President Dennis Connolly opened the meeting by announcing that Charlie Longbella has accepted the nomination to serve as NBMV Rotary President for the 2021-22 Rotary year.  Charlie’s Rotary spirit and leadership skills have been very evident even though he is a fairly new member.  Congratulations, Charlie!
 
Dennis also highlighted some upcoming events which can be found in his weekly upcoming events email.
 
Dana Rebelein preemptively offered a $5 contribution to forestall wearing the birthday hat today, but Nyle Zikmund countered with a $5 contribution to compel her to wear it.  In the end justice was served as Dana complied (see photo of Dana and Nyle below). 
 
Our presenter today was Mark Kinde, M.P.H. an epidemiologist from the Injury and Violence Prevention Section of the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH).  Mark’s topic was “I can see clearly now … Injury & Violence Prevention in 2020”.  Mark said that the mission of the MDH is to Protect, Preserve and Improve the health of all Minnesotans.  Mark credited early 20th century visionary, Geoffrey Vickers, with the following quote: “Public health is the constant redefinition of the unacceptable.” Unfortunately, the opportunity to be healthy is not equally available everywhere for everyone in Minnesota.  Mark shared a lot of data and graphs with us and he graciously made his Powerpoint presentation available to share with our newsletter readers.  Click here to download the complete presentation.  Mark and Dennis are shown below.
 
Your bulletin editor was on vacation last week, but Ed James was kind enough to takes some photos of the week’s activities:
 
At last week's meeting, Nils Friberg presented John Ordway with a Paul Harris Fellow +6, signifying over $7,000 in contributions to the Rotary Foundation.  Congratulations, John!  (See photo below)
 
Ed also snapped some photos of the Rotary Holiday Party (see below).