Notes of Aug 17 meeting

Present: Shelly, Tony, Chris Boyce, Anne, John, Dave Engen, Bill, Chris

Johnson, Malda.

Announcement of note: Tony is teaching a class using Suzanne Morse's "Smart Communities". Our own Anne Ganey is quoted in the book. The name of the class is Community Leadership.

Student help:

Tony's students will work on assessing our community's characteristics. Jan Cherrington's class will work on the "Report Card". Bill and the volunteers will stay in touch with that progress.

Radio:

We need to involve Jim Gullickson in the planning of the format & content ofmour radio program. Dave has spoken to him & will try to arrange to include him at our next meeting. Dave will try to involve Bethany in our project. Bethany has terrific equipment & even teach a course on Electronic Communication. We need to call a meeting of the ten people who signed up for the radio project in June. We need to identify the host(s), research the issues & guests. The possibility exists that we could tie a weekly program in with the NM Library programs. We could discuss the issues in the meetings preceding &

Following the Library events. Another topic would be to send someone out with a tape recorder & ask people questions on a given topic. YWCA has a new radio show, Empowering Women & Eliminating Racism, on KMSU.

Clearing House:

Malda will contact Rhys Gaffer to begin the work of gathering dates of programs that invite people to come & participate. We could not think of any programs that we would not post. If seating is limited or an attendance fee is charged, that must be mentioned in the posting.

Peter Hutchinson, author of The Price of Government & other notable achievements, is coming to town on February 9. Tony is attempting to organize his speaking to the Chamber leadership program, addressing the CV quarterly meeting, possibly addressing Southern MN ASPA, academics & other municipal organizations. Perhaps the leaders of governmental units might hear the same things as the leaders of labor unions & at the same time. His fee is $7500 for the day but might be less. We might work in a time for book signing & an interview with the media. Chris will work with Tony on this.

Other possible speakers for our quarterly meetings might be Suzanne Morse or Harry Boyd on neighborhood empowerment.

How can we involve Dennis Miller in our endeavor? Tony & John will go to see him. Perhaps Denny Dotson might also become involved.

Our September Quarterly meeting, Sept 21:

The combined topics of voter registration (rights) & Voter responsibilities. Might Tim Penny some to speak? Jesse Ventura? Anne will call Tim. Dave & Bill will contact the people doing the voter registration drives.

NEXT MEETING IS ON THURSDAY, SEPT. 2 AT 7:30 am.

The article that I referred to was a Joe Kline column in August 16 TIME magazine. In part I quote

"A new book by the Stanford political scientist Morris Fiorin, "Culture

War? the Myth of a Polarized America", argues that a closely divided nation isn't necessarily a deeply divided nation. Fiorina cites polling data that show miniscule differences between red- and blue-state voters on most issues........."

If you would like me to bring the article for the next meeting let me know soon as I recycle all my magazines by taking them to the Walnut Towers. I apologize that I do not know how to make my e-mail underline the titles of books.