2013 LPM annual meeting

Last Sunday La Pétanque Marinière held its annual meeting/dinner.
It took place at the Chalet Basque restaurant in San Rafael.

It is an event that I have long championed and I found it a little disappointing to encounter so few guests, thirty-three to be precise.
A pity because during this meeting our president (Christine Cragg) is supposed to deliver our club’s State of the Union address.
The president is expected to tell the membership how our club is faring.
According to Christine, despite a reasonable bank account, our club is limping.

It is limping because most of our Board Members have resigned or are missing in action.
I think that our problem is mainly due to age and battle fatigue. I will venture to say that the average age of our members is around 68 and when reaching that age people are less frisky than younger folks.
Basically we need new blood. We need to recruit a younger crowd or our club is bound for oblivion.

IMG_0708 - Version 2At the end of the year, Claudie Chourré, our beloved, indefatigable worker is retiring from the Board and she is going to leave a big void in our organization.

As Christine mentioned it, we need four (4) new Board Members for the coming year and I don’t see many people rushing to fill the vacuum.
It is good to remember that the Board Members are an essential part of our organization and without them few decisions can be made.

In her brief allocution, Christine thanked the actual Board Members for their contributions, and also acknowledged the services of Jean-Claude Etallaz, Alain Marchand and Jean and Emily Etcheverry.
They all indeed deserve a big round of applause.

Otherwise the evening went well.
The food, although not extraordinary, was acceptable and the service was good.

I tried to take some pictures to commemorate this event, but it didn’t go very well.
In the dimly lit dining room my small Canon PowerShot camera was too slow to capture the action and my iPhone didn’t perform well either.
That’s why I had to dump most of the pictures that I took during this evening and keep just a few.
Sorry about this mishap. I will be better prepared next time.

Last Sunday many people renewed their membership, and so should you.
Do not procrastinate, mail your check today and keep the club alive!

See you soon on the courts!

Alain

To look at photos of this event and listen to accompanying background music, turn the sound on, and click on the link “My Photos” located on the right side of this page.