Obviously, the costumes were wonderful as usual. First prize went to Bruce Dietch, the Scarecrow. Second was Sharyn Hundley as Mary Poppins. A coven of witches was third. There were many witches in attendance and I am not sure which ones made up the winning coven. (That was not a joke, folks.)
Thanks to our innovative party planner, Sandra Stephenson, we again had a chance to win some exciting prizes playing Halloween Bingo. The MCREA Scholarship fund made some money which we will give away to at least two high school seniors in the spring. If past recipients are eligible grade-wise and apply for another scholarship, we will consider them as well. Of course, this gets expensive, but seeing these young people go into education helps us ensure that there will be good people in the schools in the future.
FREA is offering $1000 grants to teachers to use in their classrooms. Information about the grants is available on the FREA website - www.frea.org If you know someone who might benefit from this opportunity, give him or her a heads-up to look this up. You can do a lot with $1000 to really perk up a program. I know FREA is especially interest in the STEM curriculum, but other innovative programs would also be considered.
The FREA conference will be held on May 24-26 at the Hilton in Altamonte Springs. If you have never attended one of these, I know you would enjoy learning more about FREA and about ideas for making MCREA more effective. Also, the banquet and the meetings are fun. There will be more information forthcoming about room rates (special usually for FREA) and the extra days that are usually available at those good rates if you want to hang around a little longer and see Hogwarts or do some shopping and dining at Disney.
Renaissance on 9th has bumped our meeting from its usual third Thursday next month to Wednesday of that week, Nov. 16. Evidently it was something they had to do because of a previous commitment which they had overlooked. They were so sorry about it that they have offered us a dinner buffet instead of our usual lunch offering. The buffet will have two entre items -- fish and/or meat. Unfortunately, Superintendent Diana Greene, who was to be our speaker, could not change her schedule in order to accommodate this new date, so we will have a different program. I do not have details about the replacement.
At the District 7 meeting in September, MCREA received several awards Minnie Lee Jones received the District 7 Volunteer of the Year Award. We received the Volunteer Service Award for all those hours we logged working in the community and with our youth. We also received the Unit Membership Award for increasing our number of new members by 46% last year. There is no doubt we are a viable and active group. Now who will step up and accept the Treasurer's job? Ron has served us long and well, but he really wants to give up the position. It isn't that difficult. I feel that even I, an English major, could do it, but I have the Blog and am on some other committees as are all the current members of the Board. We need a new person to join us.
I hope you all have had a chance to sign up for the trip to Fisherman's Village which Minnie Lee, Cultural Affairs Chair, has organized for us. We had fun at the last year's holiday visit to Selby Gardens and the trip through the Sarasota neighborhoods to see the Christmas lights. On December 14, we will be leaving Bayshore Gardens Shopping Center at 3 p.m. for a bus ride to Fisherman's Village. We will have dinner together there at Captain's Table, and then we will board a boat for a one hour cruise of the canals. Residents along the route always decorate their houses, yards, and boats for Christmas. We should be back about 10:30 p.m. The cost is $90. Treat yourself to a night out with us. You don't need a buddy to go along because we will all be your buddies. The deadline to sign up is Nov. 26. Send your check to Minnie or give it to her at our next meeting.
I put grade levels on 363 books last week and delivered them to FELT for the last food distribution before Thanksgiving. The FELT folks were very appreciative of your great donations of really good books for these homeless kids I must say it was all I could do to just grade level those books and not find myself a cozy corner and read, read, read. They were outstanding examples of children's literature. Now we must begin again in order to have more books for the last day before summer vacation. I am sure you know how important it is for a child to have a book of his or her own.
Remember we are also collecting food items for the Manatee County Food Bank. Also, Meals on Wheels is working on giving each person who receives meals an extra little something for Christmas. Socks, small flashlights, toiletries etc. make great gifts. They have asked us to help them out with that. They also appreciate gift bags and Christmas wrapping paper and bows.
I hope I see you on November 16 at 11:30. Don't forget --Wednesday instead of Thursday. If you haven't heard from your caller in the previous week, call Sue Roe at 792-4785 or Mary Ann Jensen at 756-7603.
Ellen
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