Once each month or so the Ithaca Sunrise Rotary Club distributes gently used magazines to the waiting rooms of the local hospital, and once every few months we go to Convenient Care.

Club members, friends, relatives, fellow workers, neighbors, etc. donate their magazines to our Club at the Royal Court. Frank Smith is the leader of the Magazine Gang. He gathers them up every week, and then when he determines that we have enough, he picks a date that we will meet at the hospital.

Frank will announce the date at our meetings and also sends out an email for everyone to join if they can.

 

We meet at the hospital waiting room, and we put our own Ithaca Sunrise Rotary Club labels over the name and address labels on the magazines. This maintains the privacy anonymity of those who are kind enough to donate.

Once we have labels on all of the magazines, they are divided up into bags and we head for the elevator. Frank gives each person their assignment, whether it’s the 2nd, 3rd or 4th floor.

Once all the magazines are delivered to the various waiting rooms, we all meet back in the lobby.

Frank has two rules that no one must ever break:

  1. Always wash your hands after delivering the magazines.
  2. No Rotarian is left behind.  (We have had to go out on search parties looking for Rotarians who have gotten lost in the nooks and crannies of the hospital!).

Then, once we are all together and all washed up, we head out for food, drink, stories and Frank’s dilemma of the month.

Last night [Wednesday, 25 March 2015] we went to the Boatyard Grill and had lobster dinners. (Wednesday night is lobster night at the Boatyard).  The Sunrisers in attendance in addition to Frank were Kathy, George, Beth, Mary Lou and Steve.