Coming up

Thursday, Dec. 7 will feature a few of our peninsula’s former substance mis-users, who will describe their rehab and recovery process undergone this year and why this has worked so well for them. Patty Seybold has organized this event. All are welcome but let a Rotarian know in advance. This will be our last regular meeting for the year, so please check back for interesting updates for 2018.

Lincoln County Hospice Choir sings for Rotarians

Our Rotary program Thursday night featured the Lincoln County Hospice Choir, including two of our own Boothbay Harbor Rotarians, Connie Jones and Joy Ward. Connie Jones, Boothbay Harbor Rotarian and Community Liaison for Miles Health, helped spark the Miles & St. Andrews Home Health & Hospice Choir in September of 2016. Joy, a retired registered nurse and active hospice volunteer, sees her hospice and hospice choir commitment as sacred work, since she retired in 1988 and moved with her husband, now deceased, to Boothbay in 2004. Peter Asche and Monica Churchill directed and sang with the 14-person choir, including a former Rotarian from Troy Hills, New Jersey. The program featured “Simple Gifts,” Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar,” Lenny Kravitz’ “Fly Away,” “Homeward Bound,” and “Hallelujah,” amongst the meaningful and memorable songs so well sung by this remarkable choir. Their general singing venue is for hospice individuals in their last days at homes or in facilities, but they also sing at the Miles and St. Andrews Village campuses and at most of the county’s seven Greens and the Lincoln Home. During the Q&A, many hospice choir members remarked how powerful this experience has been for the choir as well as the hospice patients, some of whom have lost all their communication abilities but can still sing or mouth some of the words while hearing the music. Rotarian Bob Pike suggested they go on Channel 6’s 207 program, and this was echoed by many amens.

Club business and announcements

President Jonathan recognized Rotarian Ingrid Merrill, Gap Program leader and organizer for 12 Boothbay Region High School students traveling to Germany in February. Our Rotary board gave $3,000 to this effort, costing $1,700 per student. Ingrid had been a recipient, as a high school student, of the Windham Rotary’s sponsorship of her to Belgium for several months on a Rotary Youth Exchange.

Auction co-chair Laurie Zimmerli thanked the many Rotarians who have made multiple pickups of auction items, already filling a good part of our large Rotary Barn in recent weeks. President Jonathan expressed our deep gratitude for all the work our two auction chairs Laurie Zimmerli and Deb Graves are devoting for our community.

Dwight Swisher raised $926 matched by our Boothbay Harbor Rotary for $1,852 donated to Red Cross disaster relief. Dwight Swisher also reminded us of the heating system and how it works: (1) not to touch heating controls for the main heating system, for cost and environmental reasons; (2) to adjust only the small propane heater in the corner when heat must be increased and to reduce it after the event, and (3) to contact Dwight to confirm heat needs to be turned up for any newly scheduled event.

Rick Mitterling announced we have 107 bikes back, with many repaired and safely stored for winter, and to be used by international workers and other people in need in 2018.

The 50/50 went to Jeff Townsend for the $5 and to visitor, BRSAF president, Brad Hastings, for the big bucks, which Brad gratefully donated back to Rotary in appreciation for the generous donations given to the Boothbay Region Student Aid Fund by Boothbay Harbor Rotary and by individual Rotarians. Brad said the BRSAF was not only the best student aid fund in Maine but possibly in the U.S. for small town donations, with $400,000 given to area students in need for higher education. The BRSAF has been in existence since the 1960s, when Rotarians constituted a significant number of the board, sparked by Rotarians and West Harbor association donations going back to at least the 1950s. Rotary’s annual summer fundraising event at the Common was known as Youth Fund Day at least as early as August 18, 1961.

Dec. 14 will be our annual Christmas party, another Yankee Swap, organized by Monica Churchill and Elise Roberts. They are looking for an innkeeper and confirming who is coming with an appetizer or dessert and Yankee swap gift for each person or couple.

Dec. 30 at 11 a.m. at the Thistle Inn will be a baby shower for Tory Paxson, who is expecting a boy around Feb. 25. There will be a double celebration there and then because Jonathan Tindal couldn’t wait to announce to us Rotarian friends that he and Jessica and daughter, Olivia, are expecting #2, a second daughter, with quite few of us having two daughters and sage advice for Jonathan for the next few years.

There will be no other Rotary meetings this month, but Rotarians remain actively helping in the community, including delivery of wreaths to Rotarian widows and Rotarian widowers, selling bird wreaths to support Boothbay Region Community Resources, and many other community and international efforts.

President Jonathan announced a Jan. 27, 2018 fundraiser in Kittery for the Kittery Rotary After Hours Club for eight tops per table with celebrity waiters and waitresses.