April 2010
© 2010 The Birch Lake Yacht Club

Sailing to summer!

Thanks to Tim & Irene Steffen for the great photo of the bass and perch they found on their shore last week ...
Commodore's Comments
I'm sitting down here in Florida, a little bored and a lot homesick for our beautiful lake. After a while you get a little sick of looking at palm trees. We're heading home on April 28th and I can hardly wait. I am so looking forward to the great summer that is planned for the lake. Beginning with the Spring Dinner on May 15th, it looks pretty busy through September. Speaking of the Spring Dinner, I hope you all plan to attend. The menu sounds delicious and Al Rizzo has promised to keep us entertained all evening long. He has even offered to learn musical requests — so let me know if you have a favorite that you would like to hear and I will let him know.

We will also be distributing copies of our new Birch Lake phone directory at the dinner. One copy is free to each BLYC member and additional copies can be purchased for $5 each.

If you don't already know by now, I neglected to include Saturday, May 15th as the date for the Spring Dinner on the solicitation form that was mailed to everyone on April 1st. So please mark that down, plan to attend and return your reservation by May 8th. On the form, I also ask that responses be sent to Linda Curtis until I get back home. If you're going to return your BLYC dues and committee contributions after May 8th, you can just send them directly to me. Once we begin distributing printed Birch Barkers, Holly Troeger, our Treasurer, will receive your donations. I mailed out 207 flyers to every address in our new Birch Lake phone book. I hope I can count on every single one joining the BLYC and supporting all of our activities.

All of us know that costs are rising on just about everything nowadays (except maybe waterfront real estate). We constantly deal with it in our daily lives and perhaps we forget that it affects our Yacht Club expenses as well. We all benefit from some of the things the Yacht Club does whether we join the yacht club or not. The quality of our lake's water should be foremost on the minds of all of our residents. The Birch Lake Yacht Club's Water Quality Committee has worked tirelessly combating invasive species and performing all the testing needed to monitor our lake. Last year the committee's expenses topped $5000. The annual Birch Lake fireworks show is eagerly anticipated by all to cap off the Independence Day weekend. This year the BLYC Board of Directors has allocated an additional $1000 for the show, raising the show's cost to over $7000.

I guess the point I am trying to make is, when you sit down to write that contribution check to the Yacht Club, remember what I said above. Whether you join the Yacht Club or not, do the math and help out, cause things aren't getting any cheaper.

Commodore Travelin'bob

Barker Kids of the Week
1ST BOARD MEETING
The first meeting of the BLYC Board of Directors for the 2010 season will be held at 9 a.m. on May 8th at the Yacht Club. Events planned for the summer will be discussed and our tentative schedule will be finalized. All Birch Lake Yacht Club members and lake residents are invited to attend. A group picture of the Board will be taken at this meeting and published in the season's first printed Birch Barker. We want you to know who your representatives are. Also, the Spring Road Clean-up will take place immediately following this meeting. The more, the merrier.

I've had some complaints about road trash, so please print this also:

CRITTER THANKS
Hi! My name is Rocky Raccoon and I am writing this on behalf of all my critter buddies here at Birch Lake. We all want to thank you humans that have finally started to come back with food for us. It has been a long cold winter and we're really glad you're back. Special thanks go out to you thoughtful humans that make things so easy for us when you put our food out in those nice, thin plastic garbage bags with no protection. Plus, we hope you like how it looks when we spread out all the paper, cans and boxes—sort of cheery, raccoon style we think. So keep up the good work and think plastic!
Book Club News
We had a great meeting at Irene's house on Saturday. The author, Lucinda Streiker-Schmidt, was friendly, interesting, and—best of all—she welcomed all our prying questions. If you'd like to know more, check out her web site: www.aseparategod.com
Thanks, Irene!

Our next meeting will be Tuesday, May 11, at 7 at Carol Dugan's home. The book Carol has chosen is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. It's well worth rereading, and if you somehow missed it in the past—or haven't read it since high school—you're in for a real treat!

Upcoming Meetings (tentative dates):
• May 11 (Tues. PM): Carol Dugan (To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee)
• June 15 (date and time to be announced): Blair Garceau (In the Time of Butterflies by Julie Alvarez)
• July 13 (Tues. PM): Judi Eichorst
• August 10 (Tues. PM): Denny Weesner

Camp Dining Hall Clean-Up
As in the past few years, Book Club members (and spouses and friends) are invited to help open the dining hall at Camp Tannadoonah. The date for this year is Wednesday, May 5, starting at 5:00 pm. The work goes quickly, and we always have a good time. See you there.

Porter Township EMS Data
Fire-EMS Response Time Study (Word Document)
Fire-EMS Response Time Study (Powerpoint)
Graphs including the 2009 YTD (Excel) 		BLYC 2010 Calendar of events
We have a tentative calendar of 2010 events ready ... to see them, click here.
Ice Out Pool
As determined by the judge (I was told it was me), the official day ALL the ice was gone was Friday 3/20. At 11:30 PM Thursday night there was still a 2-3 foot section along the east shore. As of 7:30 Friday morning it was still there as I left for work. A phone call home determined all was clear at noon. Congrats to Celia Fallon for claiming the winning date. Ironically, the last patch was along their shore line. Paul insists there is not some type of sewer refrigeration unit installed!
Ladies Golf
The date for the Ladies' Golf Tournament has been changed to July 16 ... please make a note.

Home needed
We are looking for a good home for a sweet Husky/Sheppard mix - she was found up by Birch Lake (Vandalia Mi) and myself and neighbors have tried to find her home and had no luck - we are thinking that she was dumped. She is only about 30lbs, potty trained, gets along with other dogs but is a little timid Is extremely loving, and has beautiful piercing blue eyes -
Please call me if interested - or send this email to others who you might think are interested.
Thank You
Carrie Rogers
574-536-6386
Hi Friends of Tannadoonah.
Well, we're up to 207 campers, about a month ahead of last year. But registrations are slowing down. An advertising tool at our disposal this year is yard signs. We have 50 for Tannadoonah and 50 for Tawanchi (Mishawaka day camp).

Can you help: gain approval to place these signs from residents and business owners on heavily trafficked streets? Granger is a key area. The signs are yellow, 18 x 24. We could stake them outside or take off the stake and place them as a sign with our brochures inside key supporting businesses, such as Soccer Zone.

You could then either a) come by our office (905 E Jefferson Blvd., Suite D, Mishawaka) and get a sign(s), telling me of where you are placing them, or b) give me contact info for those who have agreed and we will place them.

I don't know where you all live, but if you are on a busy street please sign yourselves up! Please contact me if you have any questions.

Thanks as always,
Marty McKiernan, Executive Director, Camp Fire USA River Bend Council, 574-234-4145

THE BARKER
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Camp Tannadoonah

Click here to see a really cool slideshow from Camp T

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FINANCIAL INFORMATION
Click here for the
2009 BLYC
Financial Reports
and Budget

Water Quality Update
The completed study of Birch Lake Water Quality that was done by Wally Fusilier, Ph.D. at the request of the Birch Lake Water Quality Committee can be viewed as a pdf document by clicking this link.