Whitewood

The Whitewood Public Library will host Mike Vogel from the SD Historical Museum in Pierre.  The presentation of Historical SD Barns will be on 17 April 2008 at 7:00.

What can you do to better prepare for your future long-term care needs?

South Daktoa now offers the Long-Term Care Partnership Program, which provides additional choices for individuals when it comes to planning and preparing for their long-term care needs.  This program offers individuals quality, affordable long-term insurance and a way to receive needed care without depleting all their assets. 

Attend a FREE one hour education session.

Thursday, April 10, 2008   -  9:00  Hudson Hall, 222 W Hudson, Spearfish

for more information:  www.ltcpartnership.sd.gov

                      Whitewood Joins the Paint SD Campaign

 Is your house in need of repainting?  Are you financially or physically unable to get the job done? Whitewood Horizons House Painting Crew is looking for their “2008 House to Paint”.  Whitewood residents or those in the immediate surrounding area are asked to submit a letter indicating their need.   The letter needs to concentrate on the financial hardship or their physical inabilities.  The request also needs to address that family members are not able to assist financially or physically.   Letters may be dropped off at Whitewood City Hall by Wednesday,  April 9^th.   The selected household letter will be submitted to the Paint SD  campaign  headquarters in Pierre.  If the community of Whitewood is selected the house will be painted in June. Any questions call Rea Weyrich 269-2616. 

We will be having a benefit pancake feed for Melinda Smith on April 20th from 4-7 pm at the whitewood resturant. We will also be having a raffle of various items.

thank you and please come show Melinda your support

8 boys from the Whitewood Wrestling Club participated in the Regionals held in Sturgis yesterday. These boys all had a great year in wrestling and were happy to have made it this far. They were: Tate, Jacob, Caleb, Clayton, Seth, Casey, Culley, and Brandon. Of these 8 boys 4 of them qualified for State which will be held in Rapid City next weekend! I wanted to give a big congratulations to Tate, Culley, Seth and Clayton for doing an awesome job in making it to state!! We are all very proud of all the boys that participated in the Wrestling Club this year! Way to go on a stellar year!! Go get em at State!! Below are some pictures of the boys at the tournament yesterday in Sturgis.

Are you ready for some fun??? Well what’s more fun than baseball? Let’s get all the kids involved!! 

Whitewood will be holding another baseball sign up day. Baseball sign up’s will be next Thursday April 3, 2008 from 5:30pm to 7:30pm at April’s Place. Boys and Girls aged 5 to 12 are welcome to sign up. Child must be still 12 as of May 1st. The cost to participate is $25 for one child, $40 for 2 children, or $50 for 3 or more children.

If you have any questions please call Brian Littleton at 722-2153.

*PLEASE BRING COPY OF BIRTH CERTIFICATE!!

I do not know who is all interested but at the high school they are selling tshirts with Ashley Nelsons picture on it which the proceeds to go the Nelson/Wood family and they are also selling wristbands, one orange that says “Ashley lives here” and a blue on that says “Melinda-Believe”. The proceeds from the wristbands will go to the Nelson/Wood family and the Smiths. If anyone is interested i know you can contact the High School to order. Money is due when you order.

The Artemis Boutique, located at 344 Colorado Blvd in Spearfish is all dec’d out for spring.  When you shop at the Boutique, you help the Artemis House. 

The Artemis House serves people in Butte and Lawrence Counties who are escaping domestic violence and sexual assault.  There are two shelters, one in Lead and one in Spearfish.  There are offices in Spearfish, Lead and Belle Fourche.  A representative is at the Newell library on Thursday afternoon and at the Whitewood library on Wednesday afternoon. 

A woman’s group meets on Monday at 5:30 p.m. at the Spearfish office.  Please call 642-7825  if you’d like to join us.

On April 12, 2008 Whitewood will be having its first Health Fair. The Health Fair will be held at Whitewood Elementary from 10am to 1pm. We are looking for volunteers to help move tables from Hale Hall and set them up at the gym in the school on Friday April 11th and will also need volunteers to help clean up and tear down after Fair on April 12th. We also need volunteers to help assist in a few of the booths at the fair. If you are interested in helping, please call Rea Weyrich at 269-2616. Your help would be GREATLY appreciated!

ATTENTION ALL WHITEWOOD RESIDENTS! WE ARE PLANNING A HORIZONS EVENT FOR THURSDAY, APRIL 10TH AT THE SENIOR CITIZEN CENTER. PLEASE MARK YOUR CALENDARS AND PLAN ON ATTENDING.

You are cordially invited to attend a Horizons event planned for the evening of April 10^th at 6pm. This meeting will be held at the Senior Citizen Center. The focus of this meeting will be to establish the steps necessary to implement the goals we set in our November 2007 strategic plan. This is not an event to brainstorm new ideas, but to see our previous ideas and visions to completion. We hope this meeting will set the stage to get everyone motivated and ready to work in their committees. We will be serving Pizza and Soda to everyone that attends. We sincerely hope that you will attend as we need the support of everyone in order to accomplish our goals.

Committees and Goals

Recreation                                        Beautification Skateboard Park                              Install playground equipment at park

SD Grant Directory:

Not sure how many are aware of this site, so I thought I would pass it along…

It is a searchable database of grants available in our area, and nationwide. The database is managed by the South Dakota State Library. If looking at finding grants, you can search by specific grants, fields of interest, keywords or specific grantor. Click the picture to follow the link to the website.

As many of you know we have a new business in town. Sacrison Paving now has an office in town on Meade St. On April 10th Sacrison Paving will be having an open house to show their new offices. They welcome everyone to come and meet them and check out their new offices. The open house will be during regular business hours and will end at 5pm. Please go and welcome them to town! It’s great to have a new business in town!

Please take advantage of these opportunities only have a few days left to get registered!

We have two great opportunities to bring back information to the local communities;

1.          “Marketing Your Area”   Presenter:  Milan Wall, Heartland Center for Leadership Development   (I  attended the Heartland Conference last week and got to meet Milan and he is an exceptional speaker – I know you will gain valuable information at this seminar.)      5:30 pm supper;     6 -9:15 pm Seminar                   Wed. March 26 – Philip , SD at the 73 Lounge

Please let  to your local representative know you are attending before Saturday, March 22^nd  as I will be in contact with each person for meal count.

        Bison – Brad       Faith – Deb    Newell – Amanda    Whitewood – Rea

Terry Hall from Bison is preregistered -

2.        Governor Conference on Economic Development -    I have included the  Agenda for the conference below:

Please let me  ( Carolyn) know if you would like to attend as SDSU must send the registration in before March 24^th:

To date I have the following attending:

Whitewood:  Kristi Wagner  -  Mary Livingston

Faith:  Paul Peterson

Bison:  ??????????????

Newell:   ????????????

Due to very popular demand, South Dakota State University’s Horizons project will host a REPEAT seminar on the steps of applying for community grants.

At the seminar, Pat Johnson and Mindy Hubert, SDSU Cooperative Extension, will walk you through the steps of applying for grants and focus on helping communities and individuals develop the skills needed to successfully write and receive a grant for community development.

The Northwest Area Foundation in St. Paul, Minn., funds the Horizons project, which is a 20-month grant project, aimed at reducing poverty and building leadership in rural communities.

The free seminar starts at 1:00 p.m. and concludes at 3:00 pm. The seminar will be held on Tuesday,  ^{April 1st}  at the West River Ag Center located at 1905 Plaza Blvd in Rapid City, SD.

Registration is required. Call Carolyn Hendricks, 605-347-2436 or email her at carolyn.hendricks@ces.sdstate.edu to register. Participants are asked to register by March 28th since space may be limited.

For ALL Horizons communities: It will be up to your community to decide what happens with your community blogs in the future. Some communities may see the value of continuing the blogs after Horizons is officially completed this summer. We also realize that some community blogs may choose to end when Horizons ends.  NWAF has told us that the blogs will be active for as long as your community wishes to use them.

Some benefits of community blogging include: 

·          A place to share ideas in your community.

·         Open forum for discussion/decision making.

·         Interactive way to measure your progress on projects.

·         Marketing tool to attract new residents, potential project funders, positive press from local news outlets, etc.

·         A way to stay accountable/build momentum/gather volunteers and resources for planned projects, dreams and goals.

Opinion Polls & Market Research

For more info on the poll go to: http://www.vizu.com/res/Grab-bag/blog/poll-results.html?n=83343&cId=0

Here is the latest blog report card for our community. We are doing great but we still need more people to post more often to make sure that we reach our goals and win our community a laptop.

Final Blog Report Card – Carolyn’s Communities

This is the last “report card” we will send to your community, but your work should continue through the end of the project. Many of you have followed the suggestions for improvement we had given you on the report cards sent in January/February.

 Shoot for the Stars (Laptop Computer) 

Faith, Newell & Whitewood – Would still like to see more active users, at this time there is one or two main bloggers, and a few others who have blogged once or twice. Technically you are meeting the requirement of having five bloggers for this incentive level, but only two of the five are “making contributions to the blog” consistently. Secondly, we would like to see posts specific to progress on your goals in the strategic plan. Overall, your community is still working at the Shoot for the Stars incentive…some, just barely. Your “to do list” through the end of Horizons:

1.       Get one or two more people to blog consistently though the end of the project.

2.       Add posts about the progress on strategic plans (Records of committee work, meeting minutes, photos of projects in action/completed, stories about people, how things have changed, etc.)

3.       If you haven’t already, include the answers to the monthly questions. We would like to read more than just one person’s perspective, for example, you may choose to give this as an assignment to committee members and/or other community members.

4.       Also, we would also like to stress quality versus quantity through the end of the project. We would really like to see specific posts on how your Strategic Plans are being implemented.

This post is from Jean Sneesby of the Genie Club:

The Whitewood Genie Meet met at the Whitewood Library Wednesday afternoon at 1:30.  We are still interested in obtaining any school photos for the Whitewood schools in the early years.  We are also interested in history and photos of the various businesses in Whitewood, and would like a history of each building through the years.  Restoring old photos and documents was discussed and plans were made to sort the articles collected for the history notebooks at the next meeting.  Anyone interested in family history and local history is welcome to join our group - third Wednesday of each month at the 1:30 pm Whitewood Library.

Here it is…….. Working together for Whitewood!  The Whitewood Horizons Strategic Planning team will work together toward goals for making Whitewood the best place it can be.  We will invite people to work together to improve our community.   We will focus on the appearance and renewed success of Whitewood.

So, how are we doing with our mission statement and vision?

I thought it had been enough time that I haven’t seen what the mission statment was. I am hoping other people haven’t g;lanced at it for a while so here is a little reminder…….

Whitewood will be a friendly, progressive community where people care about each other and work together toward common goals.  Whitewood will be a place where history and the future come together. We treasure our past, but we look to tomorrow by welcoming new residents, businesses, and visitors. Whitewood will be a place where our youth are valued. It will be a community for young and old, a place where people can spend their entire lives. Whitewood will be a clean and safe place to live. We are committed to being a community that includes those living in the city limits, in neighboring developments, and in the country.

 Check this out! I just had this list forwarded from Carolyn. At our last meeting in Whitewood Julian said this seminar was really helpful.  I have added a link to this page. Please look to the right under pages

Tonite was the annual PTO Potato feed and night was a success. Hale Hall was bustling with people enjoying the potatoe fixings. There were toppings of Chili, stroganoff, brocolli, cheese, sour cream, and bacon bits. So the potatoes could be filled with lots of yummy stuff. There was also a ice cream and brownie sundae table as well. The teachers of Whitewood were busy along with parent volunteers working the different stations. Thanks to everyone who helped make the night a success. Without everyone’s help this night would not have been possible. Here are some pictures of the event!

On Thursday March 6th Rea Weyrich, Amy Barker, Jackie Hoffman, and I all went to Newell to a Economic Development meeting for Horizons. We listened to two speakers on Economic Development. The first speaker was Marty Beutler and he gave an interesting speech on the County Economic Model for Butte County. He broke down various parts of the county by population, household types, commuting patterns, etc…. His speech was very interesting and he will be compiling data to share in this same regard for Lawrence county as well.

The second speaker was Jim Mirehouse, CEO of Genesis Equity Fund.  Jim said economic development was a process that begins when a community acts to make itself ready to accommodate the retention, startup, location, or expansion of an enterprise. Economic Development occurs when a local economy is vitalized by the creation of one or more jobs, an increase in community wealth, or the useful distribution of capital that arrives from outside sources. The process of economic development never ends during the life of a community. Currently, Jim works with up and coming technology companies that work out of the incubator at the School of Mines. These technology businesses stay in the incubator for up to 5 years and after that time, these businesses must move out on their own. He explained that communities should capitalize on this and try to capture some of this up and coming business.  He stressed that communities need to have specific goals and should look for opportunities to capture full time quality jobs in our community. Jim’s ideas were great and I believe our community should look into some of these businesses that are currently in the incubator and see if any of them would be a fit for our community.

The Whitewood Library has developed a Cancer Information Box.  Patrons can take the whole box home and lay it out on their kitchen table. 

 The donated items include:

Moving Beyond Breast Cancer (a 23 minute DVD), Cancer Survival Toolbox (an audio program), 2007 Resource Guide, Facing Forward Series - Life After Cancer Treatment, Facing Forward Series - Ways You Can Make a difference in Cancer, Understanding and Managing Diagnosis and Treatment of Breast Cancer, A Patients Guide to Diagnosis, Prognosis and Treatment, Tamoxifen and Breast Cancer, Cancer Free, and the Complete Cancer Survival Guide.   Also included in the box is a list of cancer related materials on the shelves of the library.

For more information call the Whitewood Public Library at 269-2616

The girl scouts are selling cookies, and everyone knows how great these cookies taste! If you haven’t ordered cookies yet troop 72292 is also selling cookies. You may contact Jenny Albrandt at 722-7291 or Carla Knutson at 269-2164 for more information.

A FEW DAYS A GO A FAMILY FRIEND OF MINE LOST HER HOUSE TO A FIRE

SHE LOST EVERYTHING INCLUDING HER CATS. SHE HAS 3 CHILDREN AND THEY LOST EVERYTHING

THERE ARE IN NEED OF ANY THING YOU CAN SPARE…HER CHILDREN 2 GIRLS ARE 7AND 8 AND HER SON IS 5..IF YOU WISH TO MAKE A DONATION PLEASE CALL ME  KELLIE  MRAZ  AT 206-0529 ALL AND ANY HELP WOULD BE MUCH APPRECATIED GOD BLESS ALL 

March 17th is the annual PTO Tator and Toppings dinner. It will be at Hale Hall from 5-7 pm. All proceeds go to the PTO. The dinnder includes a baked potato with lots of choices for toppings and a brownie delight. I can’t wait!!!

Also since I went to the city council meeting inviting them to the potato feed I think it is only fair to let you all know there is a city council meeting that night at City Hall at 7pm.

This Saturday March 15th the Whitewood PTO is sponsoring an Easter Egg Hunt. The hunt starts at 10 am and is at the Whitewood Elementary School.  Children are asked to bring a bag of wrapped candy.  There will be prizes too!!!

Hey Whitewood… does anyone like to scrapbook?  Need a place to get together to share ideas and supplies?  A couple of us are talking about getting together a scrapbooking “club” to meet and socialize while enjoying the fun of scrapbooking.  Even if you are new to it (I definitely am) and just want to organize some photos, give me a call.  We can see how many are interested, maybe use Hale hall or my house if there are just a few.  Interested?  Call Amy Kudlock 722-4727

This came to me from Peggy Flynn

In the past year and a half their have been improvements in the fact that some buildings have been updated.  Also painting the houses that were painted helped the people and brought the community together.
 
The newspaper on Wednesday has been good for the community.
 
It would be nice for the poverty of the community if their could be a day or week-end swap.  Inform people to clean out closets, garage and bring it to one place so that someone else could use what they no longer want.  Possibly
a nice day in May or June????Would like to get your input on this idea…
 
Keep up the good work…Peg

Whitewood Public Library Director, Rea Weyrich, will participate in a session at the annual South Dakota Library Association ‘Spring Forum’ to be held in Rapid City because of the library’s participation on the Whitewood Blog.   The focus of the session is using Blogs, Wikis and MySpace to market  libraries.  Travis Brink from the Rapid City Library had been made aware that the Whitewood Library regularly submits information to the Whitewood Blog and called to invite Weyrich to participate in this special session.