Greetings,
Here we are, just 10 days from a day that almost all of us anticipate and celebrate as great event throughout our lives. As I looked back in my journal to the year 2000, on this day, we had over 12 inches of snow on the ground and more to come. However, today I walked outside to a record shattering high temperature as I ventured to my woods to remove downed ash trees from my trails. As I later drove into the city of West Bend it was 64 degrees, an unbelievable high temperature. Thus is Climate Change, with the emphasis being on unpredictable change. Have we had these radical temperature swings in the past? The short answer is, yes. However, the frequency of these unusually warm temperatures is now much more consistent. You may ask what does all this have to do with the conservancy and where is it headed. And I will answer that our ever-changing environment is like LLC. We see periods of, stable and very static times, followed by those of incredible change.
We are now in one of those times of change and that change has brought us here. As announced to you earlier this fall we have been offered a $15K challenge grant this year and I am happy to announce that we are over ¾ of the way towards our goal of matching the $15,000 challenge grant this year! That goal, $30K over two years, was to raise enough funds to establish an endowment fund through the West Bend Community foundation to help ensure a long-term funding source for our naturalist at LLC.
With your generous support we have raised almost $12,000 towards that goal to date and hope that those of you waiting to the last minute to donate will put us over our goal. Thanks to all who have generously contributed and a future thanks to those donating now.
Best Regards to all and your families and a Happy Holiday Season,
Paul De Chant
PS. I don’t usually do this, but a colleague of mine, who I worked with in my science teacher trainings over the last 10 years, wrote a piece that I wish to share with all of you. Earlier in this post I referred to my journal. My son gave me that Journal for Christmas in 1997 and I started it that day. The link that follows was written almost 20 years later by that colleague, but is as relevant today as it was to me in 1997. I would encourage all of you to read this attachment and share it with your children and loved ones. Hopefully it will provide you and all your significant others a way to continually connect with you and our world around us.
