Granite Chips May 26, 2013

Granite Chips , May 28, 2013

President Jim opened the meeting at noon with 16 Rotarians and one guest in attendance.   Joe offered the blessing.

Ron passed around the sign-up sheet for the Rotary Breakfast in July, noting that we need roughly 52 workers to make it a successful event.  So he urged members to bring friends, relatives, anyone who can help out during Heritage Festival weekend.  

Dick S. offered a happy dollar for the chocolate chip cookies provided by the Quarry.   He ordered some for a concert he was involved with at the Opera House last week, and said they garnered high praise from attendees.   Dick also noted that the Rotabarrians will hold a rehearsal for the changeover dinner at his home at 4:30 on Thursday.

Sue advised that the work-bee scheduled for this weekend (painting the picnic tables at Rotary Park) has been postponed until next week.    This prompted a sad dollar from Bertil how said he ran into Claire at the grocery store and she advised him that she had volunteered him for the picnic table project.  He said he can’t ever get away from Rotary work even while shopping.   He also had a happy dollar for the recent VT Business Expo in which GW Plastics of Bethel received the Deane C. Davis Awards as top business of the year from the VT Chamber of Commerce.   Bertil assumed that the plaque is made from Barre granite, which Bob Pope indicated was the case, though he mentioned the name of another local granite manufacturer as being responsible for it.

President-elect Bill made an impassioned plea for two volunteers to serve as co-chairs for programs during the next Rotary year starting in July.   Surprisingly,  there were no takers.   The prospect of a year of very short Rotary meetings looms large!

Karl offered a sad dollar for the deer that had the misfortune of crossing his path on the beltway earlier this week.  Karl’s “handiwork” has been lying on the road side for several days now.   He did offer a happy dollar that “both of us” escaped unharmed, though when it was pointed out to Karl that the deer didn’t seem to be OK, he clarified he meant he and his wife. 

President Jim, in lieu of club assembly, conducted an exercise for club members dealing with characteristics, qualities, and behaviors of good leaders and good followers.   Since Jim was a professor at Norwich, and I attended Norwich and seldom understood the points my professors were trying to make, it appears that trend has continued, so I won’t try to encapsulate everything Jim passed along to us, other than to say it was a very interesting exercise and club members indicated a desire for more hands-on type of programs such as this one, and Jim offered to provide more in the future as the club desires.

Before the meeting closed Bertil seemed to have mysteriously broken off from his assigned group during the exercise.   When asked where he was coming from, Bertil offered that he had gone downstairs for a drink.  Bob P. offended that Bertil didn’t invite anyone else to join him, proposed a fine on Bertil for either being selfish or ignoring the 4-Way test (is it the truth?).   Either way, the fine passed unanimously (even Bertil didn’t vote against it).