To the Editor:

Lots is happening at the Bethlehem Grange. We’re located at 24 Bridge St. in Selkirk.

We’re looking for community donations of clean plastic bags or paper bags. We use these bags for our Craft & Plant Sales, and also for our Garage Sales.

We realize we will no longer have plenty of these after March 1. Help us and recycle your clean plastic bags by donating them to the Bethlehem Grange. You can drop them off during our meetings, or during our Corned Beef and Cabbage Dinner on Saturday March 7.

The dinner includes potatoes, vegetables, Irish soda bread or rolls and butter, beverage, and dessert.  Dinner is served family-style from 4 to 7 p.m. Take-outs are also available. The cost is $12 for adults and children 12; children ages 5 to 11 eat for $5; children under 5 eat for free.

Many dates are available for your family members’ birthday party, bridal showers, baby showers, graduation party, Easter dinner, or Mother’s Day family dinner. Our banquet hall seats 96 and is air-conditioned for the summer months that are finally coming.

We're handicap accessible, with convenient parking. We also have a full commercial kitchen if you need it for food preparation. 

We are celebrating our 146th birthday on March 17.  Our building is on the Historic Register. For more details, call me, Carol Carpenter, on my cell phone at 518-421-1384 or on my home phone at 518-438-8862.

If you have an American flag that is worn, discolored, or tattered, you can drop your flag off to our flag box, located in front of our Grange Hall. We will make sure it is properly disposed of by the American Legion Post 37.

We are also collecting the pull tabs from pet foods, canned soups, canned fish, and whatever else has pull tabs. They are being donated to the Ronald McDonald House in Albany. Bags of pull tabs may be dropped off by our back door. They must be in plastic bags, please. Ronald McDonald House uses these tabs to purchase equipment needed for the children and their families, in the Ronald McDonald Houses.

To arrange for drop-off of plastic bags or pull tabs, call Charles Ryan at 518-227-8954 or Vernon Starr at 518-567-4294 or me at 518-421-1384. We have no place where bags can remain dry and off the road, if you just drop them off.

Carol Carpenter

Master/President

Bethlehem Grange 137