An enormous clang of the old, heavy, Rotary Club of Grass Valley bell struck by President Tim McCall begins our meeting.  Hey President Tim where’s your presidential bell?   It has been missing for months.  Maybe it is time to invoke the 4 way test with your fellow Area 4 Presidents, before we lose what hearing we have left. 

Speaking of hearing loss, who was the greeter?   Scott Browne led the pledge followed by John Peplowski on Thought for the Day.  Tom Stanley, May team leader, doubled up as Assistant Sgt at Arms.  Yours truly on Spoke notes.   After a chance to eat, we were reconvened, a little less enthusiastically.  My ears were still ringing.  Scott Browne introduced visiting Rotarians.  Susie Geminiagni introduced Robert Crawford as her guest.  Robert works with Susie at AJA video.

May Birthdays and Anniversaries were announced by President Tim.  Our Birthday folk were granted a reprieve and did not get Happy Birthday sung to them.

On to Announcements:

  • Susan Fivelstad gave an update on the Little Libraries project.  Lyman Gilmore Interactors had decorated two newspaper boxes donated by the Union.  These boxes will house the first two little libraries to be placed in the community.
  • We got a report on the Rotary at Work Days.  This included the Fairgrounds Area Clubs project coordinated by our most able Scott Spencer.  Over 180 Rotarians raked, painted, tore down a dilapidated stage, or layed concrete.  It was awesome and we were treated to a delicious lunch prepared by Bill’s Chuckwagon, owned by Rotarian Tom Stanley.  The other RAW day had been done at the end of April.  Dave Peeler and team painted the reception area at the GV Police Department.
  • John Voter spoke about a Weight Lifting fundraiser for the Bear River High School Football team. 
  • President Tim solicited help for housing our incoming GSE team from India and
  • reminded us about the upcoming “Flight Day” at Lyman Gilmore on May 15th. 
  • Tim also plugged District Conference (May 16-19).  Beam me to Conference Scotty, there is no intelligent life around here.  
  • Demotion will be June 17.  Maybe the bell will find its way home.    Image

Fines were flying faster than I could write them down.  We got a bunch of bell ringers and that did not help my hearing.  Going full speed, President Tim needed a reminder that we had several students and their parents as guests and that we might want to do Student of the Month, before the Guest Speaker.  We met Lyman Gilmore’s May Students of the month.  Apologies now, for any misspelled names:  5th Grade Alyse Rodrigues and Jaden Thomas; 6th Garret Goff; 7th Jusina D’Oliva; 8th Ellie Ninnick.  Each student received a standing ovation and a nice bag of school supplies from Walker’s Stationery.

And now the program, Jessie Hudson, our County Librarian gave us a well-paced overview of the County Library System including a presentation on the library system and user stats.  Some of our members actually have Library Cards and are among the Patrons, although it wasn’t clear, if any had actually checked out a book , but those old, “Life of Riley” reruns were a hit. 

Yours truly had the lucky ticket for the marbles.  But having lost all his marbles managed only to select a white one. I am not sure if Tim rang the bell to end the meeting, my hearing was totally gone by then.

Yours truly, Rod