Rotary Chips 9/17/2014
September President Tom Babic starts our meeting
Guests- The club welcomed for a second straight week John Yacavone from the Lebanon club
From the secretary’s report- Susan informed the club of two Sept. birthdays. Claire Duke’s is on the 27th and Joe Preddy’s on the 30th. Happy Birthday! The 17th also marked Susan and Chip’s 37th wedding anniversary!
Happy $’s this week consisted of Jack’s granddaughter’s 13th birthday, Bertil was shown how to properly operate a chainsaw (under supervision of course), and our guest speaker Louisa Tripp wanted to say that she just enjoys coming to visit the Barre club.
We were lead into song by our musical genius Dick Shadroui. Our songs this week were Yankee Doodle and Take me out to the ball game.
Karl introduced our guest speakers Gary Hass and Louisa Tripp. Gary is a member of the central Vermont rotary club and co-owner of The World newspaper. Louisa is the district governor elect of Rotary. Gary leads off the presentation by speaking about some of the difficulties that rotary has faced not only locally, but, around the country. Numbers have been declining in recent years, consequently so to have the numbers of young members. Because of this his club has adopted a looser attendance policy. This is a similar trend in rotaries across the country. A way Hass believes the club can attract new members is via electronic clubs. Louisa than informed us on the e-clubs. An electronic club is complimentary to the physical club. In theory, an electronic club is an online forum where a rotary member can review past meetings and start discussions with other members without being present. A member can receive a makeup if they view the readings for that week’s meeting. The e-club allows anybody to visit the web site and participate in discussion. Other features include posting your club’s calendar and donating to rotary. On average Louisa says she spends about an hour per week working on content for the site, but notes that you can spend well over that if needed. If you would like to visit the Central VT Rotary clubs electronic site please go to www.centralvermontrotary.wordpress.com.
Additionally Jack Barnes’ daughter has been selected as Vermont’s only nominee for the Nellie Mae Education’s Larry O’Toole Award for leadership in learning. She will be competing against 5 other nominees from other states that are more populated than VT. So if you could take a second to vote for her that would be much appreciated! Please go to http://www.nmefoundation.org/grants/larry-o-toole-awards.aspx
Also another reminder we will be helping this Saturday 9/21 to clean out more brush down at the Vermont Granite Museum. If you can attend it will take place from 8am-12pm. Karl urges you to bring chainsaws, trucks, and good shoes.