A Few Highlights from our Club Meeting:
- Welcome and Introductions:
President Lora Fisher called the meeting to order, ” Welcome – It’s lunch time on Tuesday, and there’s no better place to be than La Jolla Rotary! Rotary Club of La Jolla has been gathering to do good in the world since the club was chartered on Tuesday, April 14, 1947. I want to welcome you to our 68th Club Assembly meeting and our 14th meeting of the 2015/2016 Rotary year. We are beginning our second quarter of the Rotary year. ”
- Invocation: Betty Dow reminded us that:
We may live without poetry, music and art,
We may live without conscience and live without hearts,
We may live without friends,
We may live without books,
But civilized men cannot live without cooks.
We may live without books – what is knowledge but grieving?
We may live without hope – what is hope but deceiving?
We may live without love – what is passion but pining?
But where is the man who can live without dining?
- Pledge: Camille McKinney
- Song: Bob Teaff tried to implement democracy in the choice of song, but, like Abe Lincoln, realized it doesn’t always work well and chose the song himself. As it turned out,“ Zippity Do Dah” was an excellent choice, as members all seemed to know the words. Those who knew the second verse were disappointed the songfest concluded so early.
Visitors:
President Lora Fisher and Fellow Club Members Welcomed:
- Miles Jones, with Edward Jones Investments, expressed his happiness at being here,
and said he looked forward to meeting Rotarians during his visit.
Visiting Rotarians:
- Mari Pullen is one of 17 Assistant District Governors for our District and a help support the Presidents of the five La Jolla and Torrey Pines Rotary clubs.
- Also Jim Otwell from the Rotary Club of Forsyth in Cumming , Georgia
Happy Bucks:
- Mari Pullen was so impressed with the Tijuana Home Build, she chipped in.
- Lee Vida said he and Rhonda visited LJ’s newest event space, The Lot, in the old Jonathan’s spot, and found it fine.
- Russell King found himself a last-minute draft for UCSD’s Wellness Team’s Mission Bay Triathlon entry and was pleased (and not a little surprised) their relay team placed 2nd!
- Gwyn Jones acknowledged the Salvation Army Christmas activities, and offered
 Rotarians a couple of chances to get involved. December 5th and 12th will offer the opportunity to pack boxes with food and gifts for families. If you can help to pre-screen families who sign up for the program, your efforts will be appreciated October 26th – November 6. Rotarians who can work this into their schedules may chose from an hour, to all day. Gwyn has signup sheets at the meetings, or email him.
Announcements:
- Cindy Greatrex – urged members who are able to take part in Rotary-United Nations Day in New York City on November 7th. The gathering will honor 70-years of the UN and Rotary. Behind-the-scenes tours and a fine time are promised. If you can’t make it to the Big Apple, Cindy offered a local event on October 24th at noon in Balboa Park which will celebrate the UN in San Diego. President Lora is honorary chair, and Ford Roosevelt, grandson of FDR and Eleanor will be the speaker
- Bob Teaff, who still isn’t quite sure how he became chair of the nominating committee for upcoming officers, announced that Past Presidents meet next Tuesday, October 20th, at 11:00 to discuss same, and welcome input.
- John Trifiletti said the Fireside Chat is set for October 13th, all five Red Badgers (not the rodent type) are set to attend.
- Ted Rutter noted that the Tijuana Home build Project has now completed 23 homes. The next project is set for November 14th, volunteers welcome. Each house costs $3,000, and Ted says donations are welcome and needed.
- President Lora noted that Leanne MacDougall was seen in the La Jolla Light at Monte Carlo, the MCA annual Gala, and thought a contribution might be in order.
Today’s meeting was the Annual Club Assembly. Many committee chairs gave reports on their activities.
International: Chair Don Lincoln, who is in Australia, was channeled by Lora Fisher and Pat Stouffer.
 Augmenting efforts on TJ Home builds with solar- Shelter Box
- Haiti Project – Pat Stouffer showed what the chicken coop might look like, and noted plans are underway for the trip to Haiti to build same.
Youth Services:
- How can we talk about Youth Service without thinking of Cal Mann? He’s still keeping in touch, and plans to attend the District Gala.
- Jonathon Moffat leads this alongside Charles Hartford and Craig Schneip . They will give an update at an upcoming meeting.
Senior Services – Kevin Quinn discussed League House picnic this past summer and Christmas party to be scheduled.
TJ Scholars – David Shaw discussed 15 th season of scholars lab: 28 students grades 7-12 in Tijuana from poorest part of city. Given monthly stipend to stay in school and English and computer training. Taught by US volunteers via Skype and in person.
Community Service – Cindy Goodman said there are many ongoing projects, including the Christmas parade in which President Lora will ride. Two projects with Salvation Army; Just in Time organization for kids living in Foster Care when ready to transition to living independently as adults. Military Project in planning: Bell donated by club to Naval Regional Medical Center rung every time a cancer patient completes chemotherapy.
Foundation: Will Creekmur had the good news that not only did our club raise $4,300 in Strikeout for Polio, but the Gates Foundation will match that amount dollar for dollar. The next step is asking five other La Jolla Clubs to match as well.
Membership – John Trifiletti focuses with many other members on:
- Recruiting new members
- Advancing Red Badgers
- Retaining current members
He noted that the rotary application is now online.
Service Above Selfie!
Our own Carlos Gutierrez and eight friends are riding from Brookings, Oregon to the border of Mexico to support and raise awareness for the Challenged Athletes Foundation.
The team poses at The Chandelier Tree, providing still another example that orange is the new orange.
Where in the World?
Where In The World is this Rotarian and who is he or she? Be the first to indentify your fellow Rotarian and the location to win. Please send your answer to mahalosu@gmail.com.
If you have an interesting travel photo of yourself in a recognizable destination you would like to submit for the game please send it to: mahalosu@gmail.com. Photos do not have to be recent, older pictures are welcome! All submissions will be considered, international and domestic! May the best globetrotter win!
Cal Mann is the winner of last week’s contest. His first response was Davis Cracroft, but he quickly revised it to correctly identify Betty Dow! What a looker she was, and of course still is. Great posture Betty!
Please keep the photographs coming, recent or not, in far distance places or not . . . La Jolla Rotarians go to interesting places and do interesting things, and it is fun (and sometimes challenging) for us to keep up with each other’s doings.
The Most Important Thing, and It’s Almost a Secret – NYTimes.com
We journalists are a bit like vultures, feasting on war, scandal and disaster. Turn on the news, and you see Syrian refugees, Volkswagen corruption, dysfunctional government.
Yet that reflects a selection bias in how we report the news: We cover planes that crash, not planes that take off. Indeed, maybe the most important thing happening in the world today is something that we almost never cover: a stunning decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease.
Huh? You’re wondering what I’ve been smoking! Everybody knows about the spread of war, the rise of AIDS and other diseases, the hopeless intractability of poverty.
One survey found that two-thirds of Americans believed that the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has almost doubled over the last 20 years. Another 29 percent believed that the proportion had remained roughly the same.
That’s 95 percent of Americans — who are utterly wrong. In fact, the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty hasn’t doubled or remained the same. It has fallen by more than half, from 35 percent in 1993 to 14 percent in 2011 (the most recent year for which figures are available from the World Bank).
When 95 percent of Americans are completely unaware of a transformation of this magnitude, that reflects a flaw in how we journalists cover the world — and I count myself among the guilty. Consider:
• The number of extremely poor people (defined as those earning less than $1 or $1.25 a day, depending on who’s counting) rose inexorably until the middle of the 20th century, then roughly stabilized for a few decades. Since the 1990s, the number of poor has plummeted.
• In 1990, more than 12 million children died before the age of 5; this toll has since dropped by more than half.
• More kids than ever are becoming educated, especially girls. In the 1980s, only half of girls in developing countries completed elementary school; now, 80 percent do.
Granted, some 16,000 children still die unnecessarily each day. It’s maddening in my travels to watch children dying simply because they were born in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But one reason for our current complacency is a feeling that poverty is inevitable — and that’s unwarranted.
The world’s best-kept secret is that we live at a historic inflection point when extreme poverty is retreating. United Nations members have just adopted 17 new Global Goals, of which the centerpiece is the elimination of extreme poverty by 2030. Their goals are historic. There will still be poor people, of course, but very few who are too poor to eat or to send children to school. Young journalists or aid workers starting out today will in their careers see very little of the leprosy, illiteracy, elephantiasis and river blindness that I have seen routinely.
“We live at a time of the greatest development progress among the global poor in the history of the world,” notes Steven Radelet, a development economist and Georgetown University professor, in a terrific book coming in November, “The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World.”
“The next two decades can be even better and can become the greatest era of progress for the world’s poor in human history,” Radelet writes.
I write often about inequality, a huge challenge in the U.S. But globally, inequality is diminishing, because of the rise of poor countries.
What does all this mean in human terms? I was thinking of that last week while interviewing Malala Yousafzai, the teenage Nobel Peace Prize winner. Malala’s mother grew up illiterate, like the women before her, and was raised to be invisible to outsiders. Malala is a complete contrast: educated, saucy, outspoken and perhaps the most visible teenage girl in the world.
Even in countries like Pakistan, the epoch of illiterate and invisible women like Malala’s mother is fading; the epoch of Malala is dawning. The challenge now is to ensure that rich donor nations are generous in supporting the Global Goals — but also that developing countries do their part, rather than succumbing to corruption and inefficiency. (I’m talking to you, Angola!)
There’s one last false argument to puncture. Cynics argue that saving lives is pointless, because the result is overpopulation that leads more to starve. Not true. Part of this wave of progress is a stunning drop in birthrates.
Haitian women now average 3.1 children; in 1985, they had six. In Bangladesh, women now average 2.2 children. Indonesians, 2.3. When the poor know that their children will survive, when they educate their daughters, when they access family planning, they have fewer children.
So let’s get down to work and, on our watch, defeat extreme poverty worldwide. We know that the challenges are surmountable — because we’ve already turned the tide of history.
Wanted: Club photographers for Surf Beat!
From The Pages of:
October 2015 Edition
THE ROTARIAN CONVERSATION WITH ISABELI FONTANA
From the runways of Paris to the catwalks of Milan, from the pages of Sports Illustrated to the cover of Vogue, Brazil’s Isabeli Fontana is one of the most recognizable figures in the world of high fashion. Two years ago, the supermodel became a super role model for the eradication of polio when she accepted Rotary’s invitation to become a polio ambassador. Since then, two other Brazilian celebrities – soccer player Alexandre Pato and singer Ivete Sangalo – have joined Rotary’s roster of ambassadors.
Fontana, a mother of two, began to take a special interest in polio eradication in 2011, when she brought her younger son to receive oral polio vaccine drops from the Brazilian Minister of Health as part of the country’s national immunization campaign. Since then, she has helped to raise awareness by participating in Rotary’s “This Close” campaign, and by posing for photos in an End Polio Now T-shirt custom designed by Brazil fashion brand Tufi Duek. She was part of the World’s Biggest Commercial and appeared in the thank-you video that concluded that campaign. Fontana has also used her personal social media channels to promote polio eradication efforts and immunization events.
Read More in the October 2015 Edition or Click Here
 |
|
| Club Meetings Unless otherwise noted, all club meetings are Tuesday, 12:00 noon – 1:30 p.m. at La Valencia Hotel, 1132 Prospect St., La Jolla (Map) Check out the Upcoming Guest Speakers on the Club Calendar!
• For our 3,338th meeting we will have
• October 13th – Josh Lawson – Sharing his experiences in Haiti
• October 20th – Just in Time Foster Youth
• October 27th – Outside of the Bowl
If you are interested in attending, please contact Bill Burch. You can register for the event here.
USO San Diego’s 5th Annual Golf Classic
Tuesday, November 3, 2015 – The Crosby National Golf Club
www.usosandiego.org/golf
For more information contact Laurnie Durisoe
at
619-861-1417
Upcoming Events
Click here to visit the district website.
 |
|
| To receive Surf Beat each week, click the “subscribe” button above.Looking for a past issue? Surf Beat Archive has all online editions since July 2013.Submissions to Surf Beat are welcome and appreciated.* * * * |
|
| Subscribe |
 |
|
| Rotary Club of La Jolla is one of sixty clubs in the San Diego area’s Rotary District 5340 and one of the 34,000 clubs that make up our parent organization, |
|
|
ljrc2016word.wordpress.com 