January 10, 2024 Breakfast Meeting Notes

 

 

Denise introduces District Governor Susan Cherry

 

Club members watch DG Susan' Cherry's talk

 

The 50/50 was won by Denise.

Greg won the opportunity to draw for the ace of spades but was unsuccessful. The game continues.

 

Tony presented his NH trivia. Today was what he called the “desk cleaning edition,” covering Rotary membership and a potpourri of general NH topics.

 

Our speaker today was District Governor Susan Cherry. Susan moved to St Johnsbury  in 1978 to teach music in the schools. She and husband (who is also a Rotarian) now run a Bed and Breakfast. She directs with restorative justice center in St Johnsbury and teaches music, as well as being active in her community. She enjoys gardening, sailing, and her 6 grandchildren.

 

Susan’s job as district governor is to be sure that we all have the best year possible in Rotary. The DG tries to work on with clubs to promote collaboration and get members of different clubs to share good ideas, so that all members feel that they belong. She presented luggage tags that were inscribed with “Create Hope in the World” and “Take Good Care” (her personal theme) to copresidents Mike and Beth.

 

Susan suggested that we can support our presidents by enthusiastically helping them to do projects, even if they seem a little unconventional. She did an exercise to get the whole club singing in 3 part harmony to “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” If someone in the club has a wild idea, give it a try!

 

In her work with the restorative justice system, she works with challenging circumstances. She related how in Vermont under former governor Madeleine Kunin, there was a huge budget for incarceration but then prisoners were thrown back into the community with little support. This worked on their “heads” by making them think about how that had gone wrong, but it didn’t reach their hearts. Restorative justice works on that emotional connection, seeking to get victims to speak directly to their offenders, telling them how the crime affected their lives.  The person who did the harm is motivated to do as much as they can to mitigate the pain and problems that they caused. This changes the heart. If (for example) a kid messed up in the classroom, they used to send them child to another classroom. This made the child feel unloved and eventually they would mess up in the community and get sent to jail. Restorative justice principles say that we should move the offending kid’s desk up next to the teacher, so he or she feels seen and realizes that the teacher is trying to keep them out of trouble.

 

In Rotary, the more we hear each other’s stories, the more we feel like we belong. Storytelling and ritual help to bind Rotarians to Rotary. But sometimes we don’t have enough time in our meetings to build those relationships. Peter Block’s book “Community” says that you need to ask 6 questions to get people to know each other’s stories. She suggested that we pick 3 of these questions and talk about them amongst ourselves today. We split up into small groups to talk about these questions and were encouraged to work with the members that we knew the least well.The first question was: This morning, you had lot of choices of what to do. The weather is bad.  So why did you decide to come to the meeting today?  The second question or topic was for members of each group to tell others what is the gift that they bring to this Rotary club. The third item was to tell others you are grateful for their input. The exercise allowed for greater interaction between club members.

 

Finally, Susan noted that we are all invited to the district conference at Lake Morey in April. 

 

Alicia noted that she is still looking for help with the transition grants. Braden has received the PRHS scholarship form for this year and will forward it to the scholarship committee.

Happy dollars were shared by Mike, Denise, and Tony.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

Lora Miller, secretary