Club News

The Southeast Iowa Button Club met at member Linda Hiatt?s house, in Albia, for its June meeting on June 23. The Iowa State Button Convention in Marshalltown was held on June 16, the club?s regular meeting date. Linda served yogurt, fruit, and some interesting gluten-free treats with coffee. Six members were present. Two members were involved with their Texas families and couldn?t come. One member is still recovering from her fall.

Members showed their convention competition button cards with and without ribbons. They discussed theirgreat times visiting with other state members and button dealers from several states. It was fun to see everyone and buy buttons for the next competition.

At Convention, Ann Olson gave a wonderful program on ?Get in the Swing.? The President?s award this year was buttons that involved a girl on a swing, a golf club or a baseball bat, or a dance style, etc. Ann showed all kinds of swing buttons as memberslistened to swing music. A beautiful cake and punch were served afterwards.

At the Southeast meeting, members talked about their trip next month to Missouri to visit a former member. She will meet members to shop in Cantril, and have lunch. It will be good to see her again. As soon as members connect with everyone, they?ll decide on the date during the week of July 11 for this trip. They don?t want their regular meeting to interfere with Washington County Fair week.

Linda?s husband, John, grilled chicken breasts for members. Wow! It was a treat. They had hot vegetable, salad, apple cake and ice cream.

In the afternoon, Linda gave the program on the 2017 button award: pictorial buttons specialized to Iowa. The four pictorial sections are animal, plant, object, and other pictorial. She gave examples of industries such as Tone?s spices, Blue Bunny ice cream, Jolly Time popcorn, Trailways bus company, Winnebago, Happy Joe?s Pizza, Pella Windows, John Deere, Kinze, Lake City pipe organs that may be shown on buttons. Linda shared with the group that Iowa is seventh in the nation raising black Angus cattle, third in the nation in motorcycle ownership (1 to 18), more golf courses per capita than any other state, and 92 percent of Iowa?s land is used for farming. The state bird is goldfinch. The state flower is the wild rose. The state tree is oak. Her program was very informative.