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St. Charles Peace Corps volunteer off to Kosovo

The Peace Corps apparently likes the work St. Charles architect Mike Dixon has done for the organization the past few years.

He's had stints in Ukraine and Armenia, and now the corps is inviting Dixon to work with the Kosovo Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare for six months, starting in mid-January.

His assignment is to help formulate a community development program, which will cover many economic, environmental and public facets of life in the country.

So he'll be off to southeast Europe to a nation of more than 1.8 million people, of which Dixon estimates at 95 percent Muslim, primarily Albanians.

"I accepted this invitation and look forward to working with the people of Kosovo and living in one of the larger cities in the country, possibly its capital, Pristina," Dixon said.

Dixon has praised the people and the cultures of the countries he has worked in since joining the Peace Corps. He knows enough about living in this part of the world now to sum it up fairly simply: "I expect this experience will be interesting."

Gather the wood

While admiring the Geneva Girl Scouts' entry in the annual Giving Tree display at the Geneva History Center last weekend, my timing was quite good.

The young lady who helped build the unique wooden tree was admiring the creation at the same time. Raegan Lubben, a seventh-grader at Geneva Middle School North, said members of her Troop 4807 earned a woodworking badge by putting together the tree.

It was one of my favorites in this year's display.

The girls collected the wood at Camp Dean Woods and turned it into an interesting entry at the display featuring other organizations' impressive trees, all seeking $1 votes for best tree from visitors or online voters through Dec. 23. The winning organization keeps all of the donations from its votes.

Those Aldi runners

As we prepared to participate in TriCity Family Services' annual Snowflake Shuffle last weekend, I noticed quite a few people had Aldi stocking caps.

"They must sell a nice stocking cap at the Aldi grocery store," I thought to myself. I wanted one, at least partly because my ears were cold.

Turns out, Aldi, a sponsor of the event, also registered about 50 participants for the 5K/10K fundraiser in the Mill Creek subdivision in Geneva. That's a nice way to get involved in a community event.

Still fighting Parkinson's

Since being diagnosed with Parkinson's, Paul Ruby's fight against the disease has been well-documented with the major fundraisers staged on his behalf. But he also learned a lot about the disease and how other foundations work to raise money and awareness.

The Geneva resident will now help the Davis Phinney Foundation reach those goals as a regional ambassador. And it should be a smooth transition.

The Paul Ruby Foundation, after raising more than $1 million over eight years, dissolved and merged into the Davis Phinney Foundation last year. So Ruby has his fingerprints all over the fight against Parkinson's, no matter which foundation is on the front lines.

Car wash makeover

Friends and patrons of the El Diamante Hand Car Wash in St. Charles know how hard Alejandra Suarez and his family work to keep the business going and pleasing its customers.

So they pitched in to help the family spruce up the business with a cleaning, some painting and some furniture.

Deborah Gonzalez-Mendez of St. Charles and her family came up with the idea and contacted others to give the business a nice makeover.

It surely has to make the Suarez family happy it set up shop in a place like St. Charles.

dheun@sbcglobal.net

  Jitka Janovska of St. Charles is dressed as an elf while participating in the TriCity Family Services seventh annual Snowflake Shuffle 10K run in Geneva Saturday. Columnist Dave Heun admired the stocking caps worn by many of the runners. Laura Stoecker/lstoecker@dailyherald.com
Mike Dixon of St. Charles, shown in the local library with a visitor from Ukraine, will soon depart for another Peace Corps assignment, this time to Kosovo. Courtesy of Mike Dixon
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