Evansville Retired Teachers Association Provides Volunteers at Frog Follies

 Friday, Saturday – August 23, 24, 2024 – 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

AUGUST 17, 2024

The Evansville Retired Teachers Association (ERTA) will once again contribute to our community with a large group of volunteers who will work at the annual Frog Follies sponsored by E’ville Iron Street Rods.  Our members work at the registration table to welcome the participants and distribute the registration materials and information.  We also have teams of volunteers who work in the t-shirt area to distribute shirts and giveaways to the participants.  This year, we have more than 80 retired teachers working in three-hour shifts to cover two days of the Frog Follies.

ERTA has volunteered at Frog Follies for more than 40 years.  Since 2005, Jim Sharp, retired principal, has been the chairman of our Frog Follies volunteers.  Jim works many hours assembling our volunteers and supervising our work throughout the weekend.   We work closely with Jodi Monarch, who chairs the E’ville Iron Street Rods registration work to ensure a successful event.  ERTA receives a stipend from Explore Evansville for our work at the Frog Follies.  The stipend benefits our organization and a major portion is donated each year to a community program that serves young people such as the YMCA,  the United Methodist Youth Home, and Youth Resources.

Our members enjoy greeting the Frog Follies participants while providing a great service to our community.  This project provides a great opportunity for retired teachers to share their working skills with the public.

The  Evansville Retired Teachers website and The Evansville Retired Teachers Facebook page provide examples of our programs and our work in the community.

The Evansville Retired Teachers Association (ERTA) is a vital educational organization of 225 active retired teachers who selflessly give of their time and financial resources to various non-profit community organizations such as Teacher Locker, Frog Follies, Tri-State Food Bank, and Hangers.  ERTA meets five times during the school year with a luncheon and program featuring such speakers as U of E Coach David Ragland, Bill Bussing – Otters Baseball, the Evansville Wartime Museum, Red Cross, and annual visits from local choirs and musicians.

Bally’s Evansville Announces Blood Drive

AUGUST 17, 2024

(Evansville, IN) August 16, 2024 – Bally’s Evansville will be hosting an American Red Cross Blood Drive on Thursday, August 22^nd from 10 AM until 4 PM in the Bally’s Evansville Executive Conference Center, Walnut Rooms A & B. Blood Donors, excluding Bally’s Evansville Team Members, will receive $5 in Free Slot Play for their donation of blood.

Blood Drive Hours:  Thursday, August 22, 2024: 10 AM – 4 PM CT

The American Red Cross has declared a National Blood Emergency as the blood supply in America has dropped by 25 percent since July 1^st. Remnants of Hurricane Debby are now complicating efforts to rebuild the supply.

America has dropped by 25 percent since July 1^st. Remnants of Hurricane Debby are now complicating efforts to rebuild the supply.

You can be a part of a lifesaving gift that serves others by donating blood at this drive.

To learn more about Bally’s Evansville, visit BallysEvansville.com.

About Bally’s Evansville

Bally’s Evansville is a multi-million-dollar entertainment complex located on the scenic banks of the Ohio River in southwestern Indiana. The single-level casino encompasses 45,000 square feet of gaming space featuring 940 slot games, 28 live and electronic table games and a High Limit Room. Accommodations include a 243-room hotel tower and a 95-room boutique hotel. The property also includes a sports book, three dining options, three bars, a conference center, a riverfront event center, and a 1,660-vehicle attached parking garage.

About Bally’s Corporation

Bally’s Corporation is a global casino entertainment company with a growing omni-channel presence. It currently owns and manages 15 casinos across 10 states, a golf course in New York, a horse racetrack in Colorado, and has access to OSB licenses in 18 states. It also owns Bally’s Interactive International, formerly Gamesys Group, a leading, global, online gaming operator, Bally Bet, a first-in-class sports betting platform, and Bally Casino, a growing casino platform.

With 10,600 employees, the Company’s casino operations include approximately 15,300 slot machines, 580 table games and 3,800 hotel rooms. Upon completing the construction of a permanent casino facility in Chicago, IL, and a land-based casino near the Nittany Mall in State College, PA, Bally’s will own and/or manage 16 casinos across 11 states. Bally’s also has rights to developable land in Las Vegas post the closure of the Tropicana.  It shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “BALY”.

GAVEL GAMUT

By Jim Redwine

THE CRUSADE CHARADE

The Crusades were the outgrowth of many factors but they are generally categorized as a series of wars between European Christians and Middle Eastern Muslims occurring from 1096 to 1291 AD involving competing claims over the Holy Land, especially Jerusalem. The catalyst for the first Crusade was a call to Christians made by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in France in November 1095. Urban declared that God had willed Christians to oust Muslims from the sacred sites. Urban promised remission of sins for any Christian who died in this vital service of Christ. Thousands of English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and others “took up the cross.”

Later in the New World, priests, clerics and politicians and plain Americans have spent from the 15^th century to 2024 spreading the gospel at home and continuing to attempt to control the beliefs and behaviors of Middle Easterners. Manifest Destiny was based on the premise that the god of Christians had ordained that America must eliminate paganism and not commit the sin of omitting to develop the land. Such “crusades” as the Trail of Tears were the outgrowth of European immigrants and their descendants’ beliefs that their god had ordained that America was the Promised Land for Caucasian Christians and that Native Americans had to be evicted, killed or converted to Christianity. This ingrained racial memory from 1492 until today may influence the justification for our invasions into the Muslim Middle East. Just as Native Americans had to be destroyed to save them, Muslims are still the enemies of Christ who must be saved from their misguided faith.

Most recently the United States has continued the tradition of the Crusades by invading Iraq twice and belligerently engaging Iran and such groups as ISIS, Hamas, Taliban, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and others. America designates these groups as terrorists but they claim to be part of a resistance movement. These organizations are generally Islamic in their religion as were the native Arabs and Persians during the original Crusades. There were Jewish populations in the Holy Land during the time Christian Europeans were seeking to take over the Middle East, but they were a small minority and could not mount an effective resistance to the Crusades.

Today, due to the world’s post-holocaust revulsion of the Nazi atrocities and the beliefs of many American fundamentalist Christians, such as dreamers in the Rapture, the United States is defending Israel’s aggression and is allied with the Zionists against Muslims, especially Iranians. Many of our politicians and much of the national media are on a crusade to support the hegemony of Israel under the guise of its self-defense. Israel has nuclear weapons it developed by spying on the United States and has an extremely modern and powerful military. It has nothing to fear from the rag-tag Muslim militias even if they are backed by countries such as Iran, China and Russia. Israel does not need our military support. And its current aggression in Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere, to say nothing, as most media does, about Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, clearly proves Israel does not deserve our support.

Israel is conducting its own crusade against Muslim countries in the Holy Land. If the United States cannot find the moral courage to confront this decades long injustice, we should, at least, not supply it with weapons and diplomatic immunity. It is long past the time America atoned for its own sins against our native population and that we not repeat those sins in the Middle East. To do so, all we need is to be guided by those principles of our Constitution and the philosophy of that Christian faith many Americans profess. Perhaps, if we make a good faith effort to act in the Middle East as the country we claim to be, we will not be misled by the Zionists among the Israelis into the same type of disaster those holier than thou European Crusaders had to endure a thousand years ago.

For more Gavel Gamut articles go to www.jamesmredwine.com