Granite Chips (Feb 05, 2020)

Bill Rossi

Posted by Elizabeth LaPerle on Mar 11, 2020

Long time club member Bill Rossi, with his new Rotary socks that the club sent to him. His wife say's he loves socks!

SHS Food Shelf

Club members placed totes at the Barre City poles for food to be collected for the SHS food shelf.

Pictured from left to right SHS Junior, and office aid, Kyree Hutchinson and SHS Assistant Principle, Luke Aither in the food shelf room with the totes full of food from the city voting place.

Now they have to sort the food and place it on the shelves.

Club members, Caroline Earle headed up this project with help from Ted Goulette and Karl A. Rinker.

Barre Rotary took advantage of our most recent Town Meeting Day to ask Barre City voters to bring non-perishable food items and toiletries to the Barre Auditorium to assist students at Spaulding High School. The local high school had appealed to the community for support to assist its students in need. High school administrators recently shared their concern that more students than ever before are coming to high school hungry. A list of practical grab and go food items was provided by school officials as well as a list of toiletries for student use. The SHS food shelf is located in the school’s office and has proven a popular resource for all students, thus eliminating the stigma that is often associated with asking for help.

The community responded generously, filling four huge bins with supplies and food items of all kinds. Barre Rotary dropped the donations off to the high school the day after Town Meeting, providing welcome additions to the supplies on hand.

No student should go hungry. Barre Rotary will continue to assist with this ongoing need, and we urge all members of the community to drop off items on a regular basis to the high school during the school year.

SPEECH CONTEST

Posted by Caroline Earle & Karl A. Rinker

The Barre Rotary Club held it's 2020 speech contest at The Lunch Box Cafeteria at Spaulding High School February 12, 2020. The Lunch Box is a room where SHS students serve food they have prepared at the training center. The Spaulding Interact Club was also present.

Pictured above are the three speech contestants, Charlotte Young, Camden Kelly and Jacob Huckins with Club President, Eddie Rousse.

Pictured above are the Rotarians that attended the meeting for the contest and the Interact Club.

Club member and DGN, Caroline Earle introduced each of the three contestants. Camden Kelly, Charlotte Young and Jacob Huckins

The contest consists of four rounds with the potential of winning $1000. This year’s topic was: “How Rotary Connects My World". Contestants prepare and deliver a five minute speech which relates to the relevance of this topic and to everyday relationships. Although contest rules prohibit the publication of the speech or a summary of it until the conclusion of the contest in May all three contestants did a great job.

Runner-up, Charlotte Young with Eddie and Caroline.

Winner, Camden Kelly with Eddie and Caroline.

SHS students Camden Kelley, Charlotte Young, and Jacob Huckins each put their unique spin on this topic, presenting personal and heartfelt speeches to our group. Interact Adviser and SHS teacher Samantha Loesch proudly introduced her Interact students and the students gave us a summary of their recent projects. These projects include weekly assistance to local churches providing meals to those in need, and supporting a mental health initiative entitled “I Matter, You Matter.” The SHS Interact Club, which was recently re-energized through the efforts of Ms. Loesch, is now sixteen strong and provides an opportunity for SHS students to connect with our community through good works. As one student also put it in her speech, “the best way to boost your self-esteem is by doing something nice for someone else.” No truer words were spoken. The Barre Rotary Club looks forward to working with the SHS Interact Club to do good works so that everyone can feel good!

Congratulations to Camden, Charlotte and Jacob for doing the hard work to prepare their excellent speeches! Camden will move on to Round II in the Area speech contest as the winner of the Barre Rotary Club speech contest, where she will collect a $100 prize for her success in the Round 1 contest. Charlotte received honorable mention as Runner-Up.

Granite Chips

Dr. John Steinman was the acting president for President Rouse.

Several happy dollars - fines and sad dollars were given by club members.

Club Secretary Bruce gave his weekly report - no anniversaries or birthdays but he did provide the club ith "this day in history".

Tony will be fined next week, 1 and 9 for not being at the meeting on his 6th year anniversary. Karl tried to defend him as he was bringing his wife to the doctor in Burlington. Nicole D. abstained and Bob Pope offered to pay Tony's fine because he wasn't at the meeting.

Nicole mentioned that she is heading to Arizona and then will be attending PETS.

Our speaker today was David Fleming from The Ethan Allen Institute. He reviewed his power point presentation "Towns in Trouble".

He mentioned that he was filling in for Marc Joffe, the project supervisor.

Nicole mentioned that she thought this report was similar to an individual credit report/credit score. The question was asked if the results of the report could reduce government funding in the event of a disaster. Although the question wasn't directly answered David mentioned that all municipalities received the reported very few followed up with Ethan Allen Institute for additional comments/ discussions. David said that the end goal - objective outcome is for all municipalities to recognize the scope of the problems they've identified.

Dr, John Steinman - City Counselor and acting club president assured the club that The City of Barre was in a good position and that the information from the report was old data.

Friendly reminder -- our next meeting will be at Spaulding High School at 1:00 p.m. with the Interact Club followed by the Rotary Speech contest at 2:00 p.m. All Rotarians are asked to bring a donation to the meeting for the Mini Food Shelf at SHS - -see attached list of items you can bring.
Thanks - Elizabeth filling in as scribe.