Pres. Sue’s May 21 Message
At the beginning of the year, I was thinking, “What am I going to write about for 52 weeks???!!!” How am I going to be funny, and Rotaryish 52 times??? How long of a story is too long? Too short? How many times can I repeat a reminder before people stop reading? Should I have monthly themes? Or seasonal themes? Or what??? And many weeks I just couldn’t think of much to say at all, as I am sure you could tell.
But now that I only have 6 more to write I suddenly find myself thinking: “OH NO!!! I only have 6 more of these to write! I only have 6 more chances to impose my will on you! And try to make you come over to the dark side! It’s not enough time…….”
I just wish all weeks were as easy to write as this one! (I am really going to miss these exclamation points!)
Hogar Crea
About this time last year, as I was putting my committees together, I thought I would try to get a new committee and I asked Ron Helmuth to Chair it. I asked him to put together a Community Service Committee. My goal was to have a committee that would look for small, sweat equity projects that the club project could participate in the community, that would be fun fellowship events for us, increase our visibility in the community, not cost us anything because it would just be volunteer time and not take much time, because they would all be small short projects. I was thinking, for example, of helping the Downtown Associations on their festival days or Via on Race days, etc….
Somehow, some way, Ron heard translated that into “go get a fabulous District Grant and build something AWESOME!” and so that is what he did instead. And on Saturday, we got to experience the result of that.
At 8 am, a whole bunch of us, and some of our friends and families, and some folks from Byler’s farms along with the good men of Hogar Crea built a fence (yes, a whole 3 sides of a fence!), some giant planter boxes, filled them with a lot of dirt (A LOT OF DIRT!, we are talking, 1,000's of wheel barrows full, in fact, we murdered 2 wheel barrows in the process, it was that much dirt) and then planted them with, well, a whole bunch of different plants which required a bunch of standing around going "How far apart do you plant tomoatos?" "I don't know, how far apart do you plant watermelons?". All that in only FOUR HOURS!!!! And it was a ton of fun. And I am pretty sure that any minute now my back is going to stop hurting, I am sure. That was really a lot of dirt to shovel.
Through it all the one thing I learned is that I NEVER want to meet Val in a dark alley because she will/can TAKE YOU DOWN! That woman has some muscles! Watching Rafael with that post hole digger, I was pretty worried he was going to lose a leg there for a few minutes but it all came out fine in the end. Even John St. Clair proved useful, stomping down the dirt. We were saving that job for Isabelle, the 7 year old but she proved she could handle a rake so she got promoted.
All in all, I think a good time was had by all and I was thrilled that so many of you were able to come out.
A huge thank you to Ron and Jess and Ron for planning the garden so carefully. And also to the Foundation Committee, Dee, Tom and Gretchen for writing the grant and sheparding it through the process.
Just a Couple of Reminders
Don’t forget about the Golf Tournament – June 3 – We still need sponsors and golfers
District Change Over Dinner – June 14th – Please see the District website for details. Anyone is welcome but you do need to RSVP
New Member Mixer – June 4th – Please RSVP to Barbara if you are going – Please consider going if you are on the Incoming Board or Committee Chair, or most importantly a new Member (new being in the last year or so)
There is a special Edition of the Kilt all about the recent past District Conference: http://www.clubrunner.ca/Data/7430//HTML/198286//ConferenceEditionNewsletter.pdf
If that Link does not work, please go to the District website to check it out.
Please welcome Iryna – as our NEW Social Media Guru – she will be working on our Facebook image so send her all your Rotary Photos! I also plan to ask her to help with the Website stories/content and photo albums but she doesn’t know this yet. Shhhhhh…. Don’t tell her, it’s a secret!
Speaker
Our speaker this week is our great friend Diane Donaher, Executive Consultant
Bethlehem Area Education Foundation