President Greg Hill opened the meeting with a pledge and a prayer but still without a song.

 

Then our on the ball sergeant at arms, Tony Collins, followed this introduction by wheeling John Blair for allowing his phone to ring during the last meeting, and rather than paying a fine, John graciously agreed to lead the song at our next meeting.  Who knows, maybe we have a much needed back-up songmeister budding in our midst. 

 

BRAGS:

Elliott Pinsel again thanked us for helping collect approximately 480 items for his holiday gift drive, and while he had podium he also us on his son, whom some of us fondly remember as Bacon Boy.  The young man is now 22 and accomplishing great feats in the sport of wrestling.

 

Steve Risley seemed quite pleased to inform his fellow Rotarians that his first grandson is on the way and Steve is ready to move into the next generation.

 

John Blair just celebrated his 75^th birthday, and his brother Bate came into town to not only join the party, but to accompany John to this week’s meeting.

 

Pat Schwartz traveled to Palm Springs, where he took a tank ride and watched his son discharged from the Marines.

 

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Tickets are now available for our winter fundraiser, and on Tuesday January 28^th a meeting will be held at 5:30 at the Pet Factory to fine tune the organization of this event.

 

This week Rich Schoeneman oversaw a game of rolling dice for poker hands, similar to Yahtzee.  The contest was initially held by table, followed by a grand prize playoff of the table winners, in which Diana Taylor claimed the championship.

 

Our speaker this week was Bill Morris, who told us about the organization he founded, Blue Star Recycling.  The organization is headquartered in Colorado although it has expanded beyond its original facility, and now has a location in Buffalo Grove, Illinois.  They have two missions; recycling electronics to help save the environment and providing jobs for the disabled.  Blue Star is a nonprofit, although he tries to run the entity like a business, and most of its costs of operations come from sales.  Rotary has been a big supporter of the organization from the beginning.

 

Bill got the idea for this enterprise when he saw young people with autism doing an admirable job of taking apart computers, and after questioning them, he discovered that they had no training in this job, but had just decided to do it for the fun of it.  Knowing that autistic individuals thrive on repetitive systematic projects, and also realizing that most components of used electronics can be reemployed in the manufacture of other products, he thought he had a great idea for setting up a permanent operation, and they opened for business in November of 2009.

 

In the United States there are fifty million people with disabilities and while most of them want to work only twenty percent are employed.  This makes little sense since the cost of supporting a nonworking disabled person over his or her lifetime is approximately two million dollars.

 

Blue Star Recycling thus fills an important need by providing employment to numerous disabled workers, and they are very pleased with their workforce.  These individuals work extremely hard, and they almost never miss work.  Unfortunately, though most of them have to limit their employment to part time, since the wages they would earn if they worked more than four hours a day would often disqualify them from receiving social security disability benefits.

 

Over their existence Blue Star Recycling has taken apart and recycled twenty-one million pounds of electronic devices, which instead of going into landfills have provided materials for manufacturing, which otherwise would have required additional mining.  They have thus done great things for the environment.

 

Pat Schwartz won our weekly drawing of $30.00, while our progressive pot of $640.00 rolled over once more, after Bill Rickert pulled the King of Clubs out of 30 cards.  It is beginning to get exciting again.

 

NEXT WEEK:

Fun & Frolics & Bingo– Pat Schwartz

 

Greeter & Prayer – Bill Taranowski

 

Program: Carolyn McDonald,  Entrepreneurship program at Vernon Hills High School

 

 

 

“The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball - the further I am rolled the more I gain.”  -Susan B. Anthony