 Zonta Paul Volume 78 Issue 4 September, 2004 |
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PRESIDENTS MESSAGE:Thank you for attending our President's Dinner. I hope you and your guests had an enjoyable evening. Together we raised $295 for our convention fund! Many thanks to Shirley for offering her lovely home to us and our Board Members for assisting me with the food.Evelyn and I visited with Kathy late August. She sends hugs and greetings to everyone. Ten Thousand Villages manager, Kathy McGinley, has invited us to join them one evening in December to highlight our organization and support their sales for the evening. They will publicize our club through their in-store signage, direct mail and press releases. They would ask us to also support the evening by telling all our family and friends to stop by and say "hello" and peruse their store. They will donate 20% of the evening's total sales to our club. They invite up to three of our members to be available that night to visit with their customers about Zonta and the store. We can discuss this further at our September meeting. Jennifer has offered to purchase the materials and lead us in making baby blankets in her home for the MHNA on Tuesday, September 21. Thanks, Jen, for bringing us this great idea and hosting it! Our first business meeting will be held at the Cherokee Sirloin Room on the 28th. Would each chairperson give us an update on their plans for the coming year? You may also bring your silent auction items and paperwork with you. I will take them home for processing. Thanks, Dorothy, for arranging a new location for our monthly meetings starting in October. Joseph's Grill manger, Mike Nasseff, seems very willing to work with us and meet our needs. We have received our call to District 7 Fall Seminar on October 1 - 3 at Kavanaugh's Resort in Brainerd. It is a lovely place to spend a weekend and enjoy Zonta information, education, and friendship while indulging in wonderful food! Please let me know if you plan to attend. Registration and fees should be remitted by the 24th. Enjoy the changing colors and fall flowers! Romelle Web Sites to Remember: Visit Zonta St. Paul at our Website Zonta St. Paul Zonta International Zonta District 7 Kathie Pulse: Kathie is still at the Linden Care Center. If you give her a call and she cannot answer the phone, leave a message and it will be relayed to her. Her phone # is (651) 439-3997. Her address is l05 W Linden Street, Stillwater, MN 55082. Page 2 Service Projects September 21, 2004: Service Project - blankets for MNVA Club 100 Will be at Jennifer's home starting at 6 p.m. Contact Jennifer to let her know if you can make it. No sewing involved - bring a good pair of shears if you have a one. You are welcome to bring friends or significant others to participate as well. Let Jen, Romelle or Carole know if you need transportation. We can order pizza if there are hungry folks who didn't get a chance to eat dinner before coming over. Please RSVP to Jen by Monday morning, 10 am....she'll be picking up the fabric. Also, please bring $10 for materials. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Thanks, Romelle & Zonta Club members for your donation of several receiving blankets and rattle. Our nurses/clients can really use these items! Sincerely, Julie & Susan Club l00/MVNA * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Membership Meeting: September 28, 2004: We will have our business meeting Tuesday, September 28th - 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Cherokee Sirloin Restaurant in West St. Paul. RSVP Virginia reservations. Our meeting in October ( October 26th) will be at Josephs's, located at 140 South Wabasha. (651) 222-2435, St Paul, Minnesota 55107. Click for Map Dorothy polled our members via a phone survey about making a change and all were in favor of the change. Global Event - The Global Event is fast approaching! If you need more brochures please let Lois know and she will coordinate getting a supply to you. We hope you have been able to get silent auction items and can bring them to the meeting. If you need someone to pick them up, please let Romelle, Peggy or Carole know. Reminder: Our deadline for selling tickets is October 15th, which is much earlier than last year. The History Theatre will only hold tickets for the count that we give them on October 22nd. Last year we were able to continue selling tickets, but their policies have changed this year and they are planning on selling the remainder of the tickets once we get to October 22nd. Tickets are $35.00 which covers the cost of the performance and the dinner. It is going to be a wonderful event! Page 3 President's dinner meeting minutes - Shirley hosted the president's dinner at her home and the consensus is that everyone had a very relaxing fun time. Several guests were present, including Carol, Shirley, Kristie, Linda, Susan, Jeff, Lillie, Lou, and Kermit. Romelle chaired a brief meeting and welcomed Jill as a new transfer member. Jen shared her news of her impending move to Cleveland. We will certainly miss her, and wish her well in her new home. Romelle passed this along and thought it was timely to share with the upcoming presidential election in full swing: How Women Got To Vote A short history lesson on the privilege of voting. The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic." They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women. Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror" on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press. So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because--why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining? Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie "Iron Jawed Angels" It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder. All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient. My friend Wendy, who studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped to talk about it, she looked angry. She was upset with herself. "One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie," she said. "What would those women think of the way I use--or don't use--my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women. The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her "all over again." HBO will run the movie periodically before releasing it on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Card night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order. It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity." We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. On that note; Happy Birthday to: Carole - September 1st Joann - October 2 Judy - October 28 Peggy - October 31 October Board Meeting - October 11th at Judy's - 5:30 p.m. District Seminar - October 1-3 at Brainerd. See info enclosed for registration and fees. See you all on the 28th! Reminder - call Virginia this month to let her know if you are coming. |