It has been four months since my last confe...  post.  A lot has happened since April but please rest assured, we were in control of none of it.  

This is my last entry as President of the Purple Foot.  During the past couple of months, I have had time to think about what it is that we may or may not have accomplished.  It's also time to say thank you and to cheer on our new incoming president, Larry Janke.

I'm often given to long speeches and have always considered myself to be a man of many words, so it shouldn't be hard to fill up the book here.  Stop reading here.  The rest is mostly meandering.  

My first year of being president was, well, interesting.  We had discovered that Covid was a real thing, and by our first board meeting in August of 2020, everything had been canceled.  I knew that this was happening and spent most of the summer working on making adjustments so that perhaps we could continue on.  I was also hounded by the nightmare thought that I might spend my entire presidency overseeing nothing at all.  A lot of clubs shut down, after all.  This included our namesakes, the Purple Foot of Rochester.  

Amidst all of this, and with the help of many, we managed to find our way to Zoom, to some of the weirdest meetings ever, where we all learned about the internet and still managed to have some fun.  Everything changed for all of us.  In fact, when the Holiday party rolled around, we had given up on the idea of actually greeting each other in person and instead had a really fun, innovative online party with auctions and games and fun.  The turnout was stunning and I still laugh at what we managed to accomplish.  

2021 was more of the same.  We had online tastings, online contests and online meetings.  Our board discussed and resolved a huge number of issues and we forged ahead.  We were able to create and finish the wonderful website that we now use.  The input from the people in our group, including a Mentoring committee, a Communications committee  and the overall voluntary input provided from members and board members was absolutely invaluable.  You all know who you are and I thank you all every day.  We managed, because of our membership, to adapt to times that we really never wanted to experience.  We continue to do that in fact.  

We are not out of Covid yet, but we have been very fortunate to have in-person meetings, joyful reunions and so much more fun than we ever expected.  We have been careful and we managed to celebrate a fiftieth club anniversary.  How amazing is that?  

So thank you.  There is obviously a lot more to say.  My own experience is filled with mostly great memories of all of our members and our times.  I am thankful that we stuck it out, that we have actually added a few new members and that we are still incredibly viable as a club.  I am also thrilled that Larry inherits a strong membership, great winemakers and an ever-growing group of close friends who have managed to stay in touch in spite of the changes we have experienced.  

Okay, done now.  Back to whatever it was that you were thinking about.  

Mike