The following, I hope, will be my last minutes for a while.  November will usher in Sarah Curley as your reporter and Sabine volunteered to take December (more on this below).  I believe Dr. Joe has January and who knows from there.  Enjoy.

 

4 Way Babble: For weeks now we have been told by Conrad that he spent tons of time lobbying in Augusta. Perhaps that is why he is such a silver tongued devil who is apparently bilingual because his introduction to the four way test was not in English.  It is a wonder the Turnpike was ever widened.

 

Earl Goodwin:  Carl Goodwin was at the meeting and updated everyone on Earl.  Unfortunately, Earl had another fall and suffered some new injuries.  He is not doing too well and will probably not be back.

 

 

 

In so many ways the success of our club can be attributed to the energy and spirit of Earl.  Our club truly owes its stellar reputation to Earl and other leaders like him who worked so hard to support our communities.  We all owe Earl our thanks and our prayers.  It is truly difficult to see our veteran leaders move out of the club, but we should never forget what they gave to our club and to each and every one of us.

 

Cool Kids Table:  Roland Gagne invaded the cool kids table and clearly the cool kids did not know what to do in his presence.  Roland don’t get too comfortable there.

 

Halloween Costumes:  Sarah Curley came to the meeting as Cindy Lou Who from the Grinch.  Her costume as awesome and easily recognizable to most.  Of course, Fausto asked her if she was a St Pauli’s Girl.  Apparently they had no Dr. Seuss in Philadelphia.  Lucie Kay came as an angry credit union manager and no one really knew what Don Pilon was but it was scary.  Heather MacLean claimed she dressed as a school girl, and we’ll all go along with that even though I think she wore the same outfit the week before and the week before that.

 

 

 

President Joe: Either demonstrating his early onset dementia or his attention deficit disorder or both, Joe wowed us with his announcements.  First, he did not realize it was still October and he started growing his “Movember” beard, arguably an illegal head start on the facial hair growing contest.  Second, he had no idea regarding the dates of events in December, but I think these dates are accurate:

            December 1^st will be the club Christmas party at Sue Gajewski’s in Casco.  President Joe is trying to arrange for a quote/ unquote “drunk bus” (the expression impresses our guests) to transport us to and from Casco.  Of course, Lord knows how you get home once the bus drops you off in some local parking lot but apparently that is your problem.

            December 5^th we will be ringing the bell at Walmart as fill-ins for 1 and ½ hours and then that evening we will be shopping at Walmart for the families we support at Christmas.  There will be no meeting at the Run of the Mill on December 5th though I have no doubt President Joe will show up.  Our shopping will count as our meeting that day and Sabine will have no Tack to write.

            December 11^th will be the wrapping day for the Christmas gifts in the evening with more details to come.

            December 12^th will be the $100 raffle party at Duffey’s or as Joe calls it, “the 50/50 event”.  There will be no meeting at the Run of the Mill on December 12^th.   The event on the 12th will be from 5:00 to 7:00 PM and Sabine will have no Tack to write. 

            December 26^th for those of you who are paying attention is the day after Christmas and my wild guess is that we are not meeting that day so Sabine will have no Tack to write.  So now I know why Sabine volunteered to write one Tack in December!

            Finally, to truly demonstrate that he is losing it, Joe struggled with closing the sliding doors behind him to a point where he needed assistance from our guest speaker.  Yikes!

 

Stuff the Bus Report:  Keeping with his confused theme Joe referred to our Stuff the Bus food drive on October 27 at the Biddeford Hannaford and Market Basket.  To my knowledge there were no buses involved, but more on that in a minute.  Joe told everyone with great glee that his shift ended before the monsoons started (way to leave your troops in the heat of the storm Captain).  Despite the bad weather, it sounded like the food drive was a success.  Lucie reported that the drive collected $550.00 and 1,500 pounds of food that went to the Saco Food Pantry and an undetermined amount of food that went to the Biddeford Food Pantry.  Apparently, the food trucks were able to park close to the collectors which helped a little.  When things got slow at Hannaford the food truck actually plowed right into the building which facilitated a greater haul since they had direct access to the food.  Lucie blamed it on the food pantry driver but the inside information is that Lucie did not understand the “Hannaford to Go” concept and thought Hannaford had a real drive through.  She now knows that is not the case though she temporarily created one.  We were also told that the cash will be donated to Bon Appetit and both our club and the Saco Bay Club will serve at one of the Bon Appetit events and donate the money. Nice job Lucie and everyone who braved the weather to help out.  Joe ultimately thanked “Sue” for all her hard work on the food drive.  I guess “Sue” is Lucie in Joe’s quickly deteriorating mind.

 

$100 Raffle:  Karen Chasse distributed the $100 raffle tickets at the meeting.  If you weren’t there Karen will undoubtedly track you down.  We all got some of the many tickets Earl used to sell.  Please make every effort to sell your tickets.  We need to keep up the tradition of selling them all to make the $100 raffle a success.  Remember, people can split tickets so they don’t have to come up with $100.  When you sell a ticket, put the person’s name on the ticket and then you sign the ticket on the “Authorized signature” line.  Most importantly, however, retain the stub and fill in all of the information legibly and give the stubs and the money to Karen.  Sell, sell, sell.  Please get the sold tickets back to Karen as soon as possible.  Earl was scary but Karen, well you know.

 

AED Devices:  Jim Godbout announced that two AED devices (Automated External Defibrillators for you non-EMTs) were donated by our club, one to MacArthur Library and one to Dyer Library.  We were able to purchase them through the Biddeford School Department at the discounted price of $1,200 each.  Those are great donations which could save an overstimulated library visitor’s life.

 

The real 50/50:  Carl won the real 50/50 and donated it to Red Ribbon.

 

Karen “Can’t Say No” Chasse: Matt Simmonds apparently had an emergency stock buy or something so he had to leave the meeting and Karen filled in as sergeant at arms (though Joe announced your humble Tack reporter as the fill in).  Karen solicited happy dollars and got the following:

 

Karen then started in on a few fines which was fairly impressive given the notice she was given.  In fact, she was arguably better prepared than our real sergeant.  She fined Roland for his illegal parking job, apparently there was no “no parking” sign behind the huge construction trucks so Roland parked there.  Roland there are no “no parking” signs in the middle of the Turnpike but I am guessing you are not going to park there.  She fined President Joe for getting a head start on his beard and for not knowing what the hell was going on.  She also fined Joe for thanking Sue for doing such a great job with the food drive. Of course, “Sue” would be Lucie. She fined Sarah for her awesome Cindy Lou Who costume.  She pointed out that Conrad claimed to be Alan Caron’s friend and he dropped out of the race.  She fined Sabine for her upside down name tag which Sabine said made it easier for Sabine to read.  She fined Lucie for having a Porsche as a loaner car (with New Hampshire plates I might add).  Nice job Karen.

On 11-7-18 after the Rotary Meeting we will have a Wine Tasting Committee Meeting for about 15 minutes. 

 

Anybody interested in joining the Committee is welcome along with their ideas.

 

Thanks, Conrad

 

Guest Speaker:  Our guest speaker was the last in the series of gubernatorial (weird word, sounds like we are electing Gomer Pyle) candidates, Terry Hayes.  Conrad got to know Terry in Augusta when she was in the legislature.  One day, she apparently felt Conrad was stressed  and she invited him in to make a puzzle.  The puzzle apparently had 20 large pieces and Conrad was more stressed when he left Terry’s office than when he went in.

 

Terry Hayes was very engaging and said that the election is like an 18 month job interview and she preferred to handle her presentation to our club like a job interview, so we asked her questions.  She is an independent and a clean elections candidate so we paid for her campaign.  She has run a very positive campaign with no negative ads. 

 

The following are some of her answers to our questions.

 

As a bit of a political junky I found Terry to be a breath of fresh air.  Having said that, I am afraid that she has no chance of being elected because she has been outspent and unfortunately in many instances money wins.  While Maine may be pissed off at Governor LePage’s approach, that fact remains that unemployment is incredibly low so things are probably not bad enough to create the ground swell of support needed to “throw the bums out” and elect an independent candidate like Terry.  Who knows, she lost in her first shot at the State House, maybe she will take another shot at the Blaine House in 4 years.