Wow, it’s March already!  Of course we here in Maine know that this doesn’t mean that winter is over.  But there is a distant light at the end of the tunnel. There’s also a glimmer of light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, with folks getting vaccinated and new case numbers gradually dropping.  It will still be many months before things return to any sort of “normal”, but at least progress is being made. 

 

Our Belfast Rotary “family” is stronger than ever, which is important during stressful times like this.  We have a large circle of friends who can give us support and would do almost anything for us.  I’ve had several members comment that, because of the breakout rooms, they are getting to know more of our members than ever before.  With the randomly assigned breakout rooms, people are meeting people other than the ones who always sit at the same table.  An unintended consequence, but it works! 

 

Speaking of our Zoom meetings, there are quite a few of our members who are not attending.  Perhaps they’re intimidated by the technology or they don’t have good computers or good internet access.  I’d like to point out that you can join the meetings by phone.  It doesn’t have to be a smartphone; any old phone will do.  Just dial the phone number shown near the bottom of our Zoom invitations, dial in the meeting ID and password, and you can then listen to (and talk at) the entire meeting (including being in a breakout room).  If you haven’t done it, please give it a try.  If you’d like help, feel free to contact me (rkoralek@roadrunner.com or 207-930-3552) or John Golden (jpgolden@roadrunner.com).  We really want to hear from all of our members and make sure we’re all tied in.

 

As encouragement to attend our meetings, I’d like to point out some of our interesting guest speakers.  In the past few months we’ve heard updates from our Chamber of Commerce and Our Town Belfast, a number of local organizations such as Maine Farmland Trust and Coastal Mountains Land Trust, and important service organization such as Waldo County Homeless Coalition and the Belfast Soup Kitchen.  Coming up in March we’ll be hearing from Senator Angus King and also Todd French, who will give us an update on the Sequoia.  Over the next few months we also expect to hear from Senator Collins, several others of our elected leaders, along with several other organizations and, of course, classification talks from our newest members.  Our meetings are usually quite interesting, as well as giving folks a chance to visit and socialize.  Thanks to Heather and Larry for your great work setting these wonderful talks up. 

 

Our club is strong. We have 67 members as of March 1, with 3 new members in the past few months and one more new member application pending.  Perhaps the pandemic and the need to band together and give, along with the need to socialize, is encouraging people to join.  Once they find out about our club, who we are and what we do, people seem to be very interested in joining.  We should all be on the lookout for any opportunity to tell people about us and invite them to attend a meeting and see.  The fact that our meetings are on Zoom makes this particularly easy.

 

Have a great March, and I hope to see more of you on Wednesdays. 

 

Yours in friendship and service,

Richard