You'll have to fur-give any errors in this week's report: my notes got packed up, loaded onto a Uhaul truck and deposited into storage, so what follows is partially from memory, partially made up (or, depending on your opinion on what I’ve written before, the same as how I usually). President Julie Pingston once again played virtual wedding planner, putting us all at private tables to spark conversation and community before calling our virtual meeting to order. Camron Gnass provided our invocation and John Dale Smith provided the patriotic song, My Country tis of Thee. Diane Sanborn reported on the health of the club. Of course the news of the day is that Irv Nichols is 96 this week and was showered with cards from Rotarians. He said some incredibly inspiring words that none of us could hear due to the technical challenges of the virtual world. So we were left wondering just what it was he said but in our hearts we could hear his voice and knew that it was chock full of sheer awesomeness.
Special mew-sic was purr-vided by video by the ever soft spoken Terry Terry. This week's mew-sic was - Dago Schelin who was sporting a Lansing JazzFest t-shirt and two little kittens who I assume were his daughters. Hiss ability to focus, play the guitar and sing while serving as a cat scratch toy for his daughters was delightful and worth listening to a second, third and furr-th time: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPJO2_VMQr0 (If you click on the link, click play and then just let youtube do its thing, you might get to hear Dago Schelin's version followed by a bunch of other acoustic versions which is pretty cool).
Next up was our chair of the day and Lansing's emcee emeritus, Chris Holman, who gave an effulgent introduction of the day’s speaker that would make the Pope blush. Dan Wyant, President and COO of the Edward Lowe Foundation, gave us a purr-fect insider's guide to the hiss -story of kitty litter. Yes, Edward Lowe was from Michigan and it is fur real, he litter-ally invented kitty litter. His life was not without cat-astrophes, as he suffered some a-paw-ling failures before striking it rich with kitty litter. It was amazing to hear his story, how he started from scratch and how much money he made, but what was even more paw-some was what he did with his mew-lah to help others. The Edward Lowe Foundation was set up to be a paw-sitive force for the entre-purr-mewing spirit. The Edward Lowe Foundation, https://edwardlowe.org/ isn’t a puppy foundation that gives away its affection ($$) to just anybody willing to look its way, no, just like a cat, if you want attention, you have to work for it. The Edward Lowe Foundation actually opurrrates its own programs that focus on leadership and growth and business skill building. It was amazing to watch the chat during the meeting to see how many Rotarians had already participated in one of their programs. I actually felt left out and am looking to see if an old dog (cat?) like me can still learn a few tricks (although cats are notoriously reluctant to do tricks). Mr. Wyant fielded a fur-midable number of questions from a curious audience. Mr. Wyant doled out answers like a ball of string and the audience played along and kept lapping it up.
President Julie called it a day, thanked our speaker and we were feline sad that our weekly Rotary meowting was already over. (Yes, bad dad puns are a real problem in my house).
Kevin Schumacher's email is: schumacher@glassenrhead.com