Kiwanis Club of North Suburban Golden K St. Paul

I am back from Texas vacation and the grandkids are all okay. LaMar remains steadfast to the ringing of the bell and getting our meeting started with the “Harris Stretch”. Nice to see nothing has changed in the week I was gone!

For the circle three report today Gordon Martin noted that the memorial service for Bob Munson’s wife, Mary Jane, is set for February 10th. We had three guests today too.

LaMar Zollinger started out the happy dollars for the day with a buck to celebrate his work at the food shelf this week. John Sweeney gave us a Euro story (very topical for today’s speaker) on how one of his friends was mugged and lost 1,000 Euros noting if they were lost today they would have lost less due to the decreasing value of the Euro versus the dollar – small consolation I’m sure! Phil Larson took his turn at the joke of the day with a “public service announcement” about the biggest air crash ever – yesterday in Moorehead where a Cessna 152 crashed and Ole and Swen were there on search and rescue in a Norwegian cemetery where the crash occurred – so far they had uncovered 846 dead bodies – oh it’s a cemetery – bad joke Phil! Ken Bergstedt followed with his happy dollar citing a recent gopher football event where he met the linebacker coach. Ken had season tickets since 1946, but has decided to give them up – too cold outside in the stadium for now – still having those tickets all those years is quite an accomplishment! Erv Oelke put in a buck for his visiting friend, Dale Noyed. I contributed today for my successful vacation to Houston to visit my kids, grandkids and 350 alligators. Steve Forshay put in a buck asking for advice – he is going to Disneyworld – hey Steve – just have fun!

This week Nat Watkins introduced our speaker. The speaker is a member of our club, Vern Eidman, and a professor Emeritus of the University of Minnesota. Vern’s expertise is in agricultural economics, but he did a lot of research for this presentation on the current state of the European Union. He started with the history and development of the collection of countries that now make up the group – 27 member countries (and to be 28 in 2013 with the addition of Croatia) of which 17 make up the Euro zone (common currency). This group was formed in three stages – first, dismantling barriers (borders), then, going to a single currency and finally, in 1999 creating a central bank system for all 17 countries in the Euro zone (common currency – the Euro). He finished the history lesson with the criteria by which the group is governed – very complex – perhaps too much so.

He lead a discussion on the implications of the current Greece crisis and how it might impact the other countries most in fiscal trouble – Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. He indicated that Ireland (the other I in the PIIGS group of problem countries) had temporarily solved its crisis. All of the recent austerity programs and the riots and unrest might be coming to a head and a near term solution may be at hand, but Vern indicated through his sources of research that there will still loom a longer term problem if the European community cannot find ways to create and sustain economic growth in the region. So the real conclusion from today’s discussion was – “more to follow”. We will have to maybe invite Vern back in a year to see what really happened and how the European Union has progressed. Vern was an excellent speaker – glad he took the time for his extensive research – thanks Vern!

Before I conclude this blog – I’d like to thank Walt Wolfe for writing the blog last week while I was on vacation.

Next week we will explore the wonders of medical breakthroughs with a presentation on Huntington’s disease (HD) from Byran Viau, president of the HD society of America. He will speak on the importance of raising awareness of this disease and its impact on families. It should be another informative session so bring a friend and join us for the next meeting – the social time starts at 1:30 PM and the meeting starts at 2 PM.