The Fortarian Rotary Club of Thunder Bay, February 17, 2010 (Thunder Bay) 2009/2010 Board of Directors President: Treasurer: Secretary: Directors: President Elect: Dave Knutson Past President: Joan Krisko Jill Zachary Boris Cham David Murray Arun Dighe Beverly Knutson Jodi Phillips Solade Nicol Fiona Skogstad Irene Sottile Judge Demands Answers to Paper Woes Every president's worst nightmare is that they arrive at the weekly meeting to discover that they have not one, but two programs for the evening. This was such a meeting, but our clever President avoided any embarrassment by arranging to be on the other side of the world for her two program night. Meets: 3rd Monday of each month Lakehead University, Room RC 3012, 7 pm Allocations Committee Chair: Peter Stetsko Meets: 2nd Tuesday of each month Weiler, Maloney, Nelson, Board Room, 12 noon Rotary House Lottery Committee Co-Chairs: Bob Hookham & Walter Seabearg Meets: 1st Tuesday of each month Weiler, Maloney, Nelson, Board Room, 12 noon Weekly Dinner Meetings Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. Travelodge Hotel Airlane 698 W. Arthur St. Thunder Bay, ON Address Editor P.O. Box 10061 Thunder Bay, ON Canada P7B 6T6 www.fwrotary.ca Fiona Skogstad fiona.skogstad@shaw.ca In fact we realized last week that Irene had a video presentation on polio while at the same time the House Committee was scheduled to deliver a refresher course on the House Lottery. Only Boris had forgotten that he was the star performer for the night so he had to wing it and we still await the explanation on how to use the electronic machines to produce a duplicate sales receipt when the first receipt is not produced because the paper was loaded 1 P a g e
backwards into the machine or the paper got snagged by the machine and instead of rolling smoothly out of the machine as it's supposed to, it gets all scrunched up so that the machine can't print on the paper. It is a little known fact that if you put the paper in the machine backwards, the machine won't print the receipt as the paper is only heat sensitive on one side but not on the other. Joan reports that ticket sales to date are about 400 but there is some indication that actual sales are somewhat higher as not all sales had reached Irene at the time of Wednesday's meeting. At the end of the meeting Terry allocated members tickets to those who wanted them. It's hoped that each and every Rotarian will strive to sell more tickets than they did last year. This is the first year for a long time that we have not had to compete with another house lottery in the City so our customers should be salivating to buy their chance to win this year's beautiful house on Hutton Park Drive. Gordie encouraged everyone present to come to the press conference at 11:00 a.m. on March 10 at the house located at 1552 Hutton Park Drive. At the end of the meeting members were encouraged to sign up for sales duty at the house starting Saturday, March 6. Fiona advises that she will e-mail everyone to volunteer either as data entry people or as data checkers. Bob Hookham has arranged for three laptop computers to be donated by the Health Unit and that function will be conducted at Fiona's house. Once the early bird draws start on April 14, it will be very important to get that data entry done in a timely way. As usual, data entry will occur Monday and Tuesday evenings. Data entry starts at 6:30 and checking at 7:00 p.m. Joan gave sold stubs to Fiona on the 17th so entry should start Monday, Feb.22. When sales occur with a credit card, check the expiry date of the card and make sure to write the ticket number of the lottery ticket sold. When using the manual swipers, note the security code from the back of the credit card on the sales slip. In the past we have been unplugging the electronic machines at the end of the day. No one knows why we started that practice but it results in the machines having to be rebooted at the start of the next day and that can take as long as ten minutes. From now on, just complete the end of day procedure but do not unplug the machines and do not disconnect them from the phone system. Joan has many large posters advertising the House Lottery so if you have a good potential location for a poster, please see Joan. Cancellation Looms Don t let the Rotary Anniversary Dinner fail due to lack of participation. David Legg, President of PA club writes, The event promises to be good fun and with the potential to raise substantial revenue for Polio Plus. Please consider making this evening a priority for ourself, family and friends and, please be aware we need numbers as soon as possible. 2 P a g e
Polio Eradication A Must Irene had a video presentation playing during the dinner and thus the problem of the two programs was resolved. The video was titled "The Final Inch" and its topic was polio eradication. It is a 38 minute Academy Award nominated film by Irene Taylor Brodsky. It documents the mission to eradicate polio from the Earth. Once, one of the world's most dreaded diseases, polio is now a disease of the poor. The film follows health workers from door to door to reach unprotected children. Some Muslim communities hide their children from these workers believing that American medicine can not be trusted. Other homeless children are sometimes never found before the Honour Presented Joan presented Fiona with the award of Rotarian of the Year for the year 2008-09. Joan was president that year. At Joan's insistence Fiona opened the award to reveal an impressive mantel clock. It's hoped that in the glow of the award that Fiona will be able to be both President of the Club and Fortarian Editor and Publisher. scourge of polio strikes. Twenty years ago 20,000 people a day were infected with polio while this year less than 1,000 will suffer the same fate but success will only be possible when that figure reaches 0. Funnies and Fairness Terry did the lighter side and left us all barking from the front porch. Dave Knutson had the lucky 50/50 number but since he forgot to give Fiona her award in a timely fashion, it's only fair that he was unable to pick the Queen of Hearts. The Magic Number Dave Murray presented the Rotary Instant following up on comments from the Fireside meetings that these presentations should be succinct and not boring. We need to increase our membership by one new member net and at the moment we are down two so we need to acquire three good members before the end of the Rotary Year in June. MEMBERSHIP MAKES A DIFFERNCE 3 P a g e
Come Hear Clint Sing Irene encouraged everyone to come to the Foundation Dinner at the Knights of Columbus on Feb.27th. She advises that sales are slow to date. She is also looking for silent auction gifts. Don't be discouraged just because Clint Harris is performing that night. His bark is worse than his bite and he has contributed 10 pairs of tickets for the auction. Clint is an ad guy who knows that any publicity is good publicity as long as his name is spelled correctly. Irene then became the FineMaster but she is much gentler than Colin Bruce. Solade paid for winning a green award with his work group and Bob Hookham paid for the good news that one of his suppliers who wishes to remain nameless, contributed a digital camera to Anna whose camera bit the dust last weekend. Irene followed up with Olympic related fines. Coming Up February 24 th February 27 th March 1 st March 6 th & 7 th cancelled The wielder of this week s pen, Ross Judge Rotary Anniversary Dinner for PolioPlus $25/ person Silent auction Shelter House First Open Houses of the Year UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN, REMEMBER SERVICE ABOVE SELF 4 P a g e
FROM BRIAN & JENNY We really enjoy being able to keep in touch with a lively and informative Fortarian - thank you. We are attending the Needles Club, now down to 12 members, but only about 6 at meetings. As soon as we arrived they declared that now they had the manpower to run a beef-on-a-bun stall at the Needles Rodeo, March 5th and 6th. So, on with the Needles Rotary hats and roll up the sleeves. While we miss the Fort William Club, it is great to join a small group of Rotarians in their efforts to improve life in a small and economically depressed little town on the edge of the desert. We are treated as members not visitors. Robert takes our word that we are attending because we are not even sure they have make-up cards. No committees, not even an Exec committee meets. All business is conducted over lunch at Juicy's every Tuesday. President Doug, the only dentist in town, appears in his dentist's smock and we all order from the menu. We do meet in a side room and Juicy's sets up the US flag in the corner. We had a visiting Rotarian from the UK one week and he was enchanted - so very different from the formal, often rather stuffy UK clubs he was accustomed to. Needles has had more than its annual average rainfall over three days in Jan, and without eavestroughs or road drains there was a lot of flooding and lots of residents discovered for the first time that their roofs leaked. The Needles equivalent of a snowplough was kept busy clearing the streets of sand and gravel that formed large deltas across the streets and several local highways were closed for several days as flashfloods dumped tons of debris across them. Fun, eh! Well, it is better than snow clearing. We are busy 3 days a week with a BLM project that sees us driving the OHV Trails and trying to develop a reporting product that will help the BLM schedule maintenance and apply for improvement grants, by ranking sections and points on the trails that are being eroded or have the potential to be compromised by washouts, sedimentation or user-wear. Jenny is a master 4WD driver and narrowly avoided getting bogged down trying to drive the truck into and out of an 18" washout that had obscured one trail we drove. Then she had to gun the motor for a mile to keep moving down a wash in very soft sand, not daring to stop. At other times, it is a question of keeping four wheels on high bits between gulleys, so that we do not get 'high centered'. Sure makes our field research interesting. On our office day we are busy trying to record our data in useable form, and will ultimately be creating a GIS layer of trails with red, yellow and green sections and points, with attribute files of additional data and photos attached. Since this is a new project for the Needles Field Office, we have carte blanche in developing it. So, we sure don't sit around and do nothing down here. On our non-work days, we have been active too, though Jenny has attended quilting classes in LA and Phoenix and Brian has been busy writing a paper on the de-glaciation of the Gunflint- Arrow Lake area of the ON/MN borderlands (thought he had retired). We have bought a folding kayak from a couple in Florida and have had our wobbly maiden voyage on the rather cold Colorado River. Nobody local goes on the river in winter, so those who saw us knew we had to be crazy Canadians. Regards to all, Brian and Jenny 5 P a g e