Regular Meetinbg, November 16, 2009

First, my apologies to President Jim. Somehow, during our travels, I missed the email with the report that is going to follow. Though it is late, I hope it will serve as a reminder of tomorrow's meeting and will bring you up to date with what transpired last week.

At left is Laura Shudra of Authentic Truths, our speaker.



15 Rotarians, including David and Linda Grahek attended lunch today. Laura Shudra, of Authentic Truths, was our guest and presenter. Prior to lunch Lowell welcomed guests and delivered a message from Kevin Store, thanking members for thinking of him during his time in the hospital with H1N1 and pneumonia.

After lunch, Lowell made a few announcements, including reading the names of prospective new members Jeff Slivkoff (De la Terre) and Jim Corless (Keweenaw National Historical Park). Amy Roberts drew names to see who would be the Paul Harris Fellows from the 5x5 teams and solicited names for other Paul Harris Fellowships to be presented at the 60th birthday party on January 16th. The meeting was then turned over to Laura Shudra.

Shudra is an experienced teacher and councilor who is forming a company to council anyone in need of support or direction. She emphasizes effective decision making, team leadership and choosing mentors. One aim is to help teens identify their callings and to avoid problems resulting from bad relationships.

Tom Tikkanen donated a happy dollar in anticipation of bagging an 8-point buck. We look forward to hearing about this at a future meeting.

Regular Meeting, November 11, 2009

(President Jim congratulates new member Scott See.)

Nineteen Rotarians met today and enjoyed a good lunch. Guests were Dave/Linda Grahek and Chuck “the Red Rose” Wicker from Hancock Rotary club

Announcements included: >Welcome Back to Capt Don Kilpela - back from his Italian trip! >Kevin Store is in Portage Health ICU with the H1N1 flu and pneumonia. We all wish Kevin a quick return to health! > No program today so we will resume/complete last week’s business meeting. (Did the agenda come to the meeting this week?)

Capt Kilpela gave several Happy Dollars as he reported that Tom Scanlon is recovering from his surgery.

New Member: President Jim inducted Scott See (sponsored by Sue Dana) as our newest Rotarian. Welcome Scott! Jim also read Jeff Slivkoff’s name for the first time – a potential member. Jeff is the General Manger of the De La Terre restaurant in Lake Linden.

Birthdays: Joel keranen, Amy Roberts (plus today is her youngest child’s birthdate!), Phil Smythe and Babette Jokela.

CLK Rotarians w/perfect attendance in October were: Patsi, Dan, Sue Dana, Joe Enrietti, Joel, Tom L, Jim Lowell, Rich S, Andy, Phil and Peter Vorheis. Club attendance was 57%. Congratulations to our Perfect Attendance members!

Club Business updates:

1: New trading banners are still in the works – need data from Kevin Store.

2: CHOICES program will be presented at Lake Linden Hubbell Schools – 9^th grade classes on 11/30 and 12/1. Calumet Schools will be 12/7 & 12/8. Could use more Rotarians for the Calumet Schools dates.

3: A letter request from Zack Tervo – one of our scholarship recipients was read. Zack is doing well in school and plans on completing his program in June 2010. He is planning on returning to the area and opening a repair facility in the area. Very good feedback from Zack. Our Scholarship $$ are making a difference. Motion by Tim Baroni, Second by Amy Roberts to immediately pay the second installment of the scholarship. Motion passed.

4: No Board meeting in November due to conflicting activities & events. The Board will meet once all members return from deer camp and the hospital!

5: Phil has an updated member roster that Jim Lowell will email to all Rotarians.

6: The CLK Rotary Sheriff’s fund is now at $500 (member donations ) and still rising! A big thanks to those Rotarians who have donated to this worthy cause.

(Jim explaining the purposes and ideals of Rotary to new member Scott See.)

Meetings of 10/28 and 11/4

Hello all. A blog report from Italy. (Sue Dana, eat your heart out.)

CLK Rotary Meeting Oct 28 2009 A Call to Action!

Special Thank You to Lisa Ronan – Irish Times owner – for her stellar work decorating the bar/restaurant for Halloween! We arrived to find spider webs, spiders , mummies and moss all over the place!

Guests included Linda Grahek (without Dave), Scott See, chuck Wicker –Hancock Rotary and Keweenaw County Sheriff Ron Lahti.

Attendance = 20.

Sheriff Lahti presented our program. He explained how the “Secret Santa” program conducted by the Keweenaw county sheriff’s dept worked. The program started 12 yrs ago when it became apparent there were children in Keweenaw County that were not getting Christmas Gifts. Names, along with ages & gender & sizes, were provided by various sources including community members and the Social Services dept.
Last year, the program operated with an $8000 budget and produced Christmas gifts for 79 children! Sheriff Lahti and staff members from the Keweenaw County courthouse spent over 12 hours shopping for the gifts.

Sheriff Lahti said he does negotiate discounts from the merchants to help stretch the $$. CLK rotary helped by providing $500 of Club funds matched with a District grant of $500. We also had 6 Rotarians help with the sorting of the gifts – a necessary task prior to distribution.

A plethora of questions resulted with Sheriff Lahti responding to each. He is very confident no needy children have been missed. He stressed the program is not about the parents or their lifestyle , but is focused upon providing children with Christmas gifts. He said it is common for a family to work their way out of whatever their problem is. Once that happens the children are removed from the list and replaced with others.

The Sheriff department is the focal point, however the entire Keweenaw community participates by conducting fund raisers, submitting names, providing gifts via donation or donating money.

President Jim Lowell states CLK Rotary has budgeted $500 towards this program with additional donations from Rotarians adding another $100!! If each Rotarian donated $20 to the cause, we could get closer to matching last year’s total donation of $1000! Checks should be payable to CLK Rotary .

We also need to continue supporting the project with Rotarians able to help sort the gifts. If you can give of your time, please contact Jim Lowell.

CLK Rotary Business Meeting Nov 4, 2009

Monthly Business meeting with 17 members and guests attending. Guests included Dave 7 Linda Grahek, Bob Sharkey – Ass’t district Gov, and Jeff Slivkoff – guest of Andy Murtagh (gone missing!)

Jim Lowry announced the kickoff of the Copper Country United Way campaign and distributed literature for members to read. Several Happy dollars were paid as well.

President Jim began the business meeting by announcing his notes and agenda were still at home on his computer! He apologized ( with several comments from members about the need to pay up!) and continued a capella; making the following observations:

Club attendance for Oct was 57% - We can do better!!! We need to see our members at the meetings! Members with perfect attendance and members with birthdays were not announced – they will be at the next meeting.

The Financial Report was not available however the updated Budget was presented for members review.

President Jim reviewed the CHOICES program. CLK Rotary is providing trained Rotarians to present the CHOICES program to the CLK and LL/Hubbell Schools. Our Rotary volunteers are Keith Stengel, Tom TIkkanen, Jim Lowell and Kevin Store. We could sure use another 3-4 Rotarians to help present the program. Contact Jim Lowell for more info.

Upcoming programs: Nov 11 = Emily Fiala – Habitat for Humanity. Nov 18 – could not recall who the program was.

Our CLK Rotary Board has pre-approved a number of individuals for membership. We (all of us) need to contact those folks and invite them to lunch! We need to increase our membership.

An active discussion focused upon our practice of fines. Several opinions were expressed – some supporting eliminating fines and others supporting fines - either spontaneous or well-defined. The matter was referred back to the Board.

Our continued support of the Keweenaw County Sheriff Dept Secret Santa program has grown! In addition to the budgeted amount of $500, members have contributed at least another $200 with more contributions coming in – even while the discussion was going on!

We ended with the monthly 50/50 raffle - - Tom Liljegren was the lucky Rotarian!

Regular Meeting, October 21, 2009

(The CLK Photo Archive contained a photo of the late Mr. Perona [left] playing his accordion at our first community spaghetti dinner, Mr. Perona, who was also a wonderful spoon and bone player, died recently and will be missed by the community.)


Today’s guests were Linda Grahek (without Dave as he is downstate for 2 weeks) and visiting Rotarian John Weting from Marquette, accompanied by his wife, Marny. John is our District Rotary Foundation chair.

Several announcements were made including Amy Roberts announcing a Wine Tasting Party sponsored by the Keweenaw Business & Professional Women. President Jim Lowell announced his nephew owns the Lockheed Electra 12 airplane used in the new movie Amelia.

Multiple Happy Dollars were collected.

John Weting presented a program focusing on our Rotary foundation. John provided handouts about the Foundation as well as statistics on Rotary and our District 6220 Foundation giving. He asked our club “Why did you join Rotary?”. Answers included the fellowship and dedication to the community, participation in the Rotary Youth Exchange, the fight against polio and many others items. One comment was “…to have fun!!”.

Most local service clubs support their communities. Rotary is the leader of International involvement. Contributions to the RIF (Rotary International Foundation) are held for 3 yrs and then 50% is sent to the district Foundation Funds and 50% is routed to the international Foundation. The foundation is operated off the earnings of the RIF. We have many methods of giving to the RIF – our Club has two 5X5 groups where members are contributing $200 per yr for 5 yrs and each yra a new Paul Harris Fellow will be recognized.

John gave the following information about the world population and the USA: 1/6 of the world population lives on $1 USD per day or less. Americans are perceived to be benevolent people who freely give to many charities and organizations. However: the USA spend $32 billion/yr on coffee, $35 billion/yr on beer. $60 billion/yr on soft drinks and $103 billion on fast food.

Americans have money that can be used to support those who are in need and Rotary is the key service club to facilitate those contributions using the Rotary International Foundation.

Regular Meeting, November 14, 2009

The October 14th meeting was kicked off by the induction of a new member – Keith Stenger (Picture attached.). Keith works for VSI/Goodwill as a Work Force Development specialist. After being introduced to the Club and presented with a badge, pin and membership certificate Keith gave a brief bio to introduce himself to the Club members.

This was followed by a presentation by Bob Sharkey. Bob talked about membership and how to grow and retain members. His points were as follows:

Membership is everyone’s job.

The Club might develop a list of member prospects. Houghton club did this and came up with over 100 possible new members.

Invite prospects to attend a meeting, get a sense of whether they are interested in becoming Rotarians.

Ask them to join. Bob pointed out that he had volunteered for Rotary functions for years before he was asked to join. Membership if by invitation – don’t hesitate to ask if you want a person to join.

Quality is important. Prospective members should be leaders in the business community and decision makers in their jobs.

Procedures for proposing a member are well defined and on the Rotary web site.
Have and “Elevator Speech” ready. An elevator speech is one where you tell someone what Rotary is about in a minute or so – the time an elevator takes to get to its destination.

Thanks Bob for this interesting and timely presentation. We all realize that there are as many reasons for joining as there are members of our club so let's get our heds together and bring in our life's blood: membership.

Business Meeting, October 7, 2009

(What's wrong with this picture? Check out the one below for a hint.)

Attendance: 19 including Guests David & Linda Grahek. Scott See also attended as a prospective member.

President Jim called our monthly business meeting to order. Several Happy $ were collected and fines assessed for not wearing the Rotary pin. CLK Rotarians need to wear a Rotary lapel pin or tie tack when attending a Rotary event.

Birthday greetings to Jim Lowell and Rich Schaefer!

Highlights of the meeting:

· Treasurer Joel Keranen announced the checking balance of $7547 and savings balance of $4646.98. He also distributed a financial statement. Motion to accept the Treasurer’s report was made and passed.

· Upcoming programs: Oct 14 is open; Oct 21 is John Wetting on rotary foundation, Oct 28 is Rebecca Crane from Dial Help.

· August attendance = 59%. Sept attendance = 55%

· Remember to make up meetings! One alternative is to make up on line www.rotaryeclubone. Or attend the Hancock Club (Mondays) or the Houghton Club (Thursdays).

· CLK Rotary Club 60^th Birthday Committee report – making plans and need help from our longest serving members on identifying CLK rotary alumni

· The effort to design a new club banner was resurrected. President Jim to follow-up.

· Eve Szilargy resigned due to demands of her business – opening soon in Houghton.

· A brief discussion occurred regarding recruiting new members.

· The CHOICES program was discussed. CLK Rotary has committed to hosting the program in the CLK and Lake Linden/Hubbell and Alternative Schools. More Rotarians are needed to help fulfill our commitment.

· Rich Schaefer won the raffle!

When this settle down, we hope to see Eva back in the fold. Meantime, her resignation was accepted with regret.

Meeting adjourned at 1pm.

(If you haven't figured out the answer, check out the uneven distribution of women.)

Regular Meeting, September 30, 2009

(This week's pictures from our archive are meant to remind everyone that the highway cleanup is scheduled this month. Experience has proved the adage that "many hands make light work.")

Attendance: 26 total including 2 guests, Dave & Linda Grahek, and our program speaker, Ned Huwatschek.

Our Club enthusiastically gave Happy Dollars – Joel Keranen gave $2 in honor of Joel and his wife both completing a ½ marathon on Sept 26. Joel reported Mindy beat him by a 2 tenths of a second. Also, a number of Rotarians were fined $1 each for not wearing their Rotary lapel pins! Lesson learned = Wear Your Rotary Pin!

Ned Huwatschek, our speaker, presented a program on the history of the Smith Fisheries. He began by asking how many Rotarians had visited Smith Fisheries to which approximately 2/3 indicated they had. Ned explained that the owner was Mr. Lamorand whose first location was at Keystone Bay. He relocated to the current location after determining the logistics getting supplies and fish to market. After moving to Smith Fisheries, Mr Lamorand burned the Keystone buildings.

Ned’s family bought the Fisheries in the early 1940s and operated it until 1968. At its peak, the Fisheries had 17 buildings and operated 2 fishing boats. With no road until much later, access to the Fisheries was by water – year round.

Ned’s family also owned fisheries in Grand Marais, Oscoda and Port Washington WI. The family business shipped whitefish and lake trout to restaurants they owned in Wisconsin and in California. Imagine ordering fresh Lake Superior Lake Trout in a California restaurant.

The Huwatshek family sold Smith Fisheries in 1988 to a MTU grad: Hal Baldauf. He still maintains the road and several buildings.

President Jim Lowell thanked Ned for his presentation and presented him a Rotary mug.
Meeting adjourned at 1pm.