Thursday, October 9, 2025

Lunch Buffet

Doors Open 11:30AM

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One of the core missions of the American Red Cross is support for our military and Veteran community and their families. Please join us to learn about the primarily volunteer-led work that the Red Cross does to support our service members and families; and thank our Veteran community every day. Importantly, how our communities, and you, are an important part of that work.

Dan Williams is the Executive Director of the American Red Cross serving Northern and Central Minnesota. That geography encompasses 36 counties in northern and central Minnesota, Douglas County in Wisconsin, and 7 sovereign Tribal communities. He has been in this role since 2013. Prior to that, Dan worked for Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota Financial Counseling here in Duluth for 15 years, leading their foreclosure prevention and student loan counseling statewide. Dan graduated from UW-Superior with a finance and marketing degree, and lives in Superior with his wife, Sarah, and son, Gabe.

 

 

Chambers Grove Park

Oct. 10, 2025
1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

 

We have a special volunteer opportunity to help with trail maintenance on the Superior Hiking Trail.  Volunteers will meet and park at Chambers Grove Park in Fond du Lac. From there, we will carpool to the old Mission Creek trailhead and hike around one mile into the project area.   Volunteers will help with corridor clean-up by removing dead debris and looping brush along the corridor.  Total time commitment of 3 to 4 hours, which includes the hike in and out. Please contact Dan Maki if interested in helping.

 

By Anthony Nordan

 

President Zach Walters rang in our meeting, followed by The Pledge of Allegiance and Rotary’s 4-Way Test

 

Rotarians recite The Pledge of Allegiance

 

Today’s reflection was brought to us by Jerry Thoreson. A special thank you to Jerry for stepping up at the last moment to bring us our reflection. The reflection was based on Ecclesiastes 3 the beginning half of the chapter. There is a time for everything…. A reminder that for Rotarians there is a time for everything that we do. We should make that time so we can be the change in the community we want to see.

 

We had several guests today:

Judy Sage, wife of Allen Anway

Isaac (Harbor City International School Jr Rotarian)

Harper Mistelske (Proctor Senior High, Jr. Rotarian)

Tommy Aho (Hermantown High School Jr. Rotarian)

Mark Fitzgibbons (Fitz Photo)

Eric Yonke (Eco Rotarian)

Ben Cullen (Young & Associates)

Cynthia Lapp (Guest Presenter)

 

Club #25 welcomes our guests

 

Volunteer Opportunity. We are looking for volunteers to help clean out the Superior Hiking Trail on October 10^th from 1-5pm. Cleaning up from Chambers Grove to Mission Creek. It is a 1-mile hike in and out of the area. It will take about 3 hours to clean up the hiking trail. It will be a great opportunity to be in fellowship and exercise for the weekend.

 

President Elect Dan Maki – calls for volunteers!

 

Past President Gary Melander gave us a one-week warning. We have raised 1.35 million dollars through the rose sale. You can have people go to “Rotaryroses.com” to buy roses. They can also give the Rotarian that sent them to the website credit for the purchase of the roses. Distribution sign-up is in the back of the meeting and if you are interested, please speak with Gary. This is a great opportunity to get to know your fellow Rotarians. Gary closed out his announcement with a reminder: Keep Selling.

 

Past President Gary Melander: “Sell those Rose Tickets!!”

 

Eric Yonke from Eco Rotary joined us for his first visit to Duluth 25 Rotary Club. He announced that The Paul Harris Dinner is November 6^th starting at 5:30, at Pier B (Past President Sandy Hoff earned a fine for this). This year’s guest speaker is Rotarian Thomas Gump. This is a foundation fundraiser and there is also a QR code for the dinner if you wish to sign-up. You can also find the sign-up at this link: https://duluthsuperiorecorotary.org/event/paul-harris-dinner

 

 

Eric Yonke from Eco Rotary – Save The Date for the Paul Harris Dinner- November 6^th

 

 

Allen Anway – a man of many sutures

 

 

Chair of the Day Past President Al Makynen

 

The Chair of the Day Past President Al Makynen presented the guest speaker Cynthia Lapp to the club. She is the co-founder and current board member of starry skies north. She holds a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of Minnesota and is a doctoral candidate at Royal Roads University in Colwood, British Colombia. She currently works at Metweek & Company here in Duluth but prior to that she was an Adjunct Professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus.

 

Cynthia’s first question for us was: what is light pollution? She began to explain the differences in light pollution and how it affects a variety of things in our lives. Light pollution in some European countries in handled differently than in the United States. She offered an example of someone shining a light into your house during the night and how annoying that could be. In the United States there is currently no law or ordinance addressing light pollution crossing property boundaries.

There is also a direct connection between farming / agriculture and light pollution. Pollination insects interact with the lights that we utilize and are disrupted by their brightness. There was a deep discussion surrounding the brightness and color temperature of the lights that we utilize. Lights that we are utilizing now are significantly less energy intensive but much higher on the color temperature scale. This leads to greater light pollution and an inability to see stars in the night sky. Light pollution isn’t a local problem since it can reach for dozens of miles away from the offending area.

 

There is a large swath of land in northern Minnesota that has been designated as a light pollution free zone. In these areas much of the milky way and stars in the night sky can be seen without issue.

 

Light pollution can be addressed by changing a few things in our cities. Regulation and money is often at the heart of why the solution isn’t easy. We can do some things ourselves to help such as talking to our power company, representatives, and changing fixtures at our home to be less light pollutive.

 

Questions

 

Past President Al Makynen with guest speaker Cynthia Lapp