Neighbors Who Care – Meeting since 2002

Just wanted to help raise some awareness about a city-wide association of pro-active Beloit residents called “Neighbors Who Care”. They have been meeting since 2002 and focus on learning how to deal with neighborhood situations and providing support and encouragement for Beloit residents. Their meetings are open to the public.

They meet on the 4th Tuesdays of the month at 6:30 p.m. over at the Neighborhood Housing Services Building (520 West Grand).

Joseph and Kathy Vickerman head up the group. Just last month was the first time Ana-n-I were able to catch up with them. They’re a very knowledgeable,  plugged in and active group of folks. It was very informative and time very well spent. I would encourage you to mark your calendar and stop by next month Sept. 22nd. We’ve added their meetings to the BNPA calendar here.

BMHS Jazz Band – Appreciation Reception

Folks know we’re big fans of the BMHS Jazz Band.

The Beloit Memorial High School Jazz Band cordially invites you to a reception showing our appreciation for the generous donations we received in support of our recent participation in the Essentially Ellington Festival and Competition at the Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City.

Appreciation Reception

Beloit Public Library Meeting Room

Monday, August 17, 2009

7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Cake and Punch will be served.

Preview our New York DVD, featuring photos and video of our experience in New York City.

Mark your calendar. Hope to see you there.

Added to the NPA events calendar.

First ever B.N.P.A. National Night Out Picnic!

Tuesday August 4th is National Night Out. And given that we’re always looking for an excuse to get together with neighbors and friends anyway this is a great occasion to do so.

• Where: Horace White Park. We’ll be gathering by the band shell.
  
• Time: 5:30-9:00
• What: It’s a picnic. While you’re certainly welcome to bring something to pass it is not expected, it’s not a “pot luck”. So simply bring what you would enjoy for a picnic.
  
• Bring the kids: We’ll have games and prizes!
• What else to bring: There are approximately eight picnic tables available though you may want to bring chairs or otherwise plan for this.
• Grills? There are no grills there. You’re welcome to bring one along though if you’d like.
  

Please invite your neighbors and friends who may not see this web posting.

BTW, there’s a small fee for reserving the park. As such we’ll be passing the hat to cover this.

Thanks to Marge F. for pulling this together for us!

Photo credit: Mark P.  (any excuse to showcase Mark’s pics and this HW park pic is among my favorites)

Community Garden Sites – Proposed

There are a number of city lots available for the possible creation of community gardens. We’d just need to find people in the general neighborhood of a site to take responsibility for it. Two are adjacent to historic districts. One at 432 Wisconsin (College Park Hist. Dist.) and one at 507 St. Lawrence (Bluff Street Hist. Dist.). I -know- there are some avid gardeners among us.

Sounds like fun -and- a great option for fresh produce -and- a great use of this space -and- a great neighborhood initiative. Interested? Let’s discuss at our next regular meeting, or comment.

All potential community garden sites:
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Meeting Minutes 1/12/09

Once again we got hit with nasty weather the evening of our meeting. All the same over twentyfolks braved the snow and cold including a half dozen new faces which is particularly gratifying. Things continue to come together for us.

We’re now a licensed not-for-profit

Committees have been agreed upon and are forming

Both Visit Beloit & Stateline Community Foundation support offered

Most importantly though, we now have an actual wooden gavel

Items discussed:

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Church St. Neighbors Coffee

Just a quick reminder for those living on Church Street that their next regularly scheduled coffee (1st Sunday of the month, 8:00 am) is this Sunday 1/4. C’mon out. Pleasant Street Coffeehouse as per usual. Some folks we’ve not seen for a while.

Also, we’re beginning to reach some critical mass on other streets. This is an enjoyable model other streets could benefit by emulating. We simply need someone to initiate. Interested?

Viral knitting

Not sure how this applies to ‘neighborhood preservation’ other then the building of ‘community’ often hinges on folks coming together socially simply to enjoy shared interests. Who knew it would be knitting?

It would seem that some latent, smouldering passion for knitting has lain pent up just under the surface among many of our friends and neighbors simply awaiting the subject being broached. Now released it’s gone viral. I understand there are over a dozen now who’ve expressed an interest in getting together to… well, knit.

So come on out and join DebD and the rest at Pleasant Street Coffeehouse next Wednesday 1/7 at 4:00.

Meeting Minutes 12/08/08

It was an icy bad-weather evening last night. And the bad weather not-withstanding we had thirty one people join us including a bunch of new neighbors. We met some new neighbors from Central and some new neighbors from Emerson. Not yet really well represented are Wisconsin Ave. and Milwaukee Ave. If you know of anyone on those streets it would great to have those areas represented.

Sgt. Northrop from the Beloit PD joined us. We’d forwarded to him a raft of questions and incidents we’d hoped to talk about. Frankly I figured we’d likely go about half an hour > forty five minutes and have time for other agenda as well. It would seem though we tapped into something a lot of people wanted to talk about. The exchanged showed no sign of let up for the full hour and a half we had. It could have likely continued if we’d not called time. It was a very positive, supportive exchange which I was particularly glad about. Very light on the pissing & moaning. Heavy on the what-can-we-do support. Lots of questions. Lots of good background information. Lots of actionable things we could take home with us which was great! Frankly there was too much for me to try and recount here. If you missed it we’ll most likely touch on this again in some form again.

The short-list of things you’ll want to keep in mind or try to put into action…

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