I was excited this week when my friends at the Janesville Noon Rotary let me know my first and somewhat clumsy attempt at being an auctioneer for 20 minutes or so brought in more than $3,000 for a very important cause.   As auction organizer Dennis Beggs put it, "I ran the numbers, and you made the Rotary $125.40 a minute.  Looking for a new job?"  

Janesville Noon Rotary will send the $3,100 dollars raised in Monday's auction and another $3,000 they have raised to "Shelter Box", a project a Rotary club in the United Kingdom started to provide temporary shelter for victims of natural disasters.  http://www.shelterbox.org/  The $6,000 the Janesville Rotarians raised will provide six 10-person tents,  thermal blankets, stoves, cooking utensils, water purification tablets, tool kits, and even crayons and drawing books for children who were victims of the cyclone in Myanmar. 

The Janesville Noon Rotary club is also helping provide wells and clean drinking water to people in Haiti, and has teamed up with other Rotary clubs in Rock County on a project called "Kids Against Hunger".   Recently, they packaged more than 18,000 meals for local food pantries.  http://www.nbc15.com/home/headlines/19100089.html.  

I'm not much of an auctioneer.  I had to ask the group several times, "What was the last bid? I can't remember."   The Rotarians were not only generous in putting up with my lack of auctioneer experience, they were generous about opening their wallets for an important cause.   The motto of Rotary International is "Service Above Self."   At $125.40 a minute, and with all the other projects they're involved in, this group is certainly living up to that pledge.  http://www.janesvillerotary.org/