Ha pp y B ir th da y

November 28, 2006 - Business Meeting

December 12 2006 - Business Meeting and Holiday Get-together

January 23 2007 - Business Meeting

February 27, 2007 - Joint Meeting with Minneapolis

March 27, 2007 - Program Meeting

April 24, 2007 - Business Meeting

May 22, 2007 - Business Meeting

Members are to call Dorothy if they are unable to attend the December meeting, which will be at Dorothy's home. She will need an exact count since the meal will be catered in. She will need to know by Tuesday, December 5th for the December 12th meeting date.

If you do not call, it will be assumed that you are attending and you will be billed for that meeting. If you are unable to attend due to last minute circumstances, you will be billed for that meeting.

Reservations for the November Meeting are due by November 17th so that Dorothy can give Joseph’s the reservation numbers.

We hope that everyone has gotten their poinsettia information. As you all know, we will not be having the global event this year, so we need everyone to work extra hard on selling the poinsettias. This will be our major fund raising event this year. Shirley will be coordinating the ordering of the plants at Linders and we will need to call or e-mail her with the order information.

At our November Board meeting, we authorized a minimum of $500 service grant to be given to Northwest Youth and Family Services women's mental health program, and to Minnesota Visiting Nurse Agency Club 100. If our poinsettia event is especially successful, we are hoping that we can increase the grant amount.

The Board also made a decision not to renew our bond insurance. The annual premium went from $84 to $102 for $25,000 coverage. Since we are not having our global event, our income for the year will be less than $10,000. We will review the need to obtain bond insurance on an annual basis.

Membership – Co-Chairs: Romelle Vanek and Carole Snyder
Service/Status of Women – Co-Chairs: Judy Cognetta, Evelyn McDonald and Janet Shannon
Jane Klausman – Open
Young Women in Public Affairs – Open
United Nations & Programs – Open
Global Event – Not applicable for Current Year
Reservations & Hospitality – Dorothy Swans, Chair; Virginia Krahmer
Poinsettia Sales – Shirley Nice, Chair
Zonta Paul – Peggy St. Germain, Chair
Public Relations/Communications – Open
Sunshine & Birthday – Lauraine Torgerson, Chair;

Plants will be available after November 15th. Linder’s has raised their prices slightly, and we did not raise our prices last year. However, we had some instances where we lost money on some of the orders because the delivery charge was added on, and we did not feel we could pass that cost along to the customer since they were not aware of it up-front. Our prices are therefore slightly more than last year, but still under what Linders recommends they be sold for. Our contact at Linder’s is Jaime Riehle. Please e-mail or call Shirley with your order. Also, forward any delivery or pick up sheet you receive from Linder’s to Shirley so that we can keep accurate records for billing purposes. Thanks for all your efforts in making this another successful sale year!

Our Club will be hosting the Area meeting April 13 and 14th, 2007. Our preliminary planning and brainstorming about several topics/speakers is completed. At this time, we have two speakers who have graciously agreed to come and speak at our area meeting, and are in the processing of getting the third speaker.

Sandy Martin, Mayor of Shoreview, will talk about how she came to enter politics, how she became mayor and obstacles and surprises along the way. She is also actively involved in a tennis organization (a not-for-profit organization) and will share with us why she became involved with this organization.

Our second speaker, who most of you have met, is Kay Andrews, executive director of Northwest Youth and Family Services. She will talk about her 30 year career at the Agency, the differences she has seen over the 30 years and how the role of women has changed. As you may recall, Kay became blind at about age 10, and has kept a positive attitude which has enabled her to achieve many things.

Our third speaker will be someone in the community who works in law enforcement in the area of trafficking of women in the Twin Cities and Minnesota. We have several contacts who we are working with to find this speaker.

We are still working on a location and will have more to report later. Our goal was to have relevant, interesting speakers, and a topic agenda set well in advance of the meeting date so that we can get information out to all the area members.

We will need to come up with a "theme name" for the event, so if any of you have any suggestions, please share them with Carole, Pat, Romelle, Janet, Judy or Peggy.

We think it will be a terrific event which everyone will definitely not want to miss.

The tradition of the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving is steeped in myth and legend. Few people realize that the Pilgrims did not celebrate Thanksgiving the next year, or any year thereafter, though some of their descendants later made a "Forefather's Day" that usually occurred on December 21 or 22. Several Presidents, including George Washington, made one-time Thanksgiving holidays. In 1827, Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale began lobbying several Presidents for the instatement of Thanksgiving as a national holiday, but her lobbying was unsuccessful until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln finally made it a national holiday with his 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation.

Today, our Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday of November. This was set by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939 (approved by Congress in 1941), who changed it from Abraham Lincoln's designation as the last Thursday in November (which could occasionally end up being the fifth Thursday and hence too close to Christmas for businesses).

But the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving began at some unknown date between September 21 and November 9, most likely in very early October. The date of Thanksgiving was probably set by Lincoln to somewhat correlate with the anchoring of the Mayflower at Cape Cod, which occurred on November 21, 1620 (by our modern Gregorian calendar--it was November 11 to the Pilgrims who used the Julian calendar).

• FISH: cod, bass, herring, shad, bluefish, and lots of eel.
  
• SEAFOOD: clams, lobsters, mussels, and very small quantities of oysters
  
• BIRDS: wild turkey, goose, duck, crane, swan, partridge, and other miscellaneous waterfowl; they were also known to have occasionally eaten eagles (which "tasted like mutton" according to Winslow in 1623.)
  
• OTHER MEAT: venison (deer), possibly some salt pork or chicken.
  
• GRAIN: wheat flour, Indian corn and corn meal; barley (mainly for beer-making).
  
• FRUITS: raspberries, strawberries, grapes, plums, cherries, blueberries, gooseberries (these would have been dried, as none would have been in season).
  
• VEGETABLES: small quantity of peas, squashes (including pumpkins), beans
  
• NUTS: walnuts, chestnuts, acorns, hickory nuts, ground nuts
  
• HERBS and SEASONINGS: onions, leeks, strawberry leaves, currants, sorrel, yarrow, carvel, brooklime, liverwort, watercress, and flax; from England they brought seeds and probably planted radishes, lettuce, carrots, onions, and cabbage. Olive oil in small quantities may have been brought over, though the Pilgrims had to sell most of their oil and butter before sailing, in order to stay on budget.
  
• OTHER: maple syrup, honey; small quantities of butter, Holland cheese; and eggs.

• Ham. (The Pilgrims most likely did not have pigs with them).
• Sweet Potatoes-Potatoes-Yams. (These had not yet been introduced to New England).
• Corn on the cob. (Indian corn was only good for making cornmeal, not eating on the cob).
• Popcorn. (Contrary to popular folklore, popcorn was not introduced at the 1621 Thanksgiving. Indian corn could only be half-popped, and this wouldn't have tasted very good.)
• Cranberry sauce. (Cranberries were available, but sugar was not.)
• Pumpkin Pie: (They probably made a pumpkin pudding of sorts, sweetened by honey or syrup, which would be like the filling of a pumpkin pie, but there would be no crust or whipped topping.)

Erma McGuire shared this note from Karissa Dolan (Ladlie), our Jane Klausman award winner. Karissa graduated with a degree in Human Resources, and married John Dolan (who is stationed at Ford Hood, Texas). They are living off base in Texas and she is an employment specialist with Sallie Mae, Inc., whose mission is to make education affordable to all Americans.

"Looking back over the years, I am so grateful for the wonderful opportunities and support that allowed me to further my education. Thanks for being a part of that! God bless you throughout this holiday season and beyond" - Karissa Ladlie Dolan.

If you have anything that you would like included in the newsletter, please let Peggy know. I know we would all be glad to hear what is going on with you!

See you all Tuesday, November 28, 2006 at Josephs!