MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

So dear CAL Volunteers,
I can tell you how my day started. I was up and dressed and headed off to Naples to attend the first grant committee meeting at the home of Diane Arrants. The ride was lovely, I was enjoying listening to “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri, and Cooper was enjoying watching out the window while having his ears scratched. Diane lives in a lovely pastoral area. When I pulled up to her house it seemed ominously quiet, no one answered the door, no cars in the driveway. I called and found out that the first meeting was at Bizarre Bazaar. I had overshot it by 30 miles. You can imagine how my day filled me at that point.

If you think perhaps things are a little busy lately at Bizarre Bazaar, you are so right. Business has been incredible. As a result, we have $9000 MORE to give back to the community in grants and scholarships than last year. That is an 8.6% increase. Last year we had $96,000 and this year we have $105,000. I was thrilled that we had crossed over the 100K mark this year. To quote Joyce Spiller, “Yippee!

Speaking of Joyce. She called me this week from her car. Seems that she was leaving BizBaz and as she was pulling out of the parking lot a moose ran across right in front of her. Neither moose nor vehicle made contact, but Joyce reported that the moose did not look pleased.

We had an interesting board meeting this week. About four months ago Donna Hutter approached me regarding the possibility of creating a fund with the Idaho Community Foundation for CAL. A fund like that would insure that money would continue to flow into the community to CAL and in the name of CAL for support of non-profits even if we ceased to exist in the form we do now. We are in the preliminary exploration now. As we learn more about the pros and cons we will be coming to you to exchange thoughts. If we decide it is worth serious consideration, we will bring in someone with expertise to speak to the entire group.

Our meeting on April 15 will be very different. We usually don’t have an April meeting so we decided to have a little fun with this one. Wishing you all a happy Easter.

Love, Sherry 

P.S. Hold the Date:  June 27 is the CAL dog walk to support cancer services in Bonner County.