The meeting started with Barb leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance and Amy giving us the “thought of the day” which was Margaret Atwood’s following explanation of  the “solstice” part of the year which is:  “This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath, the door of a vanished house left ajar.”

  

   Ballots for the Election of Officers & Directors of the Club for Rotary year July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026 were passed out for members to cast their votes. The results of the voting were:  Ken Drummet will serve a one-year term as President, Debra Campbell will be the President Elect for a one-year term, and Amy Skalinder a two year term as Secretary. Bob Baker will serve a two-year term as Director, Moha Bouacha and Rich Lalley will continue to serve on the Board as Past Co-Presidents, Patti Van Cleave will continue as Treasurer in the 2^nd year of her 2-year term, and Bill Leske, Chuck Norton, Heidi Sibert, and Barb Tubekis will continue to serve as Directors in the 2^nd year of their 2-year terms.

 

  Happy Bucks were given by Ken Drummet for celebrating his birthday and both Debra Campbell and Moha were happy to help Rich distribute coats to kids in Chicago which brought the total number of coats given kids in Chicago by our Club so far this year to 2500.  Robert Mardirossian gave 4 Happy Bucks for member Adriana Cook bringing 3 guests and prospective new members—Marjane, Doris and Kirsten.

 

   Barb announced that we will be meeting for our January 2^nd  meeting at Little Honeycomb for lunch and we will not have a speaker or program that day.

 

   GUEST SPEAKERS Ida Fiore and husband—co-founders and administrators of SaLT—Service and Learning Together which is a learning and education organization based on the North Shore, primarily in Highland Park, Lake Forest, Glenbrook, Deerfield and Winnetka, with the goal of trying to “inspire young people to change their World”—both Ida and her husband have substantial educational backgrounds.  Their brochure lists the following “service and learning” programs –Supporting Local families Fighting Food Insecurity; Tutoring Services for Local Elementary Students; and Offering Essential Items to Communities in Crisis. The SaLT Service Learning Trips have taken high school age kids to Orlando, New Orleans, Puerto Rico and Alaska.  It was mentioned that many of the high school SaLT programs are very similar to Rotary’s Interact Program.

   In the Shop N’ Drop flyer of the SaLT program it lists the “ways to help” people in need is to collect and “donate food and essential items” for needy families, much like Rotary now does around the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.  They indicate that their Shop N’ Drop programs provide over 28,000 hours of service with over 2300 volunteers—it further states that it serves over 2200 people in over 550 families, including many of the migrants who have been left stranded at some of the railroad stations on Chicago’s North Shore.  This presentation was very informative and presented a number of areas that this organization might be able to team up with some of Rotary’s programs to help those people in our communities in need of such services.

   The meeting ended around 1:30 pm with the reciting of Rotary’s 4-way test.