Meeting Minutes 8-24-2010
Posted by Damyen Lofton
Bulletin of the Marin Evening Rotary Club
August 24, 2010
Our meeting
was called to order by President Mark. We were led in the Pledge by this
evening's PTR designate, Marsha Solvason, who followed this up with a
very nice reading.
There were
several visiting Rotarians this evening and several guests. In fact, we
had pretty much of a full house. Among visiting Rotarians were: Rich
Benson, our wannabe County Assessor, from Terra Linda, Bob Hope from the
Foster City Rotary and Jim Becker from Petaluma, while guests included
Henry Froneberger, a friend of Becker (who was somehow related to a NY
Times Bestseller!), Karen Burnworth, a very close friend of Larry
Burnworth, and Kim Kassner and Lea Schwartz two very experienced guests
of our Club. Plus our two speakers, Jane Nielson and Howard Wilshire.
On to Good
Times...........But before we got started, Mark cooled us down a bit
with the warning (?) that fines were on the way, a tradition we've let
slip for these past few years. According to Mark they'll be returning.
But apparently not yet, so Marsha admitted that she'll soon be off on a 2
1/2 week cruise to Alaska. She also noted with pride and pleasure that
this was her one year anniversary as a member of Marin Evening Rotary.
Cheer, cheer. And we're proud to have her.
A Good Time
was enjoyed by Malcolm who attended Patty Wolfe's birthday party down in
Atherton. The party dined at Benihana's in Burlingame, and
probably managed to squeeze in at least a couple of lanes at 101 Bowl as
well. Though this could be just my imagination working there. Our
guest, Bob Hope of Foster City said that he'd enjoyed the Rotoplast
Cruise on the Bay last weekend. As had our President-Elect, Al Shirley.
Back to our resident Anglo, Malcolm, who told us that he'd attended a
Rotary Program on Grantsmanship last Saturday (that was a busy Saturday,
Malcolm), put on by our own resident Grant experts, Holly and Keith.
Malcolm reported that the two of them performed admirably.
Curt's Good
Time was that Holly had saved his Little Black Book and all that came
with it. Turns out that Curt fell into the water up at Clear Lake during
the Club outing. Nothing to be concerned about there - except that his
I-phone was in his pocket at the time. Bye bye, I-phon
e.
Not to fear though, as Holly was near ! Turns out Holly had learned
about how to quickly "dry off" an electronic device. Shove it into a
bucket of salt. Which she did. And voila - the phone worked. At least
for a while. Long enough to pull all those important phone numbers - and
other stuff - off of it, before it died for good a few days later.
Mark then enjoyed a Good Time,
having the honor to pass out Blue Badges to Traci, Cory and Jean, which
added them to the role of Good Timers. Following that, Curt confessed to
having a birthday - as had yours truly earlier in the program - and the
assembled throng belted out a sterling rendition of the Happy Birthday
Song to the two of us.
It turned out that our guest, Henry
Froneberger, who was previously mentioned as being related to a NY Times
Best Selling author, was actually the son-in-law of the author of the
Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, which was indeed #1 on the NY
Times Best Seller list for several weeks last year. Those of us at
Henry's table enjoyed chatting with him about the book, of which he was
quite knowledgeable. Henry mentioned to those gathered around him at the
table that he'd be happy to speak to our Rotary Club on the subject at
one of our meetings. As one who's read the book, I'd look forward to it,
and I hope that we put him on the schedule.
On to Announcements, and the first
one up was Al Shirley who discussed our upcoming Community Service
Project, serving lunch at Martinelli House on Saturday, but in view of
the fact that that function is now history, I won't bother repeating
Al's instructions. Jayne made one more pitch for contributions to the
RIF and announced that more raffle tickets were available if needed. She
added that the Club's contributions so far were excellent.
Nearing the final turn, Marsha
presented to us her home baked apple pie (gravensteins are the key, she
says) and some flowers. A wicked bidding war then ensued, and when it
was over, the winner was one of our visiting Rotarians, Rich Benson.
President Mark tried to finagle a deal for the Marin Evenings, so that
our property assessments could be lowered in return for our letting him
have our pie, but I'm not sure that Rich agreed to this.
So, anyway. Elsia introduced to us,
our speakers Howard Wilshire and Jane Nielson, both of the U.S.G.S., who
spoke to us on the human-generated environmental challenges facing us
in the western United States. At the conclusion of their talk they
signed one of our children's books, and off they went. And off we went.
Don't miss next week's meeting.
You'll get to learn who the real Barbara Gillett is ! Plus other really
neat stuff. See you there.
Winston