Cari fratelli e sorelle,
The year 2011 is in the
history books and now we’re in the bleakest part of the year, winter 2012. With short days and long, cold nights along
with incredible heating bills, I can’t wait for spring to come along. I’m very grateful we’ve had so many ‘balmy’
days recently, except for a few ‘nuisance’ snow storms which, no matter how
little snow, still needs to be shoveled away!
By the time this newsletter
comes to you, Ground Hog Day will have taken place and I’m hopeful Punxsutawney
Phil predicts an early spring. Of course
we have a few members who will be in
Our lodge had its January
council meeting and several items were discussed and presented to the lodge
during our January Meeting. For those
who were unable to attend, following is a very brief review of the subjects
discussed:
The Italian Classes Program at
this writing has 64 students, with thanks to Phil D’Alleva
who publicized the offering just about everywhere. Also, thanks to Dan DiTucci,
St. Margaret’s once again will allow us to use their classrooms at no
charge. This is an enormous PLUS for our
treasury. Thanks to Phil and Dan!
We discussed dwindling membership
and possible incentives for our members to find and bring in new members. Marie Patrick will come up with incentive
ideas.
Our wine tasting event will
be held on April 13th at the American Legion on
Our regular June meeting
will be at the Billerica Elks for a cookout.
It’ll be very different and sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun with lots
of hot food from the grill! As of the
moment Pat Moreno has ‘volunteered’ to do the cooking!
Our annual Christmas dinner was
discussed and will once again be held at Lucia’s unless someone can come up
with an alternate location that provides
Italian food as wonderful as Lucia’s and is within a price we can
afford. So far we’ve not be able to find
a restaurant as accommodating and affordable.
The council also suggested we ask every member for a $20
donation in order to supplement our scholarship fund. The
last time we did this a couple of years ago we raised over $1,000 thanks to our
generous members. I’m hoping we can do
it again. Please send your checks to me
at
Meanwhile, we do NOT have a
dinner/dance on our calendar for this October due to a lack of a committee to
put plans in place. Last year’s
dinner/dance was an OUTSTANDING social event with rave reviews from
everyone. If you’d like to pitch in and
get involved in running an event, let me know.
It can be both fun and very rewarding.
It’s a great experience. We need
your participation and leadership. We
can’t depend on the SAME people every time.
Some happenings for our
March meeting: we’ll be initiating a couple of new members and also inviting
the parents of our Junior Lodge members to join us after our regular monthly
meeting to socialize over coffee and dessert and get to know what the Sons of
Italy lodge is all about. It’s our hope
they may become interested in joining our lodge.
On the 28th of
March, as part of the Italian Exchange Program, the Italian kids from Cles (near the Austrian border in northeast
Carol Nappa
has been doing an outstanding job with the interesting monthly newsletter. BUT, like everything else, it’s only as good
as the information it contains and she NEEDS interesting stories, Italian
history, jokes, recipes, trip reports, etc.
Please send her items for publication to keep our newsletter interesting
and the very best newsletter within our Massachusetts Grand Lodge.
Our next meeting will take
place on Tuesday, February 21st at
Have a happy St. Valentine’s
Day and stay warm and healthy!
Ciao!
Don McGowan
781-272-0529