Greetings
fellow walkers,
This
will be my last time writing to you as we have just elected new officers to our
board. Please welcome Steve Hughart as your new President, Heidi Foster as
Vice-President, Linda Roye as Treasurer and Gale
Hughart will continue another term as Secretary. Remember that these are
non-paid, volunteer positions and require much time, energy and effort; please
welcome and thank them for taking on these jobs for the next 12 months.
A
huge thank you goes out to Myrna Jackson for her 2 year term as our treasurer.
She was a wealth of information and help to me in so many ways - a bridge from
the Sticks before and to what they are today. She was meticulous in her
bookkeeping and rarely missed a meeting or walk. Her home continues to store
our Club “stuff” and we used it in our most successful fundraiser to date, the
fall rummage sale of ‘05.
This
last month our Club participated in 3 Health Fairs in
Heidi
Foster and I were on the TV program “Sacramento & Co.” promoting
volkssporting and our Hot Walkin’ Nights summer
series. The publicity from TV and the newspaper articles in the Sacramento
Bee were instrumental in bringing out many new walkers to our T-Street
Friendship Walk and our 1st Hot Walkin’ Night in
The
Hot Walkin’ Nights series will continue thru August
30 and I hope that each of you will be able to make this a habit in your week.
Come join in the fun of walking in the early evening and meeting new faces and
seeing familiar ones. The routes picked out are wonderful and the variety of
places you’ll see will almost be like you’re going on mini vacations each week.
In
closing I want to say what a truly memorable experience it’s been to be the
President of the Sacramento Walking Sticks for 2 years. I had a vision at the
beginning of my term that simply put was “if you build it, they will
come.” Our membership has risen dramatically and for a whole variety of
reasons ~ pre-meeting walks, a variety of walks offered both day, night and
midweek, monthly meetings, carpooling, name buttons, a beautifully designed and
well-built website, consistency in our walks with their quality, food offered
at our walks, new member packets, great newsletters, welcoming walk alerts and
e-mails, refreshments at our meetings, publicity, etc. Our membership has grown
because of a lot of hard work by a whole lot of committed and enthusiastic
people who had a common denominator and that was to have fun volkswalking! I’d ask for help and boy, I got it and not
from just 1 person but from a wide variety of you. Thank you for volunteering
to go out to all those Health Fairs and sharing what you do with your friends
and co-workers. Am I sad to be leaving office? Yes and no. Yes, because it
became such a part of me and I came to enjoy and feel
comfortable with my role and yet – because I have faith and confidence in your
new board that they will continue what I started “they will build it and more
will come.” And I will take my earlier vision to our State and its 21 clubs and
see if we can build membership and enthusiasm in our sport on a grander level.
I am still and will continue to be a Walking Stick member–you may not see me every weekend because I plan to travel and do walk abouts with the other 20 clubs. Please continue to e-mail and call me with any questions or to say hello. It’s been an honor to serve you and thank you for the memories I’ll have for the 2 years I served. ~ Barbara Nuss ~
A Greeting
from the President-Elect
THANK YOU! I appreciate your vote of
confidence, and “Thank You” as well for voting in a Board that will help the
Sacramento Walking Sticks become even a better club than it already is. I am
honored and humbled to be your President and look forward to the year ahead and
the promise it holds. Congratulations to Heidi Foster, our new Vice President,
Gale Hughart who will continue as our Secretary, and Linda Roye,
our new Treasurer.
Before I lay out an agenda, I’d like
to give some perspective on the two years that Barbara Nuss
has been our President. Barbara started Volksmarching in 1988. It took a while,
but she finally joined the Walking Sticks in Nov. 2003. A few short months
later, she was elected president and started her term on
How many people joined SWS in
1990
- 2;1996 - 3; 1997 - 1; 1999 -
1;
2003
- 5 (Barbara joined); 2004 - 27 (9 joined before
2006
- 58 (as of June 8).
Do the arithmetic and you will
notice that 125 folks signed up since Barbara became President. Since there are
142 active members as I type this, that’s 88% of our membership! That’s one
tough act to follow.
The even better news is that Barbara
will be able to help us grow and get better now that she is the President of
the California Volkssport Association. She’s not going to quit being a member
of the “Sticks,” so we’re in a unique position to help out and benefit from our
state organization.
Of course, no one person could have
done this all on her own. There were lots of people
who stepped up to the plate and took on tasks that helped the club. Myrna
Jackson stands out as our current Treasurer. Myrna never missed a deadline,
hosted the perfect place for our Garage Sale that was our best fund raiser
ever, and helped keep the club together for many years. Carol Doring, Gail Samcoff, Virginia Jelinek, and Sharon Olson helped keep the club going
through its “middle years” putting in countless hours as Board members, walk
creators/coordinators/registrars, and doing all the other tasks it takes to
make a walking club work. Thank you all and to all whom I did not mention by
name for creating a great club that Gale and I could join, way back in October
of 2004.
And then there’s the 2007 AVA
Convention which will be held in
So where would I like to see the
club go in the next year? The list below
represents my personal priorities and will be where I put the majority of my
energies. The new Board will be getting
together in August (after vacations) where we will be discussing all of our
priorities, fitting them together, and generally making sure we’re all rowing
in the same direction. I want to
encourage everyone in the club to be thinking about what they want the club to
be and be willing to help out with your time.
Here
are the directions I’d like to see the Sacramento Walking Sticks go in the next
year:
• Growth: We should strive for
continued growth in membership. We need to be open to new ideas for publicity,
new walks, and any way we can to get folks out to their first walk. The rest
“sells” itself.
• Volunteers: Increase the number of
people who volunteer their time so that we aren’t so reliant on the few who
have already given so much of their time.
I’d like to see the total number of volunteer hours go up, while the
average number of hours per person go down.
• Make our work valuable: Make sure
that we are working smarter, not harder. I might be pestering you from time to
time to provide numbers on this and that. We should make sure that we are
putting our efforts and time toward those things that work best for us.
• Families: The club should work to
attract more families. We need to use our collective creativity to get folks out
and pry those little ones away from the TV and video games.
• Fund Raising: I’d personally like to
keep fund raising as low key as possible and not make money the focus. Last year, the garage sale made it possible
for the club to get needed publicity and equipment without constantly hitting
up the membership for their dollars. I
plan to hit you up for something far more valuable: your time (see the 2nd
bullet point). I think the Garage Sale
should become a yearly habit. Besides, I
have a huge pile of junk growing in my garage!
• Hot Walkin’
Nights: I think the club should take
over Hot Walkin’ Nights in 2007. Barbara has forged a great line-up of walks
and it wouldn’t take nearly as much effort to repeat the schedule with minor
adjustments than it would be to start from scratch. We just can’t conflict with the AVA
Convention. Barbara will be way too busy with CVA business to be the lead on
HWN.
•
• Website: As many of you know, I’ve been the mechanic
behind the Walking Stick’s website.
Fewer of you know that Gale has been the artist behind the graphics that
have made the website look great from day one. I plan to stay married to Gale
and to keep her artistic services available to the club throughout the 2006-07
term of office! I haven’t been told what her plans are for me for this
year–yet. ;-) I have plans to improve the website and to add new pages, but
we’ll just have to see how much time I can pry away from other duties and obligations,
the Convention website, sleep, and work.
Are these things negotiable and do
you have any say in these matters? Absolutely YES. All
you have to do is speak up and be willing to lend a hand in the effort. Will
you always get everything exactly your way? Probably not, but groups do best
when decisions are made by consensus and I foresee few scenarios where the
Board would make a decision without coming to a consensus first.
Before I was asked to run for
President, Gale and I had planned our vacation which happens to start the first
day the new Board officially takes office! Honestly, we didn’t plan on skipping
town as our first official act and we will be back on the 30th. We’re looking forward to seeing you all on
walks in August.
I like the new AVA motto: It has its priorities in the right
order: 1 - Fun, 2 - Friendship, and 3 -
Fitness. If you don’t have friends how
can you have fun? If you are not having
fun, how can you devote the time necessary fitness? Please join my friends and family in setting
me straight when I take things too seriously – tell me a joke or make a goofy
face – make me laugh and we’ll be friends.
Thanks again.
-Steve
New
Members:
Marlene
Gideon
Rex
Gideon
Priscilla
Plescov
Chuck
Leni
Stephanie
McDonald
Debi Pierce
Shannon
Pierce
Marsha
Robinson
Kathie
Vaughn
Wendy
Warbis
Dan
Wermiel
Holly
Wermiel
Janice
Williams
Happy
Birthdays!
June
|
5 |
Ron
Peterson |
|
9 |
Ron
Miller |
|
13 |
Sherry
Reed |
|
14 |
Theresa
Boschert |
|
14 |
Sally
Coones |
|
14 |
Marge
Tarbell |
|
15 |
Jane
Graham |
|
15 |
Jeanne
Ross |
|
18 |
Kendall
Smeeth |
|
18 |
Jytte Taylor |
|
19 |
William
Roth |
|
23 |
Theresa
Wright |
|
27 |
Chuck
Donaldson |
|
30 |
Suzan
Goodban |
|
30 |
Sharon
Olson |
July
|
3 |
Gail
Samcoff |
|
4 |
Karen
Miceli |
|
7 |
Marlo McClurg-MacKinnon |
|
8 |
Charles
Leedy |
|
10 |
Art
Hurlbut |
|
11 |
Catherine
McElligott |
|
13 |
Steve
Oesterreicher |
|
14 |
Heidi
Foster |
|
14 |
Dan
Wermiel |
|
15 |
Jakie Moran |
|
18 |
Gene
Adkins |
|
22 |
Randy
Haynes |
|
23 |
Anne
Geraghty |
|
26 |
Londi Medrano |
|
27 |
Pat
Thomas |
Sticks
Anniversaries:
June
|
2 yrs |
Dick
Shearly |
|
1 yr |
Sally
Coones |
|
1 yr |
Jane
Graham |
|
1 yr |
Juliet
Lund |
|
1 yr |
Katie
Ratliff |
|
1 yr |
Ava Simpson |
July
|
2 yrs |
Chuck
Donaldson |
|
2 yrs |
Helen
Donaldson |
|
1 yr |
Janet
Riley |
|
1 yr |
Dan
Robinson |
Highlights
of June’s Club Meeting
• Meeting Icebreaker: What do you
collect?
Barbara Nuss
- Walking; Steve Hughart - Cycling, tapered pint beer glasses; Teri Steinman -
Red Hatter hats; Chuck Leni - Tool nut, metal working
machinery; Shirley Hines - Garage/rummage sales/flea markets, 1930’s toys,
1940’s paper dolls; Linda Roye - gardening & make
jewelry; Gail Samcoff - walking, U.S. stamps and
coins; Carol Doring - walking, scrabble, kribbage - barn pictures, mushroom objects; Myrna Jackson -
walking, Hummel’s, coins, anything to do with kitty-cats; Pat Wood - rearrange
furniture, refrigerator magnets; Dick
Shearly - walking & cycling, state quarters;
Carol Rogala - art, rabbit objects; Wendy Warbis - exercise & weight loss, collects negative
pounds; Kathie Vaughn - quilting, asian art, panda
objects, brush animals, wood spirits; Brenda Hardiman
- walking, Volkssporting medals; Gale
Hughart - walking & photography, squished pennies, hat pins, bookmarks;
Heidi Foster - walking, singing, art glass.
• New Officers: Steve Hughart,
President; Heidi Foster, Vice President; and Linda Roye,
Treasurer. Gale Hughart will remain your secretary for the next year.
• Gail Samcoff
made cupcakes and “Jello Jigglers”
for refreshments. Two sets of Reynolds “Fun Shapes” baking cups (the type the
refreshments were made in) were raffled. Winners were Dick Shearly
and Carol Doring.
• Myrna Jackson has brought back an old
Mercy Walk that includes the “Fab 40’s” and a
cemetery (for all you folks with new cemetery books!). This walk used to be our
old New Years Walk.
• Brenda Hardiman
volunteered to take over the Elk Grove Walk Box. Her duties will start in July.
• The video from Barbara Nuss and Heidi Foster’s TV debut on “Sacramento & Co.”
was shown.
• The first Hot Walkin’
Nights brought in 62 people, with quite a few new walkers! A new method of
starting walks in 15 minutes intervals seemed to work out quite well.
• Wendy Warbis
volunteered to take over the Social Committee that sends out birthday cards to
members.
• Want to walk in Etna? We’ll keep you
posted.
No Sticks club meeting in July, but Hot Walking Nights are still going strong!
The Places I’ve Been
By Gale Hughart
May 27th was the Friendship Walk in
A
bunch of us from different clubs drove down to
The walk was so cool. It took us
through
Then it was back on the ferry home.
I loved that walk. And from the photo above, it couldn’t have been a more
glorious day! It’s an A+ in my book.
We
walked
While I have you here as my captive audience, and I have another column to fill, I thought I’d
show you some photos I took on a volkswalks in
The above rose is quite ethereal. I’d like
to say it was from my cool filters and excellent photographic skills, but I
must confess that the softness that makes this shot pretty is from camera
shake.
We’re heading back up north in July. I have a
new wide angle lens. Let’s see what I come back with! Do you have
vacation/walking photos and stories you want to share? Send them to me at
gigiwalks@yahoo.com. Let’s share!
What Else
Can Walking Do For You?
To
be sure, scientists have only begun to scratch the surface in understanding the
benefits of exercise – not only for fighting cancer and boosting immunity but
also for enhancing all aspects of human health. Interestingly, most studies of
exercise use walking as the activity of choice. and
they have revealed some extraordinary information about what this most
fundamental of workouts can do.
• It supports weight loss and weight
maintenance.
• It reduces the risk of heart disease
and stroke.
• It fends off diabetes by improving
the body’s ability to use insulin.
• It eases the pain and stiffness of
arthritis.
• It keeps bones strong, which prevents
osteoporosis.
• In women, it relives premenstrual and
menopausal discomforts.
• It improves sleep.
• It builds strength, flexibility, and
stamina.
• It enhances mental function.
• It counteracts anger, depression, and
anxiety.
(Source:
Prevention’s Complete Book of Walking)
SacramentoWalkingSticks.org
President
Barbara Nuss
Vice President
Steve Hughart
Secretary
Gale Hughart
Treasurer
Myrna Jackson
Newsletter Editor
Gale Hughart
Next Walking Sticks
Meeting:
(Want to walk first? Meet at