Out to Lunch at Jalapenos Restaurant

Join us for the monthly Out to Lunch event

Date: Monday, January 30th
Time: 12 pm
Where: Jalapenos Restaurant
7 Clock Tower Plaza
Elgin, IL

Dan Fox and Don Waters of the Elgin Leadership Academy will be our guests. Dan and Don have run the Academy with the backing of the Elgin Area Chamber for the last 15 years. The academy has nurtured hundreds of future leaders including a state representative, county board member, city council members, school board, social service and community organization board members and business leaders. Many DNA volunteers and staff members have attended over the years and Armida Dominguez, Jennifer Benson and Heidi Lipinski are in the academy this year. I am a proud alum of the class of 1999, "Leading Elgin Into the New Millennium". Please post a comment if you are an academy alumni and share the impact the experience has had on you.

So join us on the 30th to meet two individuals that have contributed in many ways to the volunteer spirit that defines this place we call Elgin.

The menu is an all you can eat Buffet Lunch. Please RSVP at (847)488-1456.

Event Expected to Bring Philatelists to Elgin

The U.S. Postal Service is unveiling the newest 2006 first-class 39 cent stamps, Favorite Children's Book Animals, on Friday, January 27, 2006. The event will take place at the Gail Borden Library at 270 N. Grove Avenue, from 11 to 3. Wild Thing and Curious George characters will be present and there will be many, many fun activities throughout the library. Honored guests at the 11 a.m. ceremony will include Elgin Postmaster, Diane Tindle, and Connie Neale, superintendent of U-46 schools. A unique one-day-only Gail Borden Public Library cancellation will make its 4-hour cameo appearance from 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. at the library. More information.

This is the second time in the last six months that a stamp was unveiled in downtown Elgin. The "Let's Dance" series was unveiled on September 17, 2005 at Fiesta Salsa.

Downtown Businesses in the News

Kim's Black Belt Academy at 5 S. Spring St was featured in an article on the Larsen Middle School Fine Arts/Life Arts Career Day.

For the second year in a row, Butters, a drama teacher at the school, helped coordinate Fine Arts/Life Arts Career Day, an opportunity for pupils to explore various careers or hobbies and absorb some of the passion for those activities from the people who love doing them.
Margaret and Jeff Kim, for example, got educated in computer science and law, respectively. But the couple have turned their love of martial arts into a running business. The duo runs Kim's Black Belt Academy in downtown Elgin. And on Friday morning, they were speaking with seventh- and eighth-graders about martial arts and their love for it.

It was written by Liza Roche and appeared in the Saturday Courier News.

Andersen's Engraving at 64 N. Grove Ave was featured in an article by Lenore Adkins in the Sunday Daily Herald.

Sverre Jarl Andersen, founder of what was known as Andersen’s Gifts of Distinction in downtown Elgin, believed in doing things his way when he opened the store in 1961.
“He would take the business and always want to improve it somehow,” said his son Dave Andersen. “He never wanted to follow the template, he wanted to be the guy that writes the template.”