This is the 7th anniversary of the horrible events of 11 September 2002, when foreign evil thought to harm us. We, as a nation, arose in our rightous wrath and responded to the unprovoked murder and maiming!
Change is the essance of life. District Governor Kathie Bell is now
* Immediate Past District Governor (PDG) Kathie Bell and
* the new Secretary for the Dodge City (noon) Lions Club
We wish her well with both!
On Thursday, 21 August 2008, twelve member of our club met at Lions Park for a family dinner. We had fried chicken from Dillions and KFC, "dirty rice" from Zaffrans [sic], salad and a fine desert or three. One ice thing is the winds were strong enough that the flies settled onto the closed food containers and (hopefully) went hungry!
Everyone had a fine tiime.
The webmastger is hoping we can have a late fall, start of the "cool season", supper. It would be nice to have a soup or two (crock pot), French bread, salad, desert and probably some fancy coffee.
It should be fun!
In late September 2008, we will be having the first Zone meeting of the new Lions year. Admitedly, the Lions year started in early July but a number of the clubs simply either don't met in the summer or can't seem to make the trek to Dodge City. Oh, well...
Upcoming events:District Governor Kathie Bell (M17 K3):
Zone Chairman (Zone Leader) Lion Mike Bell visits:
- As of 12 January 2008, DG Lion Kathie has visited perhaps half of her clubs!
- As of mid December 2008, Lion Mike had visited all five of the clubs in his zone and sent out a largish evelop with the minutes of his November Zone meeting and artilces (hopefully) of interest to his clubs.
The 2008 Annual Lion Pancake Feast is coming up!The place is the Natioal Guard Armoury and the dates are:
The costs are very reasonable! $3.50 from a Lion and 4.00 at the door! Given that you'll be given
Friday, January 18 from 5 pm to 7:30 pm
Saturday, January 19 from 7 am to 2:00 pm
you'll be very hard pressed to get a better deal in Dodge City!
- 3 pancakes (and refills!
- a sausage patty (and extras for a very cheap price!)
- coffee
- milk (white or choclate) and
- friendly service,
USA-Canada Leadership Forum: Grand Rapids Michigan!This lovely event was set up by a great staff lead by Kansas' own Ed McCormick. In the words of "Big Ed hisself" (Or is it "Big Ed his ownself"?)
This was a very nice five day event that started (we're told) the evening of Wednesday 5 September 2007. Lion Kathie and I arrived late afternoon on Thursday 6 September. We checked into the hotel.
Thursday afternoon featured two special seminars by two outstanding speakers: Striker Corbin and Eilene McDargh.
The dinner that night had a very nice speaker. This former Miss North Carolina (1963), Jeanne Robertson said that humor didn't need to have sex or profanity in it and then proceeded to prove this with wonderful standup comedy. She capped one joke by joking "my water broke and I wasn't even pregnant!". This simply meant she was so amused she'd peed herself; the women in the audience could relate to that as well as their husbands...
The Friday noon speaker Steve Gilliland talked about taking care of your people. A quote is: "If you take care of people, the business will follow."
The Saturday luncheon speaker was our own International President Mahendra Amarasuriya of Colombo, Sri Lanka. He gave an inspirational speech.
The Saturday evening speaker was a young man who has truly overcome many obsticles in his life. I don't think I know anyone who could have been beaten so badly and yet managed to come back: Manuel Scott!
Afterwards, the head of the Canadian Forum Group came up wearing a kilt, clown red nose and a wig. We really needed the comic relief!
The seminars were quite well done even if a couple were repeats from last years. Ah, well, sometimes you can't hear helpful good advise too many times. Lion Mike broke his left ankle and was in a motorized wheelchair scooter at the International Convention in Chicago.
On the evening of 7 June 2007. Cargill supplied the hamburger that allowed various Kansas Lions' Club to feed the folks in Greensberg for free! DG Denny Smith and VDG Kathie Bell were deeply involved in this (Here is a copy of DG Smith's press release to fellow Lions.Many people don't realize that Lions around the world "kicked in" thousands of dollars for the victims of the 4 May 2007 Greensburg Kansas tornado. In Kansas, Lions District K-3, DG Denny Smith rushed to contact Lions Internation and arranged for two grants: the first for $10,000 and the second for $15,000. PDG Bob Courtney worked miracles in getting vouchers available for the folks in Greensburg. These vouchers were "cashed in" at various places including Dillions Groceries Stores, Walmart and Quik Shop.
Well done, Lions!
Here are some rather sobering pictures of Greensburg post tornado. After this slide slow, here is are before-and-after shots of Greensburg. It is horrifying to realize that my house (the webmaster that is) is only 45 miles from Greensburg and there is no "forcefield" protecting Dodge City from a "Greensburg class EF-5" tornado. Tis enuf to ruin one's sleep.
A bit of a horror story: there are stories going around that most of the folks in Greensburg lived in rental housing and did not have enough Renter's Insurance!
State Convention: when: 1-2 June 2007
______________where: Grand Prairie Hotel
____________________Hutchinson, Kansas
The Guest Speaker is International President Jimmy M. Ross (with his wife Velda). IP Ross is a very charasmatic person who speaks very intelligently and very eliquently. "Biggest" Lion Ross gave a very interesting speech after the Saturday evening feast. During the convention, he also conveyed a lot of interesting information about Lionism International. This was well worth listening to! It was also the first time I'd heard that folks from different region had different views on the direction our family (Lions International) should go. (This is to be expected, of course...)IP Ross preached [to the choir] of the need for "Paradyne Change". "Paradyne Change" simply means looking at how we've been doing business and making needful changes. Sounds simple but in practice this can be gut wrenching. (A "Paradyne Change" would be for many of the "Old Lions" to leave the safety of their little club and to venture out into the wider universe of Lions Clubs. This is something I'd not have given much thought to before going to conventions and before being a Zone Chairman.)
The webmaster recalls something a German Ruler said:
- We need more projects that involve Lions and others
- We need to do joint projects with others
- We need to let the public know what we do for them
- We need to make the younger generations feel useful and
- to feel their time has been well invested and not merely spent
- We need to convey What Being A Lion Means To Me! to each other.
- All this means giving members reasons to want to be Lions and
- for non-members to Want To Be Lions!
In War, all things are simple but even the simpliest thing is hard!Perhaps quoting Bismarke is wrong but the Iron Chanchellor knew what he was talking about. Trying to get and keep Lions is a form of war with every other possible way to invest one's time. (A lot of this is the webmaster disgressing from IP Jimmy Ross' wonderful speeches. Anything incoherient is the webmaster's fault...)Pictures of International President Jimmy M. Ross et al
Ten "moving pictures" of Lions Jimmy M. and Velda Ross 1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 5.. 6.. 7.. 8.. 9.. 10
The webmaster was hoping there might be an auction and thought about making legal copies of various novel published by Baen and offering these CDs for sale. Here is an excellent etext reader.
At the risk of being too serious...
Formal events at the Convention included the formal vote to confirm the Re-Districting. This matter was discussed at length at the Mid-Winter Rally in January and discussed again. The vote was a majority win for the redistricting plain. Here are some "pretty printed" versions of the State Maps:
The old District Distribution
The new District Distribution
A "clean" map of the Kansas Counties for the sake of clarity.
The Annual Relay Walk For Life is from the evening of 8 June to the morning of 9 June. While the Dodge City (noon) Lions Club is not fielding a team this year, VDG Kathie Bell will be walking with another team and has been collecting money for luminaries. This webmaster, Lion Mike Bell, plans on going to the High School track and walking after he gets off work. Last year's event was badly flawed; the previous two events had been rained out: the event was cancelled in mid evening in 2004 and held at the Dodge City Armoury in 2005. The 2006 event included losing the incmparable Lenitte and since, in a sence this was a "new event", there were some "teething problems". One hopes this year will revert to the usual very high standards of the pre-2004 era.
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This web page got a bit of a rewrite and was "presented" to the world on 24 May 2007
The award this Lions Web page won in 2002!