We begin the New Year with our meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2010, at noon at the Edgewater. Sound familiar? Well, the program will be about something that may not be familiar - the Madison City Channel. It's on Charter cable, and Brad Clark will tell us exactly where it is and what it does. It's time to add to your knowledge of the electronic age. Those with satellite dishes should come too, to find out what they're missing. MICHELLE VETTERKIND is the Program Host.

Prior to our last meeting, nine Lions and one former Lion were at "Vicar" BOB BOHN's funeral. We made up about half the total attendance. As noted previously, BOB was a hardworking Lion who took a part in most of our Club activities, and we'll miss him. In his honor, ten Lions rang the bell for the Salvation Army, JOHN JENSON, PHIL INGWELL, TOM STEVENS, PHIL STOWITTS, MICHELLE VETTERKIND, DALE MUELLER, SCOTT GROVER, JACK HEIM, TERRY SCHAR, and JERRY HODDINOTT.

At the last meeting, Pres. JODI ran the meeting, SCOTT GROVER gave the invocation, and LINDA BERGREN led a rousing version of "Jingle Bells", eschewing the usual music. TailTwister DOC STEVENS was resplendent in an automated Santa hat, with flashing lights and jingling bells. It brought to mind the tie with the flashing lights that DALE MUELLER used to have. He (DALE) had an even better ornament at this meeting, though - he brought wife Gwen as a guest.

It was reported that DALE ST. JOHN and WALT PRIDHAM had made donations to WLF in memory of BOB BOHN, and anyone wishing to follow suit can send or give them to Treasurer SCOTT GROVER, who will transmit them. We expect to hear that our Club has sent a memorial as well.

Our Vision Screening project is picking up steam. We're presently running sessions at Head Start, and will have more of them in January. This is a "hands on" project that anyone can help with - it helps if you are trained to use the equipment, but "non-professional" help is still needed for setup, crowd management, errands, etc. See JIM SCHUTZ. All the Madison-area clubs will be working on this mission in the coming months, and hopefully the community will notice.

There will be a Food Drive on Sat. Jan 23 in partnership with Copps food stores. More details to follow, we expect.

LINDA BERGREN, now identified as our Head Nut, still has goodies from the Holiday Treat sale left. The ever-popular fruit cakes, chocolate almonds, pecan clusters and malted milk balls, plus a few other choice items. Help everybody out, and take this stuff off her hands. Our service benefits from the money we raise.

As part of International's "Lions In Sight" program (meaning, visible to the general public) we will have 30-sec. PR spots running on local radio and TV, thanks to a grant received here in Wisconsin.

PDG JOHN JENSON will be Chairman of the 2010 District Convention. We should be ready to help him out, because conventions don't just happen, somebody does a lot of preparation.

KAREN and SAL AL-ASHKAR have transferred out, to somewhere in Arizona, and Dave Weinbach and Jan Cichocki have resigned. For those keeping score at home, cross them out of your Directory.

A few more one-liners -

Borrow money from pessimists - they don't expect to get it back.
A conscience is what hurts when the rest of you feels so good.
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
OK, so what's the speed of dark?
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.