LURE of the DRUMS : Year Two at GFWC Woman's Club of Spokane

Last year we discovered that our clubhouse large auditorium, which is notorious for it's echoing qualities, is the perfect venue for a percussion concert. It's an absolutely amazing experience, the floor, your chair the very air in there becomes part of the drumming experience. This year Japanese style Suzaku Taiko Drummers and the  African Style Ashe Drum and Dance Company are returning as our feature performers. This is an exciting way to invite the community into our clubhouse to celebrate local artists and Arts.

Lure of the Drums is a fundraiser for our clubhouse renovation and maintenance needs. The clubhouse is 80-100 years old [we added on 6000 sq ft in 1928] and there are many fix-its awaiting in a building this age.  One of the fix-its is toning down the acoustical echo in the large auditorium.Our initial project is to replace vertical blinds, installed in the 1980's, with heavy sound absorbing drapes on the eight 5ft. by 8ft windows.  That's over 200 yards of fabric and lining.

Woman's Club of Spokane Event Weekend Meets Artic Front

Well, our luck is holding, again.  A planned event is falling during sever weather.  So far that has not prevented our success in drawing in people , but I do wonder what our draw would be with a little better cooperation with Mother Nature.  Last night, while Spokane slept we had a blizzard.   Ten inches of swirling snow and it is very cold.  Fifteen degrees when we started shoveling at my house at 8:15AM.  My good man, Ralph Humphreys, was hard at work shoveling the Woman's Club of Spokane.  With two weddings and a Holistic Women's Helath Fair [Care for Caregivers is the theme] scheduled this weekend at the clubhouse, that snow needed to be removed before the ice cap formed on the sidewalk.  Did I mention they predict -3F for Saturday morning. This was the view from my dining room window this morning.

                                 Just 3.5 more weeks of winter, I hope

Exploring Energy Conservation in Old Clubhouses

February in Spokane is still winter.  After surviving the worst of it,we hope!, our minds turn to spring and work projects. Last year our house committee wrote a vision paper for our renovating our clubhouse.  We have completed several projects this year, with lots of volunteer labor. It is so exciting.   Our 100 year old clubhouse needs a plan for increasing it's energy efficiency. Last week our club house committee chair Correen, and I toured our clubhouse with Josh, from Sustainable Works Spokane Sustainableworks, and a lovely gentleman from Banner Furnace.  It was an eyeopener to see our building through experienced eyes. We probably will never qualify for LEEDS certification but there is lots of room for improvement.  And many projects we can do ourselves that will save operation cost money next year.  Green jobs are great for our local economy and we want to encourage this by looking close to home for ways to educate both our club members and the general public.   Because we have a commercial building not covered under their grant we can't take advantage of their full program, but now we have the seeds for a plan.
By the way, this week, both Correen and I had Sustainable Works audit our homes [a 1940's house and a 1904 house]. Wow, what a great project this non-profit has, we both learned so much.
Next post, conservation, education and a landscaping project.

BREAKFAST with SANTA at Woman's Club of Spokane

                                              I do believe the children believed, I know I believed
Two years ago we starting thinking about fundraising ideas.  Things you love to do.  This was our first year with Breakfast with Santa.  A club member found a WONDERFUL  Real Santa Claus Fred at her doctor's office.  A local retirement home volunteered to cater the breakfast [Belgian waffles, strawberries, sausage and eggs and OJ!]  We had real tablecloths, real china, and great decorations.  The children were dressed up and had a great time. We had the children from several families sponsored from a community center in one of our poorer neighborhoods. This was the second event where our club's new C-3 Juniorettes volunteered. We learned so much.  Our goal next year is to have more children with at least half to be sponsored.

                                                            Santa and some C-3 Juniorettes

GFWC Preservation and Paint

                                                               Two of the four scaffoldings.

 

Rosemary [blue shirt and cane] gives a tour

We just had a fantastic weekend of collaborative volunteering at the Woman's Club of Spokane.  Our budget is minuscule, but our need to maintain our historic clubhouse is pressing each month.  Spokane Preservation Advocates [SPA] has a "Doing It" project about four times a year.  We were thrilled when they asked to help us with painting.  Our Large Auditorium ceiling is 2700 square feet and has 17 1/2 foot high ceiling; think lots of scaffolding and oceans of heavy plastic to cover hardwood floors, huge windows and dangling historic light fixtures. The club provided a speghetti lunch for 50 people and the paint.  Oh my gosh was this a great day. We were expecting 25 people and the weather was awful [slick black ice].  Imagine my surprise when all those people showed up and they wanted to work.  SPA also gave us a matching grant last year to replace broken window panes in the room below the Auditorium. 

Winter hits GFWC Spokane Clubhouse

                                          WOMAN'S CLUB of SPOKANE SNOWY DAY
Thanksgiving week 2010 has been a challenge in Spokane.  The week started out with a white out blizzard  with snow dry as fluffy sugar. Then we moved into subzero arctic cold and we are now finishing the week with a huge dump of snow.  Ralph, who lives in a tiny garage apartment off the alley, two doors down from the clubhouse, is smiling with a $100 for a week of snow removal in his pocket.  Gosh I'm glad we have him, he gets the place shoveled most days by 8 AM and clears it again if needed.  That's 200 linear feet of sidewalk 6 feet wide, almost a 1000 square feet of walkways and stairs, and breaks through the snow berm on the arterial.  December 5, 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of the first meeting inside the new Woman's Club of Spokane clubhouse, purportedly the first commercial building built by women in the City of Spokane.  Isn't she pretty.

There is a wedding scheduled inside the clubhouse on the day of  this picture, November 27,2010.  You can also see the three trees and 25' flagpole added to the landscaping this year.  OK you can stop snowing now!

Supporting Libraries in Tough Economic Times

As this recession drags on, cities are facing tough financial decisions. Yesterday, I, and six other members of the Woman's Club of Spokane attended a Library Board meeting to express our concern about a budget decision.  The board is choosing to close a branch library in a very poor, central urban neighborhood in our city so all other branches can remain open full time.  The Library board recently announced that the East Central library branch closure was based on "metrics".  The "metrics" were:  least amount of traffic [except Internet use] and closest in distance to other branch libraries.  The catch, many new immigrants live in this area [Spokane has a large international refugee settlement program], children and teens walk to this branch as their parents cannot afford to drive them to this library on any other, and bus coverage in this area is inadequate and about to get cut back even more.  In addition, there are two large elementary schools in this neighborhood and this is considered a safe haven for children after school.

The crowd of about 30, of all political persuasions and economic levels, had quite a few ideas about alternatives to closure.  Our club president, Ginger, testified about GFWC's long standing support for public libraries, especially in under served neighborhoods.  Another member Louise, presented over 100 letters of concern from the  general community about the closure of this branch.  I spoke to the TV news.   No one wants to see a library close, even in hard times.  Libraries are too important of an element for sustaining our American way of life. We hope the board will reconsider their choice.

My thought: surely closing a library in a more affluent neighborhood where access [by a parents car] to other libraries is less of an issue makes more sense for the common good.