September 24, 2012 Club Bulletin, # 435

Program for September 24, 2012: Rose Mary Boesen United Way Building Blocks

Invocation by: Scott Ingstad

Guests on September 17, 2012: Usha Balakrishnan, Iowa City Rotary Club; Angela Joseph; Rafa new exchange student from Brazil who is staying with Tony and Angela Joseph.

Your Rotary Board: President, Kelly Garvin, Keith Porter, Sarah Ingstad, Secretary, Brooke Mehaffey, Treasurer ,Mike Ruby, Tony Joseph, Scott Ingstad, Steve Jameson and Mary Odell.

Rotary News: Picnic is Today, September 17, 2012 at 6:00 P.M. at Tim and Debbie Nelson's rain or shine!!

Steve Jameson read letters from the two exchange students, Kara who is in Belgium and Emily who is in Spain. Both are doing well and settling in.

Scott Ingstad announced that Dawn Sturms will be suspending her membership with Rotary effective 10/1/12 since she will no longer be working for Family Resources. Her position was regionalized and Dawn decided that was not the position for her at this time. There will be a going away party celebrating her time with Family Resources on 9/26 at 4:30 at Wine Nutz. Please stop by. We hope that Dawn will be able to rejoin Rotary when she finds another local position.

Meeting Location input requested: President Kelly and Board Member Keith Porter went over the location problem and solutions. Please speak to Kelly or a board member with any questions or comments. We will meet at the Clarion for 4 weeks and then starting 10/21 move to Calvary Church with HyVee catering for 4 weeks. During this time member feedback will be gathered and a permanent location will be determined. There are no downtown options at this time, but if one opens up we will look into it. More information will be coming. Background: Rotary was informed the Button Factory was closing on 8/28/12 and that they were working on getting someone to take over our contract at the same location until we found a new home. Last Monday, 9/10/12, Rotary was to meet at the Button Factory and have a caterer. We ended up meeting at the Muscatine Hotel instead and were not notified of the change until an email came to Kelly at 12:20 that day. The food was wonderful and they honored our membership cost of $9.05 per plate. However, actual cost would have been $26 per plate and menu was hard to negotiate for a comparable cost. Brian Chapman (Rotarian), at the Clarion, would like to discuss having Rotary meetings at the Clarion. Kasey O’Kelly (Rotarian), at HyVee, would also like to discuss the option of having HyVee cater the Rotary meals. Calvary Church will let us use their location and kitchen at no cost for the noon Monday meetings with HyVee catering. Several other options were explored and these two options were deemed the best at this time. Please see a board member with comments.

Program:Mary Odell introduced our own Rotarians, Doug Schnoebelen and Sarah Lande, to talk about the River as Bridges program. This is the program that brought Chinese high school students and teachers to the Midwest this summer to explore the sister-river relationship of the Mississippi River and the Yangtze River in China. Our Rotary Club provided the funding for lunch during the Muscatine portion of the trip.

Doug showed slides and described how the students participated in not only classroom learning but hands on learning as well. In the groups the students were very attentive, interested, and engaged with the information they received about the river; the button industry; and flooding among other things. A group of Muscatine high school Ag and Chinese students were able to join them for this presentation and hope to make a trip to China to see the other side.

Sarah talked about how the students wanted to come see her house since the Chinese Vice President had been there. They asked many questions and interviewed Mayor Hopkins, Sarah Lande, and Joni Axel before leaving. The questions were mainly about communications, what the Chinese and American differences were, and how they felt the students were different. The Chinese students finished this trip by making posters of their travels. These posters are on loan to Mayor Hopkins and he is currently displaying them at the Musser Public library if you’d like to see them.