were baffled. “To get email addresses,” Mike said, “if you please, and we’ll email these people next year to buy trees.”  Steve C. drew the ticket, and what do you know, the raffle wreath winner is Rick Hinck of Bow.

 

 

Gale Kenison had a year which was fine. A grandson born on her birthday: he drank milk, she drank wine. Work is good fun, and here’s a relief: Gale looks forward to working with the new police chief. “I’m happy to be part of the Bow Rotary,” Gale hollers, and hands over to the Foundation one hundred dollars.

 

 

 

Jeannie Gerulskis $1 did lose, because once again she appeared in the news. Harry Judd paid for being in the Bow paper times two or three, thanks to his closeness with Chuck “je suis Charlie”. Dave Stack is even closer with Chuck, he did rage, because he appeared on the very front page. And consider Kiniry, alas,yes, poor Ben, his face was depicted in the Bow Times again.

 

Happy Bucks:    

 

Ben’s glad Dave Gazaway called to remind him, to get to his shift and leave work life behind him. He was late but he rang his bell loudly and smart – but cold and alone, stood up by Chuck Rheinhardt. Ben gave a Happy $5 and a loud amen, delighted to have feeling in his toes once again.

 

Dave Gazaway was delighted that we filled all the slots for bell-ringing and cheer, for the Salvation Army it was a good year. He gave $20 and said this is no bull, it was hard to put money in a kettle so full!

 

Michelle Fortin was late and this is no jive, she was happy to ring the bell with Tom Ives.

 

Harry was delighted Bow Rotary, Boy Scouts and Marines this year, helped dozens of Bow families needing some cheer. Bow’s Deb Bourbeau was able to bring 21 Thanksgiving baskets and then, 40 Christmas baskets to make these Bow families grin - and 35 kids now believe, just because, they got presents on Christmas from Old Santa Claus.

 

Mike Fortier was thankful for Rotarians that sold Christmas trees, including wife Patti, who helped the job seem like a breeze.

 

Noreen Christensen is happy to have Steve here, what a fun day; she’s happy her last surgery is Monday. As they headed off to Florida, she’s happy to leave. The GPS on her phone knows where she heads Friday mornings (and now, so does Steve).

 

Skip Poole has 2 tickets to the Holiday Pops concert at the Capital Center for the Arts; you’ll grab them up quickly if you have the smarts.

 

Ken Moulton will dine with Mary Louise Hancock, and listen to this: she had polio at 4 but is now 96.

 

Robert Louf gave $2 for the fun he and Jeannie G had, trying to sell the last 2 trees and one wreath before things went bad. They sold the last wreath, then rearranged the sign’s letters with glee, they got rid of the last trees by making them free.

 

Bill McGonagle was happy about something he listed, the notetaker is very sorry she missed it.

 

Nate Sanel opened up a second store, he’s no slack - a dealership right down in old Merrimack.

 

Karen thanked her tree-selling partner Harry, who arranged for a pit of fire, so she could stay toasty and warm and not tire.

 

Al Kanegsberg is leaving for three weeks to the Southwest, he’ll return when he finds a good cold weather vest.

 

Gerry Carrier gave $5, so happy about Dave G’s bell-ringing success, and $15 to celebrate his mother’s 100^th birthday, I guess.

 

After two Friday mornings of passing the basket, Paul Mercier made us aware, we raised $643, which the board rounded up to $1000 for Bow Welfare.

 

Sargent Challenge: Yes, it’s challenging to be a sargent of arms, but you signed up for it, Gerry, so just use your charms. Get dollars from logos, from late comers, and they’re not alone, you can also take dollars when there’s ringing of phones.

 

Raffle:  Chris Parkinson left but he wrote his name right on his ticket – who knew that the raffle coupon drawer would pick it?! Eric Anderson stood up for Chris and pulled a card – but it was not the joker, drawing that one is hard. Still, he had hopes for this $20 bill: it was given to Amigos de Honduras – what good will!

 

 

Program:  

Rotary member introducing speaker: Dean Cascadden attempted to introduce the speaker, but the speaker was a no-show, so that didn’t go well. So Dean transformed himself into the speaker, and covered two topics:

 

Program topic 1: Wildcat Habitat. This is a project to create an outdoor learning and play center for Bow Middle School, an outdoor classroom for the kids. The plan is to fundraise to build the base, then have a warrant article to fund construction. Cost savings include help from the Town of Bow’s Maintenance Department, to move dirt, etc.  The reason the speaker wasn’t able to come was because Bow schools had a two-hour delay, which segues into the next topic.

 

Program topic 2: Making the school/no school call due to inclement weather. Dean grew up in Littleton NH where there were mountains of snow and freezing cold in winter, but school was rarely called off. So deciding on calling a snow day/delay when he knows he would have just toughed it out back in the day goes against the grain. His support system for making calls like this is a group of local superintendents that contact each other to work through challenges like this.

 

A strong factor to be considered in making the snow day/delay call is wind chill, which is a calculation involving both temperature and wind speed. For example, on a zero-degree day with wind speed of10-12 mph, there is a chill factor of -20 degrees. The chill factor can make for deadly conditions.

 

The Weather Channel has three types of alert:

There is no clear standard on what these alerts mean, they are subject to interpretation depending on where you live. For example, wind chill in Montana is lower than wind chill in NH. In the Bow-Concord-Hopkinton area, we call a snow day/delay when the wind chill is -20. Up in Berlin NH they are tougher so they go lower before calling it. Dean and his local group decided to call for a two-hour delay to demonstrate to students the wisdom of being careful, taking precautions.

 

In the Q&A following Dean’s presentation, Dave G stood up and gave $1 because he said that Dean is a hero in the Gazaway household for his decision. Al said when he ran Rumford Press, attendance increased on snow days because it became a competitive challenge to make it in to work. Bob Couch noted that a two-hour delay made things challenging for parents and Dean concurred that it made things difficult in a two-earner economy, and is part of what the superintendents take into account in their decision.

 

President Gale had Dean sign the frontispiece in the Handy Mthyology Answer Book, which will be given to the Baker Free Library.

 

Then she rang the bell with a toast to Rotary the world over and concluded the meeting before the clock struck 8:30.

 

Respectfully Submitted,

Jeannie Gerulskis

 

 

Bow resident; sells and installs indoor “wall of plants” systems
 

 

His trip to Cuba
 

 

 

 

 

Dave Stack, Program Chair
townmgr@bow-nh.gov