January 2008

January Club Volunteers:
Greeter: Bob Libby
Prayer: Bob Libby
Program: Jeff Rudolph
Tail Twister: Gary Fabian
Newsletter Notes: Donna Schultz

Iowa City Noon Lions Club Meeting Notes


January 2, 2008
TT & Announcements: This was the first meeting of 2008. January birthdays and anniversaries were recognized. January birthdays were Susie Brown, Paul Burgess, and Donna Schultz. Jovon and Donna Schultz where the only anniversaries. Gary Fabian and Ruth McAndrews won the Convention Fund drawing and Mary Ann Woodburn didn’t draw the joker. TT questions were weather related. Did you know that the highest temperature recorded here on Jan 1st was 51 and the lowest was -10? Those questioned and fined were Chesley Hansen, Chris Misel, Paul Burgess, Doug Busch, and Bob Libby.
President, Mary Ann asked for a volunteer(s) to serve as Lion Tamer. The club needs someone to store the flag, banner, bell and gavel and bring it into each meeting as the University Club has no room to store it.
Dough Busch brought a guest, Jeremy Provin from Hills Bank.
Program: Sarah Downs, home from Optometry school in Memphis, Tennessee, and a member of SVOSH (Student Volunteers for Optometric Service to Humanity) was our speaker.

SVOSH was founded in 1975 and serves Central and South America. They have seen over 185,000. Lions Clubs sponsor them with funds and recycled glasses. They also do vision screening in the Memphis area. Each student raises $800 to support their volunteer trip out of the country. Much of the equipment is brought by SVOSH. They also give sunglasses too.



January 16, 2008
TT & Announcements: TT Gary questioned us on movies. He actually wanted us to remember ones from 1900-1930! Convention fund winners were Susie Brown (doesn’t she ALWAYS win?) and Mary Ann Woodburn. Jeff Rudolph did not draw the joker.
Mark Kamps from Coldwell Banker was a guest of Steve Vanderah.
President Mary Ann, asked us to check our homes or office to see if we have any Lions items (i.e. books, Smencils, paper plates, napkins, bulbs, brooms). She wants to get them all located and possibly put in one location. Please contact her if you do have something.
She thanked those who have returned forms stating the prospects you will contact for support of the golf tournament this summer.
MaryAnn read thank you’s from Katie Vitosh for letting her participate in the Peace Poster contest and from the Johnson County Historical Society to which we donated several of Irving Weber’s books.
She asked for more volunteers for eye glass sorting and for the KidsSight program.
She read a list of all of our accomplishments so far this year and thanked everyone who has helped. These are listed below.
Program: Our own Jeff Rudolph, presented the program talking about financial trends. He asked if we were worried about what appears to be happening. He said we should concentrate on our personal goals and don’t worry about the ups and downs in the market.
He compared today with other times of apparent recession. In 1987 we were worried about Japan taking away our market share, now we have China. In 1987 we had a new Federal Reserve Chairman just like we do now. At that time we experience Black Monday when everything dropped 24%. Things recovered.
Are jobs going overseas? Not really… we have a 4.7% rate of unemployment. It was much higher in the 70’s and 80’s.
Should we worry about gas? No. It represents only 4% of our income. Labor is the greatest cost of business today. The economy is still growing, inflation is low and stable, corporate profits are strong, and stocks are of average value.