About
The picture up there is a Mount Horeb summer — a kid in a handmade crown, face painted, at our Kid's Zone on the night before the Fourth. One of our favorite evenings of the year. This past one, the kids spent it writing thank-you notes to their neighbors and to the men and women who've served. Mount Horeb is good at saying thank you. And we're grateful for the chance to serve our village — its kids most of all.
We're the Optimist Club of Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. Chartered in the fall of 1995, part of the Southern Wisconsin District. Friends of youth. Neighbors who believe in our home.
Optimism as a practice
Optimism, the way we mean it, isn't a mood. It's a daily practice.
It's easy to talk about; and a little harder to follow through, month after month, year after year. It means choosing to invest in kids without regard to the news of the day. It means bringing a high school student and their family to one of our meetings, and telling the other Mount Horeb Optimists — this is someone you should know. It means believing — out loud, in public — that a humble village's best days are the ones still ahead.
Most days it doesn't feel like something special. Pancakes at the high school. Burger shifts at the Frolic. A Kid's Zone at the Norsk July 3rd Celebration. The quiet pride of watching a student get named Someone You Should Know. It adds up. And we show up for it.
The Creed
The Optimist Creed is older than the club — Optimists have been saying something like it for more than a hundred years. It starts like this:
Promise yourself —
To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet.
To make all your friends feel that there is something in them.
It goes on for ten promises. Most of us don't have it memorized. But after a while, you notice it showing up in your life every day.
Come say hello
If this sounds like the kind of place you'd like to stand, come say hello. We'd be glad to meet you.
Say hello