Several of us attended our District's mid-term leadership assembly on January 14th. This was a worthwhile session focused on membership growth, public image, and foundation giving. We came away with a number of good ideas to spur us on to growth in all these areas. Our District's annual conference for all Rotarians is coming up on the last weekend of April and will be held in St. Paul. I plan to go and hope some of you will also. These gatherings are always inspiring -- reminding us of all the possible ways for Rotary to make a difference in the world. Our youth exchange students will be in attendance for part of the session and put on a small program - always a highlight of the event. Our student, Jiui Yoon continues to thrive in her year here. Her second host family, Jeff and Kathleen Johnson, have made her feel so welcome that Jiui now declares her last name to be Johnson! Please consider spending a few hours or a day with her to show her some of the sights of Minnesota. She has a true thirst to "see it all and do it all" during her year here.
February is when we award our Paul Harris Fellow in conjunction with NYFS's Service to Youth awards dinner. This year we are giving our Paul Harris Fellowship to our own Paul Bartyzal not only for all the work he does for our Rotary Club, but all the work he does for the Boy Scouts of America. The presentation will be on Thirsday, Fenb. 9 at NYFS beginning at 5:30. It is a very inspirational night and I encourage you to attend.
On March 14th, our Rotary meeting will be in the new Shoreview Library – this time no longer under construction, but in “full production” after the January 28th grand opening. It’ll be great to see our pre-school literacy items, obtained through our District Service Grant.
Our exchange student Jiui Youn has been here almost 6 months. She will move to her third host family sometime in March. Jiui ( or “G”) is planning on doing a spring sports activity at Mounds View. She has been busy making new friends and getting acquainted with exchange students in the metro area.
Her family in South Korea is currently hosting a student from Minnesota. The international exchange program for Rotary continues to be popular.
In the coming months, we are asking for club members help in showing Jiui around the metro area. Jiui will be here through mid-June 2017.
While not all inclusive, here are some ideas for short and longer outings, throughout the year.
High school or college games, such as basketball, hockey, and girl’s track meets.
Concerts
Tour of the State Capital Building
Tour James J Hill House
St. Paul Cathedral
Visit Minneapolis Institute of Art
Visit to Taylors Falls and the Taylors Falls Drive-In
View from the top of the IDS Center
Minnehaha Falls and Minneapolis Park system, Lake Harriet, Calhoun and Lake of the Isles
Visit to Alexander Ramsey House
Boat cruise on St. Croix or Mississippi River
Please consider taking an afternoon to show her around town. Check with Peggy or me for her contact information.
Today's meeting was our quarterly Club Assembly. The major topic for club discussion was planning for next summer's new fundraising event - "A Taste of Hops". Kevin Keenan reported on behalf of the committee. Kevin, Bill Kiehnbaum, Bill Klumpp, Paul McCreight. Ken Hola and John Suzukida have been hard at work determining plans for food, music, set-up and sponsorship. As the date nears, we will need to organize ourselves into several committees to complete the planning and implementation of all aspects of the event. Following this topic, Peggy led a discussion around increasing club membership. Ideas from a recent District conference on the subject were shared and members contributed a number of creative suggestions for further consideration.
Our very own Terry Schwerm provided today's program. Terry provided an overview of the master plan for expanding/improving the Shoreview Commons area and the Community Center in the next several years. The plan is exciting and includes a number of very attractive features including a large destination playground and a space to host outdoor wedding services. The City has done such a nice job in the past, anticipating future needs and finding ways to make them happen in a fiscally prudent way; it is therefore is easy to feel good about this latest plan. We know it will be done well and will be widely enjoyed throughout our community and beyond!
The Club welcomed our Exchange Student Jiu who attended the meeting. The Rotary Club's representative at Camp Enterprise was at the meeting to tell Club members about his experience. He indicated that it was a great experience and that he heard from several businessmen/entrepreneurs about their experiences. He worked on a project that would create a better backpack and that he served as Chief Technology Officer for his group. He thanked the Rotary Club for the selecting him to attend.
The guest speaker for the day was Barbara Muller, who serves as the Honorary Consul in Minneapolis for the Federal Republic of Germany. She explained that there was the German Embassy in Washington DC and eight consulates in major cities throughout the United States. There are 39 Honorary Consuls that are appointed by the German Secretary of State and approved by the United States State Department. She was appointed to serve as the Honorary Consul in Minneapolis in 2016 to focus on the areas of economic relations, traffic, culture, and legal services. Her service area is Minnesota, the Dakotas, and a few counties in western Wisconsin. She works under the Consulate General office in Chicago.
She typically holds weekly office hours at the law firm where she works and the majority of her work is associated with passports, registration of births, and consultation regarding citizenship questions. She also works on cultural events such as GermanFest in New Ulm, the recent Martin Luther exhibit and participating in informational events.
We were pleased to hear from our very own Miriam Zachary and Bob Freed today as they gave their new member "classification talks". They each shared unique and interesting aspects of their respective upbringings. Miriam's father died at about the time of her birth so her widowed mother needed to work. She had studied Home Economics and so was able to land a good job for women of the time, but it required frequent travel. As a result, Miriam boarded at a school in NY state. Miriam ultimately landed at the University of Wisconsin where Bob was doing graduate work. They have an interesting "how we met" story -- it was in a hospital in Madison where Bob was being treated for a rugby injury! We learned that Bob has had a life long love of sports. He played football and baseball as a child, football in college at St. Olaf where his team was undefeated, and subsequently he came to love and play the sport of rugby! Bob finished post-doctoral work in chemistry, then went on to law school where he earned a degree in patent law. He has been a partner in local firms, currently Moore and Hansen LLC, for a number of years. Miriam and Bob reside in North Oaks and have four adult children, all of whom attended Mounds View High School. Miriam was a stay-at-home Mom for most of their growing-up years but earned certification as a Marriage and Family Counselor a bit later in life. She is currently a practicing therapist but promised she would not analyze our marriages! We are so pleased that Miriam and Bob have joined our Rotary organization -- we will benefit greatly from their smarts, experiences and obvious interest in our local and global communities.
The Club welcomed guest Gene Nichols who is a Shoreview resident that serves on the City's Human Rights Commission and was also a graduate of the Shoreview Citizen's Academy.
The guest speaker was Brooks Clifford who would be talking about Bitcoin. He indicated that Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and payment system that is generally considered as anti-government and anti-big bank. He noted that it is an advanced technology that allows people to exchange money from one person or entity to another. The United States Treasury categorizes Bitcoin as a decentralized virtual currency.
The largest user of the Bitcoin technology is in Africa since there are less stable governments and minimal banking infrastructure in some countries. Some of the advantages of using the Bitcoin is that money is obtained instantly and there are no transaction fees, unlike the use of credit cards. However, it is also impossible to get refunds of the payment, unlike a system like Paypal.
Brooks answered several questions about the use of this new money exchange system and indicated that although it is growing in use, Bitcoin is still not well understood by most people and outside of the mainstream.
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