The Newbury Woman's Club Weblog
Serving Newbury, VermontFall Notes
I don’t know where the time goes, but here we are in the middle of a spectacular fall with all sorts of activities on the horizon. Hope you had a happy summer and got in enough warm weather to last you through the next few months. Please take a moment to look through this site because it is packed with information about two upcoming club meetings, all the interest group activities and a very important message involving the ongoing process to clarify the property boundary for the Old Village Church.
Spring Festivities
Lose your April doldrums by joining us this spring in some of our many activities. Check out this site for news about dinner opportunities, discussion groups, craft and gardening activities. Also help us plan for a June fundraiser. Above all, keep your fingers crossed for some warm spring weather! See you soon.
2014!
A belated welcome to the new year and another busy season for the Newbury Woman’s Club. Our upcoming calendar is pretty packed with club activities and fundraisers. We are looking forward to providing refreshments at Town Meeting again this year as well as our big mud season flea market. Pins and Needles, Book Discussions and our Potluck Dinner groups all have activities planned in the coming months and the Gardening group is already dreaming of some summer excursions. Check out the following pages for more information about all of these events.
Join the Celebration
250th end of year celebration – Saturday, December 14th on the Common. The 250th Committee has planned a wonderful day of activities to celebrate the close of our anniversary year. There will be all sorts of family oriented fun including an outdoor ice skating rink. The Woman’s Club has been asked to provide cookies and manpower for the warming tent during the day. We’re not entirely sure of the timeline and all the details at this point, but we will be needing people to bring cookies and also people to work at the tent. The calendar committee also plans to use this opportunity to sell the remainder of our calendars (we are getting down to the bottom of the box. If you still want some, they are also available at Kiss the Cook and the Party Store in Woodsville, Copies and More in Wells River, the Newbury Village Store and the Wells River Savings Bank in Newbury Village and the Norwich Bookstore in Norwich). Come be part of this historic community celebration!
A Summer to Remember!
What a summer! The Club has never been busier. We kicked off the season by hosting the big Founders’ Day 250th Celebration in May and things never slowed down! Between work on the Old Village Church, the Cracker Barrel Bazaar Cookie Walk tent, tending the flower boxes throughout the Village and all the activities of our many specialty groups, we’ve had more than enough to do these past few months. Usually we look at fall as the start of our busy season, but this year I suspect we’ll feel like life has slowed down when our annual meeting in October arrives! Check out this site for a recap of all that’s been happening the past few months as well as our plans for the future.
Happy 2013!
We’re heading into a very busy time of year for the club. We have several fundraising projects in the works, 250th Anniversary Celebration events and some fun club get-togethers scheduled for the next couple of months.
You may have noticed that most of our club communication these days is via email, which has saved us a lot of time, energy and money and has allowed us to be more spontaneous in our notices. However, I realize that some of our club members do not regularly use email and it worries me that they do not always get all the information about club activities in a timely manner. Consequently, once we have completed work on updating our membership list (thank you, Helena!) I would like to formalize some phone partnerships between people who get email and those who don’t so that all information gets out to all club members. In the meantime, if you know of someone who doesn’t generally get email and who would like to be notified throughout the year of club activities, please take a moment to give them a call when you get a club email notice and let them know what is going on.
250th EVENTS
Thanks to Selenda for organizing the very successful program featuring Adam Boyce as Charles Taggart at the library in January. We’ve planned two more ways to participate in this year’s celebrations. Coming up on Saturday, May 18th is Founders’ Day. We plan to open up the Old Village Church for this activity and provide refreshments.
We are also planning and planting all the flower boxes in the village this spring. The committee has a planting scheme in mind and will be acquiring all the necessary plants for this project. We hope to get everything out and planted by Memorial Day weekend (May 25th-ish). We will need more workers on planting day and people to keep an eye on the boxes over the summer. We are planning to come up with a per box cost in hopes that people will offer to help finance a box. Thanks to everyone who has already volunteered to help. If you are interested in any aspect of this project, please contact Jane.
See you this spring!
Newbury’s 250th Celebration!
The Woman’s Club is planning three “events” to help Newbury celebrate its 250th anniversary:
On Sunday, January 13th at 2 pm at The Tenney Memorial Library, the Newbury Woman’s Club and the Tenney are sponsoring a Vermont Humanities program, Adam Boyce presents Charles Taggart, a Newbury musician. Adam is a skilled fiddler and this program is fun and gives us a bit of Newbury history. Taggart once lived at Elmbank in the northern part of Newbury Village where there is now an historical marker.
Fall 2012
I always look at fall as the start of a new year of activities and plans for the club, though that is probably a result of my many years spent working in education! This past year has been very successful and busy for our organization and the coming year promises to be equally productive. Re-writing our by-laws last fall gave us the opportunity to think about how the club operates and what is important to us. In that discussion we discovered some traditions and rules we wanted to change, while at the same time reaffirming many policies and activities we want to preserve.
One key operating philosophy of the club, that I think is in danger of getting lost, is the concept that the club’s mission and work is a community effort that continues independently of any one individual. For many years the same people have served as officers of the club. Historically, our officers changed every two years giving everyone the opportunity to participate in a leadership role. I have been pleased and honored to serve as club president these past many years, but I am terribly worried about the future if we do not have different people involved in an official capacity. At our annual business meeting in December, let’s talk about this issue and see if we can’t come up with some good ideas for the future.
Meanwhile, check out all the great activities listed on this site (kudos to our program committee!!) Mark your calendar and plan ahead. Remember to invite a friend or two to join us, everyone is welcome! Contact us using the form below if you ever have any questions or need more information about club issues or upcoming events.
Spring 2012
We have several more events planned for the spring. Look through this site for details! Jane
Sign Up for a Committee Today!
At our annual meeting in December, the club ratifed the revised by-laws that were written this past fall. As part of these revisions, we created 5 standing committees for the club and we are asking everyone to participate in at least one of these committees as follows:
1. Old Village Church – work with others to preserve and restore the Club’s historic Methodist Church building and property on the Newbury Common.
2. Membership – work with the vice president (Marjorie) and others to update the club membership list and create a new club phone/email book; act as a committee to determine membership status, if needed, by maintaining records of those members who have participated in club meetings, interest groups, committees and service groups and/or paid dues (in conjunction with the club treasurer, Martha ).
3. Fund Raising – work with others to plan and organize the Club’s fund raising projects and events.
4. Publicity – work with others to inform the community of Club programs, fund raisers and service projects and any other club activities.
5. Program – work with others to plan the programs for the year and complete all necessary arrangements for carrying them out. (Currently we sponsor a speaker with the Tenney Memorial Library in the fall, plan an all-club dinner out in the spring and have an annual cookie swap/Yankee swap in December but the committee could opt for other activities and programs if they chose).
Please contact Jane using the comment form below to sign up for one of these committees if you have not already done so. Thanks!
The Newbury Woman's Club Weblog 