Good morning Rotarians!
Last week we were joined by many guests! Carol Casey, Kim Lapinski and Cynthia Pacetti joined us for lunch and to hear our speaker.
HAPPY DOLLARS
While everyone was enjoying lunch happy dollars started to add up.
Tony started us with a sad dollar because he was getting lots of phone calls of people trying to reach someone else, all because his number was the one up on Google.
Doug gave a happy dollar for the celebration of the Orthodox Christmas which is on Jan 7th.
This then sparked Eddie to share about how he collects calendars and saves them from past years. He noted that there are some years that have the exact same dates as 2026, I believe 1994 was one of them. He offered up old calendars that line up with this year to anyone that wanted one.
Karl shared that he got a new switch for one of the grills that is used at the Rotary Breakfast, and was able to get it at a lesser price than originally anticipated.
ANNOUNCEMENT
The Pie For Brunch has been scheduled for Pi day this year as it falls on Saturday. March 14 we will be handing out community grants and eating all the pie we can! Nichole has noted that she will have applications available by January 15th and they will be open for a month.
Eddie brought up that the library was putting on a fun event during the school break in February. They will be having indoor mini golf and are looking for sponsors for each hole.
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Jim gave all those in attendance the RI Magazine quiz from December, there was no prize this go round, which was OK as no one got any of the questions correct. The next quiz will be on the January magazine during our Club Assembly at the end of the month. Read those magazines!
Eddie also shared with us that he was approached by the SHS Hockey Teams about helping to support them during their Pink Out Game, which will be played on January 31. Pink Out is generally to raise awareness for breast cancer. Eddie floated the idea of having Barre Rotary match any donations from the games that night to then be donated to cancer. A motion was made that Barre Rotary would match any donations that night to help the SHS hockey teams raise money for this cause, a second was made and no discussion. Everyone unanimously voted to support this endeavor.
Eddie is always looking for volunteers to help at the concession stand. Click HERE to sign up for a shift at the concession stand.
GUEST SPEAKER
Last week our guest speaker was Toni Kaeding. Toni is a retired nurse who now uses her time to help in the education of the medical aid in dying with Patient Choices Vermont. She started the meeting sharing about what the medical aid in dying is NOT, and the biggest thing is that it's not suicide. There are strict requirements to be able to utilize this, one of which is that you have to already be dying, usually these are people who are already on hospice care. They also need to be capable of making their own decisions and also self administer the drug to bring a peaceful death at the time of the patients choosing.
The discussion also shifted a little bit to death doulas and their role. They are there to help the family and patient transition, and often privide a listening ear for the patient's and their families..
Toni shared that MAID (medical aid in dying) is currently legal in 12 states plus DC and should soon be legal in New York.
She shared that the median age of patients using MAID is 70 and it's used about 40 times per month. In Vermont there have never been any abuse or misuse of the drug reported. The largest user group of this are cancer patients who are terminally ill followed by those with Parkinson's Disease and ALS. She also shared that about 30% of people who fill their prescription don't use it.
In talking about how to request the use of MAID Toni suggested talking with your primary care physician about if they would assist in MAID if it is something that you want to request in the future. She noted that it's better to know that now when you have the time to search for a doctor who would support your decision in this if desired.
To use MAID you need to request it three times to your doctor, two of them need to be oral requests with a minimum of 2 weeks apart from each other and the last request needs to be written.
Everyone found Toni's talk incredibly informational and were grateful she could join us.
