Next Meeting - September 20, Tuesday noon, at the Coliseum Bar & Restaurant, as usual. This is our usual Program Meeting, and this time it's an inside job - our own JODI & DALE BURMESTER are just back from the US-Canada Forum, and a visit to Leader Dog headquarters, and we will hear a report on both. The Forum is an event designed to tell the attendees (who number in the low thousands) a great deal about Lions in a short amount of time, and it does just that. It's not limited to pure Lion stuff - there are seminars on leadership and working with people that benefit those who participate in many life activities. This is a very worthwhile event that you should attend if you possibly can, but the next best thing is hearing about it from someone who went. Our Club has supported Leader Dog for years and years and years, and they provide life-changing assistance to people with visual disabilities. Eyewitness reports like the one we're going to get are always interesting.

At our last meeting, we were all seated in a small area, so Pres. MIKE just tapped the bell and got our undivided attention pretty easily. SCOTT GROVER reported that we have already had several Eye Bank missions in September, one of the two months in each calendar year when our Club has that responsibility. The procedure has some new tweaks in it - there are now three dispatchers rotating the duty, and if you are a transporter your call may come from any one of the three. Records on the missions are now available on our web site.

The Tale predicted we'd be hearing about the Holiday Cake and Nut Sale, and we were right - LINDA BERGREN started this year's campaign with a distribution of Order Forms. Menu and prices are similar to last year, with a few price increases here and there. There's more to come on this subject, of course, but one big caveat right from the beginning - Fruit cakes present some order/inventory difficulties, because they are only available in case lots of 24. That means LINDA has to count, allocate and order very carefully, because we don't want to end up with orders for 25 or 39 cakes, and either fail to deliver or have 23 doorstops left over to store. Just get your request for fruit cake in EARLY.

There were a few recognitions presented - Lions PHIL INGWELL and JODI BURMESTER got Centennial Awards, and JODI also received the Silver Membership Key for securing a number of new members.

Comment from Stuff the Bus chairperson JODI; Thanks to all of us working together, the 2016 Stuff the Bus school supply drive was a huge success! Even with fewer ads & other hiccups at some of the stores on collection day, collections were up! This year's value is over $16,000! Bringing our 4 year total to $64,000+!!!! That's a lot of school supplies & Lion & Lioness hours! Our Club members put in 49.5 hours, out of a total of181.5 . We don't have the list on hand, but we'll have the names of our Club who worked in the next TALE.