November 11, 2010: Rotary Log

Rotary Log for November 11, 2010

By Melissa Benson

We had the pleasure of having a Rotary meeting right on Veteran's day!

Because of this tremendous honor, we sang marching military songs for each division; Marines, Army, Navy, Coast Guard, and Air Force...Basil's wife knew them all while the rest of us struggled a bit :)

We had several guests including Robert and Anna Ricci, Cousin Richie, Patricia Kelly, Priscilla McGuiness and Kim Reagan. We were also reminded to fill out the ballots for the new nominating committee.

Ballots were picked up with the attendance cards.

We had several major announcements last week. First was the upcoming Thanksgiving Day Dinner at the Jarvis Hall. We were informed Rotary needs more turkey cookers and pie bakers. We were even honored with a special guest...the turkey himself! The next announcement was reminding us that each Rotarian has to sign up for a minimum of 2 shifts for our 2010 Christmas Tree Sales. Diane Levine asked for volunteers to join her on the scholarship committee. Finally, Basil said something inaudible, but we all assumed it was regarding the Poinsetta sales :)

We hadn't had a Fine Master for a while, so Fine Master Ricci hit us hard. Several fell for the cell phone trick. Others were fined for plaid shirts, and too many cookies snatched for a Rotary table.

Our program was unique in that the "yin to the yang" of Basil was our presenter; his wife Louise Richardson. The yin to the yang implied we would be able to understand our guest speaker :) Louise is co-curator of the Warner House and shared many different ceramics, Chinese export porcelain and the importance of archeology and the knowledge that if one were only to look at a museum, they would have an erroneous picture of what is really out there. If you want to know the true antiquity of the object, you must look in the ground! We learned that back in the 1700's they did not have garbage disposal like today, so all trash was thrown out the windows. The houses, therefore, were lined with rings of trash.

And because it was lying openly, much of the antiques from that time were lost. It was only the very tidy homeowners that didn't want their house lined with trash, that dug a hole into the ground and placed the trash there. We saw pieces of ceramics, chamber pots, a mug and a flower brick from the 1750-1760's time frame.

Lastly, Rotarians gratefully thanked Basil and Louise Richardson for their generous donation of $1,000 through the Sunshine Scholarship for the Chicken BBQ.

And that's what you missed at last week's Rotary!