President Bill led the meeting today, with plenty of happy, sad and cross fines, and enthusiasm too! There were 17 members and 5 guests and visiting Rotarians. Notable happy fine was for Ken Cox becoming a Texas Longhorn fan. Just took the right sales pitch, apparently.
The Interact Club at West Prep is active, reported Lynn Price, and Duncan Lee delivered books and presented pins to those who worked at a soup kitchen. They have more community activities planned and are coming to help at our next Red Rock Clean-up.
The Fremont Club celebrated its 25th anniversary at the Fremont Street Experience - where else? Mayor Goodman spoke, and the Fremont canopy show featured a finale of Rotary with photos through the past 25 years of the Fremont Club service and fellowship. It was pretty emotional for some of their members.
Prsident Bill challenged the club to match his $ 100 donation for the relief efforts in Japan. Brett Grant's radio station, KSHP-AM 1400, is running their own effort of Shelter Boxes. We decided to support that, and raised $ 350 in a matter of a few minutes.
The speaker was a returning Ambassadorial Scholar from Green Valley. He graduated from Northern Arizona Univ. in music and math and went to New Zealand to work on his masters thesis. He lived in Christ Church but visited 4 countries, 60 cities and made presentations to 49 Rotary Clubs. His presentation spoke of connections through trust, friendship, honesty and hope. He was a facilitator for RYLA, which is quite different than ours, as it is for 18-24 year olds. The hospitality of the people of New Zealand impressed him the most along with New Zealand Airways, which has a daily $ 2 ticket to a different city. That facilitated his travels greatly.
Rotary Clubs in New Zealand sponsor an Emergency Response Kit, similiar to but pre-dating the Shelter Box program, for disasters throughout the country and neighboring islands. These were important following the recent eqrthquakes, which have had 4,000 after shocks.
Rotarians there play a wine game at club meetings which he introduced to us with a bottle of new Zealand Savignon Blanc. It replaces happy bucks as a fun fundraiser, where everyone stands up and puts their hands on their head or tail, a coin is flipped, winners remain standinbg for another round until there is a winner. Guess who won! The guy next to Brett Grant, who Brett sponsored into the contest. Photo attached.
Next week are the RYLA presentations, a meeting no one wants to miss.
Tom Lott
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