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Okay, Mr. President (President Joe that is) which is it? Does attendance (like size) matter or not? You campaigned on a platform of more service and less attendance requirements and you were unanimously elected. Okay, in reality Bernice stepped aside, we begged you to step in, and you agreed, but we still had to vote you in. But, you have said repeatedly that we don’t have to worry about attendance and instead you want an aggregate of 1,200 Rotary service hours out of the club. We were all feeling warm and fuzzy about that. Now, when I say “we” were all feeling warm and fuzzy I mean the 6 people (I doubled my earlier estimate) who read the Tack (same readership as the Journal Tribune) and the 30 or so members of the Club who come to the meetings because the rest of the club has no idea about this alleged shift in focus from attendance to service.
On August 1, however, you made a point of telling the Club that when the Board met on August 1 it spent time talking about the members of the Club who have poor attendance. Now, I realize we have to pay the RI dues for all of our members, but if the members are paying their dues and not showing up for meetings it is not a dues issue, it’s the old attendance issue. Now, if members are not paying their dues then they should not be members of the Club at all. So Mr. President what’s the true story, does attendance count or not?
Having busted the President’s hump about whether attendance is required or not, let me make a few observations. Three weeks ago I sat across from Chuck Hennessey. Chuck has been in the club forever but I am sure many of you do not know Chuck who was career military and then the owner of an insurance agency until he retired. I had no idea that Chuck has lived on Little Sebago Lake for years and that he has a bunch of grandkids. I only learned that because I went to a meeting.
Two weeks ago we played Rotary trivia and learned some cool things about some of our members. We learned those things because we were at the meeting. We also laughed a lot and got a great break from the day.
This week we heard all about our Past Presidents’ Fund and our Company B Fund. We learned about those funds because we are at the meeting. Our Club is very unique in having that kind of money available. Other Clubs have little or no reserves to use or fall back on. I know about the funds because I was at the meeting.
Furthermore, Sabine gave a great classification talk. She was very funny and she has led a cool life. She has done things about which I had no idea and she has started a business/ community service organization which is absolutely incredible. She set goals at a young age and achieved them. I would not know all of that, and I would not have enjoyed her delivery if I missed the meeting.
In the end it is nice to think we are not going to get drummed out of the Club for missing a few or a lot of meetings if we are otherwise contributing to the overall good done but the Club, but there are the intangible benefits of laughter and knowledge that come from showing up at a meeting every now and then.
Another peanut thrown from the gallery.