Visiting Rotarians and guests: There were no visiting Rotarians. Jerry Curry, a resident of Brimfield, is a married father of two, who works as an engineer at CTL Engineering in Akron. He’s also an Army veteran, an Ohio University graduate and is now working on earning an MBA. He is interested in learning more about Rotary. Paul Organ brought a guest, Nathan Thomas, who has worked at Marathon Financial for seven months and has lived in Indonesia but recently moved back home from the tropics. Laing Kennedy invited guest Brian Grubich, associate director of athletic advancement at Kent State, who is a Field graduate living in Mogadore and is interested in becoming a member of the club. 

 

Announcements: President Kathy announced that the Kent Rotary Foundation will be accepting grant requests by Jan. 31. If you know of an organization worthy of a grant request, please notify the Foundation Board.

 

Birthdays and anniversaries: Jim Arthur, Carol Crimi, Matt French, Phil Lanier, Larry Lohman, Bill Myers and Stacy Richardson had birthdays in January. Chris Martin is celebrating 20 years in Rotary this month, and Dave Hansford is celebrating 40.

 

Program — Table Topics: This week’s speaker was Mary Beth Harper, who introduced a program that asked members to break out into small groups to converse with each other around a list of discussion prompts: pet peeves, extravagant gifts we bought for ourselves, and our guiltiest pleasure. Rotarians engaged in lively discussions. At the end of the program, several tables shared some of the responses. We are annoyed by left-lane slow-drivers, anti-vaxxers, bad grammar, people who don’t call you back, and double-spacing between sentences. One person had too many pet peeves to list. Extravagant gifts included a hot tub, a Bruce Springsteen concert, a Yamaha grand piano, a Mustang convertible, diamond rings, and a meal at the Russian Tea Room with a future wife. Guilty pleasures were mostly related to food, drink, and watching junk TV.