After our usual rituals, we sat down to lunch on salad, chicken or turkey with gravy and biscuits, and cookies. All was quiet until Ted rose to give a Happy Dollar for the newly placed granite plaque (covering up 12:15 and replacing it with 12:00) on the service club marker at northern entrance to the city. Thanks to Bob Pope, anyone looking for the correct time of our meeting will not be fifteen minutes late. They just won’t know where to find us. Ted’s happiness must have been infectious—Karl threw in another dollar.

 

 

 

               Dick introduced George Weaver from Connecticut who spends his summers in Barre. Karl introduced Scott Funk, HECM (Home Equity Conversion Mortgage) Loan Specialist: he has been approved for membership. This is the first announcement of the Board of Directors approval; in two weeks he will become a member of our club. Liane introduced Deborah Kelty, a co-worker, visiting our club as a potential member.

 

 

 

               Karl announced that he had received an invitation to attend the Montpelier Rotary Club meeting next week (Monday at the Capital Plaza at 12:15 p.m. to hear Captain Phillips speak.) He wondered if any of us had received the invitation: None of us had. Evidently when you use Club Runner, you can have members make reservations for lunch/dinner and he will explore that feature further so we could use it in the future.

 

 

Below is the essential information:

 

- See more at: http://portal.clubrunner.ca/1428#sthash.yd3YlnCO.dpuf

 

Rotarians Tom and Carolyn have agreed to compete. Ted said that they are looking for sponsors, six major ones. Someone suggested checking with the other service clubs and other Rotary Clubs in the area to see if they would want to enter a couple in the competition as a way of increasing attendance. And someone suggested Norwich cadets as the wait staff. If you have any ideas, pass them along to Liane or Ted.

 

 

Operation “New Signs” has been completed Karl announced two weeks ago. Here are the pictures of them at the various main entrances to Barre.

                                                     

 

                                 

                                                                             East Montpelier Road--Route 14

                                                         

          Jockey Hollow

                                                                                                       

                                                                                                                                                 East Barre Road

 

 

 

On September 2, 2015 Karl presented Dick Parnigoni with an Honorary Membership to the Barre Rotary Club. Dick was a member of Rotary for over 50 years and Chair of the Breakfast for some 30 years.  Several Rotarians accompanied Karl for the presentation at Dick’s home.

 

 

                                                                          Karl Congratulates Dick While Several Rotarians Look On

 

 

Bertil reported on Wednesday, August 12, 2015 that he was rushed to the hospital by a dinner guest last Sunday evening suffering from what they thought was a stroke. He spent time in the ER and then in the ICU diagnosed with a “rhythm” problem, not a stroke. It took care of itself and he is fine. In the meantime, Gladys returned home and managed to trip and cut her leg and the Barre police ended up taking her to the ER for treatment. She is on the mend and doing fine. After Bertil commented that he thought it was unusual for a couple to both end up in the ER within hours of each other, Tom offered a Happy Dollar because he was also there on Sunday being treated for first and second degree burns as a result of spilling a hot cup of tea. We should check to see if three Rotarians in an ER at the same time would be a Guinness World Record.

 

 

Ron’s phone rang and brought an avalanche of “automatic dollar fine” admonishments. The basket was passed and Ron paid the fine without protest. Shortly thereafter, while Sue was passing the cookies, her phone rang and she rushed to silence it, but too late. Tom proposed, in addition to the automatic fine, “one and one and a half” on Sue. Sue’s defense centered on passing out cookies, but that got her no sympathy and she made her case worse by threatening to withhold cookies from members in the future. Needless to say the fine passed. Sue also reported that she identified Tom as the caller and so Bob proposed a fine of 1 and 10 on Tom for phoning Sue. An amendment was proposed to include Joe as a co-conspirator to the scheme. Bob defended Joe, but to no avail. All fines passed. Although there was no ring to it, Liane was fined an automatic “one and nine” for a picture appearing in a newspaper. Her defense was that the company that she works for controlled these releases. When asked “What company was that?” Liane wisely replied, “The place where I spend a lot of time each day.” Defense did not hold up and the fine was levied.

 

                                   Tom Defending Himself

 

            

                                                                                                                    

                                                                                                                                                         Bob Defending Joe

 

 

With the selections of Wait Till the Sun Shines Nellie and Shine on Harvest Moon, the younger members of the club were heard saying “I don’t know this one” and so it turned out to be an older male chorus singing today. The arrival of new, updated song books will undoubtedly ameliorate this situation.

 

 

Sue announced birthdays and club anniversaries. They are listed on the side panel of this newsletter and on our Website each month. She also announced that Nathan Payne, with TD Bank, has applied for membership. (His application was later approved by the Board of Directors).  He will become a member after the two week notification period.

 

 

 

[Interrupting President Karl’s announcements, Bob rose to propose a fine of “one and nineteen” on Sue for making a phone call while Karl was talking about our new signs.  Fine passed.]

 

 

 

Caroline introduced our speaker Mike Lannen. He is founder of Eternity Web, a Web development company located in Burlington and Barre. He started the business 15 years ago after leaving Champlain College where the College had put a stop to his “testing out” of the courses in computer science in which he had been enrolled. On the personal side, he earned the highest rank as an Eagle Scout; has a burning desire to skydive; loves to kayak, but can’t swim. He lives in Barre with his wife Mollie (owner of Copy World), daughter Claire, 18 months old, and dog Zoey.

 

                              Mike Lannen

 

Mike told us that he and the employees of his company have combined experience of over 70 years in Web development and the goal of the company is to make the Web a better place. Its services include: Web design; content management systems; economic online stores; and search engine/ content optimization + marketing. Eternity Web develops Websites for all devices and Mike presented some interesting statistics: 60% of traffic comes from mobile devices; 61% of visitors will leave a Website if it is not mobile; an adult’s attention span is 8 seconds, less than that of a goldfish; only 2% of the population is good at multitasking. Since most of us scan and don’t read, don’t riddle the site with too much text; KISS- get to the point. He then showed us examples of before and after client sites that illustrated these points. He concluded with some other examples, some local, of Websites that they have developed including non-profits done pro bono. His presentation was interesting and informative and another good learning experience for Barre Rotarians. Thanks Mike.