Good morning my friends. I couldn’t wait to get up at 4:00 this morning and see what kind of captions Vickie put on my birthday pics. I played editor today and went through all 153 of them this morning and made a few changes to suit me...you know how editors are, don’t you Vickie? Thanks for taking all that time doing that, but I just couldn’t help putting the Cotton-touch to some of the captions. We spent the whole afternoon yesterday with Rick Fipps and Jamison Ellis of WTVI filming an episode that will be aired some time in September. I really enjoyed working with them in the heat. We had to turn the air-conditioning off because of the noise while taping and it got pretty doggone warm. And we apologize for any inconvenience to our customers who came by while we had to close for a half-hour or so while we had to go on location to the Harris Farm to shoot some scenes on location. The show we taped yesterday for WTVI will differ greatly from the one that will air on Friday night at 7:30. Be sure to watch PBS Friday night to see the segment on North Carolina Now with Bob Garner. I hope I don’t embarrass my friends in Mooresville by my performance while singing with my friend, Stephen Brooks. Stephen wrote this fantastic song about “Friends” that just about sums up how we feel at the gallery. It is what I have said for years, “There is no such thing as a stranger, a stranger is just friend I haven’t met.” We want everyone who comes into our gallery to be our friend before they leave. We will be installing our new Exchange Club president, Vickie Ketchie, and her new board of directors today at our noon meeting. Our current District President, Dan Wakeley will be coming over from Raleigh to do the installation of the board and of our newest member, Keith Vorwald. And Barbara Orr, Regional Vice President of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, representing the National Exchange Clubs will be installing me as the new President Elect for our North Carolina District. I will have to go to Detroit, Michigan in October to get trained…I think they will also send me to Toledo, Ohio in January to get me house-broke. I hope they knew what they’re doing when they elected me for this position. Please come to the meeting today to learn more about Exchange and all we do. Child Abuse Prevention is our main focus, but we are also involved in Americanism, community service and working with our youth. Tonight, Vickie and I will be attending another awards banquet, this time at River Run Country Club to receive recognition from the Mooresville Weekly paper as the Number One Gallery in the area. We surely have been blessed a whole lot lately with all this attention we’ve been getting and I don’t know if everybody is feeling sorry for me because I’m getting old or what, but nonetheless, the attention and recognition is really appreciated. Well, it’s almost 6:00 and time to take my seventy-year-old body to the gallery and get started on the day. I hope you all have a great day and meet a new friend. Come to the Exchange Club meeting at noon at the Charles Mack Center today and I promise a good time, good food, and some good friends will be there just waiting to meet you. God Bless!!
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 10:07:51 +0000