Happy Tuesday, Rotarians.

Need to Know:

1. Activity for our Romance Raffle is rolling on. Our 3^rd Annual Romance Raffle will be held on Friday, February 12, 2016. ****Tickets are now available and you should be selling lots of them!!!!**** They are $140.00 per couple again this year. Checks should be made out to “Romance Raffle”.

****Please solicit sponsors for the event! If the donated item is a gift certificate/card, please turn it in with the sponsorship form. Otherwise you may hang on to the donated item until we are ready for the event. Or contact me to discuss drop off/pickup of donated items. We need items for the live and silent auctions or cash donations to pay event expenses.

2. Upcoming speakers: Next week, Sara Herren will be speaking to us about the Chamber of Commerce; on February 9^th, Marshfield Superintendent Alan Thomas will be speaking to us again; On February 16^th, a representative from RYLA will be discussing the Rotary Youth Leadership Academy.
3. Our next board meeting will be Wednesday, February 10th at noon. It will be held at Southern Missouri Bank. All members are welcome.
4. Go ahead and put this on your calendar now: the Marshfield Easter Egg Hunt will be held on Saturday, March 12, 2016, with a rain date of March 19^th.
5. Leslie Thomas reported that the Niangua Interact Club would be sponsoring an Easter Egg Hunt for Niangua kids on Friday, March 18^th at 1:00 PM at Niangua Schools. It would be nice to see several Rotarians there to support our Interactors.

Meeting Recap

We inducted two new members today: Mary Bransfield (sponsored by Danny O’Neal) and Sara Herren (sponsored by Joe Daugherty). Welcome!

Three representatives of Marshfield’s Tree City Committee spoke to us today: Connie Stockton, Lisa Jamison and Jim Hartley. Marshfield is one of 85 “Tree Cities” in Missouri. The committee meets on the first Thursday of each month at 5:45 PM at City Hall – all are welcome. Each member of the committee is responsible for overseeing tree-related matters at one or more of Marshfield’s parks. Last year the committee replaced 25 trees in Rotary Park with free trees from the Forest Relief Service. The committee and other volunteer organizations provided almost 2000 volunteer hours for Rotary Park alone, saving Marshfield thousands of dollars in maintenance. The three top varieties of trees in Rotary Park are the Redbud, the Cherry and the Red Maple. Each of these trees can keep 600 gallons or more of storm water out of the city’s drainage system, and collectively these trees (representing approximately 1/3 of the trees in Rotary Park) can negate one year’s worth of carbon dioxide emissions from a single car. The committee is currently working on an inventory database with GPS mapping and measurements of all the trees in the City parks. This will assist in keeping track of which trees need to be replaced, which trees thrive or do not thrive in particular locations, etc.

Final Thoughts

“He that planteth a tree is a servant of God, he provideth a kindness for many generations, and faces that he hath not seen shall bless him.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933) from The Friendly Trees

“The planting of a tree, especially one of the long-living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to prosperity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it will outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or evil.”

George Orwell (1903-1950), from A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray (1946)

https://youtu.be/1JGVHndX5MA?list=RD1JGVHndX5MA

Marshfield Rotary Club: Raising the bar through leadership, giving and education.

Yours in Rotary Service,

Kristin Grace Krebs