December 4, 2024 Breakfast Meeting Notes
Our guests today were our speakers, Grace, Jessie, and Claire, who are freshman students from PSU.
We opened with Tony’s famous NH Trivia. This week’s topic is Holiday Objects and Symbols.P
The 50/50 was won by Phil, who donated the money to Tom.
Phil was also the lucky winner of the chance to draw the ace of spades, but his luck ran out. We are down to less than half of the original deck and the game continues.
Announcements: Thanks to all who helped decorate the Common on Saturday. Parks and Rec will be putting up the tree in the gazebo shortly. Steve noted that we plugged some of the lights on the Common into the wrong circuit. Traditionally we have a lighting of the Common at the start of the parade and we have already have some come on. We will fix this next year.
Preparation for the Hometown Holiday Celebration on Saturday: The Bridge House will decorate the senior center for the cookie walk on Friday night. Beth will email everyone a reminder of what jobs they signed up for after this morning’s meeting. The final stages of float decorating will be at noon on Saturday at Jenny Bentwood’s house. The bonfire setup is at 6 am Saturday. You can donate wood but NO NAILS. Two Rotary exchange students will wear the cap and gown and ride the float.
Mayhew has a new director. Her name is Laura Brusseau. She would like the opportunity to speak to us. She can be reached at 603-744-6131 or laura@mayhew.org.
Sharon’s will be the program chair on the 18th. Her speaker is from the Fryeburg Rotary club and he will be bring some flavored olive oil ($22) that they are selling as a fundraiser. Bring extra money. This will also be the day that we collect money for Tom’s Christmas gift.
Grace, Jessie, and Claire from PSU speak to the group.
Denise introduced our speakers, Grace, Jessie, and Claire, who are 3 freshmen members of the Saving Biodiversity program at PSU. They have started a project to refurbish the gardens at PSU.
Their class is centered on the “wicked problem” of saving biodiversity in the planet. (Wicked problems are those that are hard to solve due to interconnectedness and wide scope.) They broke the class into 6 different groups and worked on different aspects of biodiversity, such as invasive species control and biodiversity education. Their project centers on refurbishing 3 garden beds around the sustainability office. They also worked with the feeding the world group, which tested the pH of the soil to determine if it was suitable for planting. Fortunately it was.
They started by looking at the existing gardens and planning which plants to put in for pollinators. They raked and removed dead plants or those that had gotten too leggy, They planted the tallest plants in the back, with shorter ones in front. They tried to choose the plants so they would have some blooming at different times of the year, rather than all in the spring.
The gardens are meant to be community gardens, so feel free to visit. If you go up the center street, it’s between High Hall and a dorm. They would also welcome members of the community who would like to help work on the gardens.
They did face some challenges. They were trying to focus on native plants and avoiding invasive ones. The weather was also not always helpful, since this was a fall course and a lot of their plantings are spring flowering. Some of the original plants were dead or overgrown and it was hard to tell what they could keep.. They planted butterfly weed, Phlox, and a wide variety of other plants.
Once they are all done, they will be doing a map of their project.They plan to put the map up on an information board. It was suggested that Steve Swedler is in town; he was the horticulturist before retiring 2009 so they may want to talk to him about what plants used to be there.
Sharon noted that tomorrow is caroling at the Pemi Youth Center at 4 pm and they have invited the Rotary Choir, Be there!!
January 2 is the scholarship student breakfast. Sharon is reaching out to the students to see who can be there.
We received a thank you from Rotary Zones 33 and 34 for our donation to their disaster recovery fund.
Mike posted pictures on line from Ashland Common Man ceremony in which the Laconia Rotary donated money to the Common Man for Ukraine. Half was from a single member. They also donated a bag of hand-knit “Peace Babies” with lots of little details from the Congregational Church of Laconia. Someone else was getting rid of a lot of beanie babies and these were donated also.
Happy Dollars were shared by Mike, Sharon, Phil, Denise, Alicia, and Steve.
Respectfully submitted,
Lora Miller, secretary