Last week's meeting featured two great speakers.

 

Our BAVTS Artisan of the Month award winner Justin Yearwood gave an inspiring talk. A senior currently enrolled in the Masonry Program, Justin gave us a review of his BAVTS career which included learning carpentry, applying a roof to the BAVTS project house, and masonry techniques. After graduation he plans on attending Northampton Community College and hopefully pursuing his masonry career which he loves to do. We wish Justin all the success, and by his passion and enthusiasm will succeed-masons are just one of the trades in high demand with the skills learned over many years of experience.
 

Our speaker was Northampton County District Attorney Terry Houck, giving his first presentation to our club about the legal side of Northampton County. As expected last year's COVID shutdown delayed many cases, resulting in a doubling of cases to process this year. A positive has been the ability to select quality jurors since the pandemic has made it easier to weed out those who do not want to perform there civic responsibility by using Covid-19 fear as an excuse.

 

Terry elaborated on the DA's office community outreach program and gave us some pandemic crime statistics. Burglary down, drug related offenses up, and domestic abuse remaining the same. He assured us that despite problems seen with other police departments in the US, all Northampton County police departments are accredited and officers go through rigorous training procedures to assure our citizens have the most professional and competent officers protecting us. It was a pleasure to have Terry talk to us and look forward to future updates.

 

Many thanks to our amazing webmaster Al Philpotts for running the meeting from his hospital bed and doing the Invocation. Talk about Service above Self! The great news is that Al has been home resting up and we look forward to seeing him Wednesday.

 

At our Happy Hour meeting Thursday Paul Ricciardi told us the 28 cases of dictionaries have arrived at his house, stickers need to be applied, and then they will be distributed to area elementary 3rd graders (also 4th graders who missed receiving due to the shutdown). Stand by for more details as the committee is working out the distribution with the schools.

 

Another District 7430 "Welcome to Rotary" Zoom program is this Tuesday February 2 at 5:30PM. Learn about things Rotary does around the world and locally that you are not aware of. As you increase your Rotary awareness you will also network with area Rotarians. With the snow continuing into Tuesday this sounds like a great way to stay connected and have something to do.

 

This week we will hear from Jenae Holtzhafer of the Kindness Project-an all volunteer non-profit organization that provides support to foster families in the Lehigh Valley and operates "The Kindness Exchange" store in Emmaus. We will find out what this dynamic organization does and how they ease the transition of children into their new foster home and how you can help.

 

Yours in Rotary service,