THE LAMORINDAN

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

I think it was Rod Ford-Smith who offered up today's Thought in the wake of whatever it was that happened this week. In any event, Rod's (or somebody else's) was:

" I am very proud to be an American."

GUESTS, VISITING ROTARIANS, AND SUCH

Glenda Fillinger - Still The Queen of our collective hearts (that's what I said last week, Paul - and I meant it, too)
Larry Sly - Concord and CoCo County Food Bank
Half the Lafayette Club, to wit:
Bill Eames
Jay Lifson
Larry Ducent
Mike Heller

Harry Burrows - guest of Bob Heinen
Gary Pulcher (Gawd, I hope I got that right) - guest of Paul Bettelheim
Dan Garfin (I know I got that one wrong - many apologies) - also guest of Paul Bettelheim's, except it doesn't count for 2-4-1 because Dan is his nephew.
Rene Aguire - Krysten Laine's beloved Hawaii-trip-arranging hubby
Steve Shaggs - Rossmoor
Kyle Vinter (okay, so my ability to hear names is lousy this week - so sue me) - guest of Gillett Johnson's and powder coater extraordinaire
Mark Fillinger - somebody has to laugh at Papa Paul's jokes
Kelly Hord - cosmetic surgeon of the MD variety.

BIRTHDAYS & ANNIVERSARIES & MISCELLANEOUS GOOD NEWS

Skipped this week in order to attend to other foolishness, like Steve Ware getting fined $10 for greeting Kevin Croak. It made sense if you were there.

LATE BREAKING NEWS: NOTHING EXCEEDS LIKE EXCESS

Stop the presses! In late breaking developments, it seems that our response to Lauri Ware's plea via hubby Steve for clothes for the Eden Valley Hospital Emergency Room has been overwhelming. Lauri called this reporter to ask that (1) her thanks for the Clubs' tremendous response be passed along; and (2) we kindly please stop. She now has more in the way of clothing than she can handle. So consider yourselves thanked, and now please stop, at least for now.

IMPORTANT NEWS - REALLY

Reporter's note: Please forgive the length of this item, but this is important stuff for every Lamorinda Sunriser and our extended family to read and understand.

After consulting various of the shakers and movers in the Club - and Brad Davis, too - President Pat came to a major decision: the Dinner & Auction is off for this year. Event Chair Rich Shearer stood and cheered so loudly that it appeared that a tranquilizer dart gun might be needed. Fortunately not, because no one in the Lamorinda area carries enough of any tranquilizer to work on so large a beast.

Seriously, this was a hard decision for Pat to make, and he clearly did not make it lightly. He did, in fact, consult with many members before making the call. The consensus was that there is simply too much economic uncertainty for it to make sense to try to ask area merchants to contribute.

So what are we going to do for funds? Over the course of the 2008-2009 Rotary, we are all being billed for four tickets to the Dinner & Auction - well, what we would charge for four tickets if we actually sold tickets, which we don't anymore because it proved to a real migraine some years back. We have historically priced these "tickets" so they would pay the overhead - hall rental, caterer, the auctioneer, and various other expenses that always come up. Since there will now be no (or negligible) expenses, that "ticket" money can go into the do-good fund. That will give as a starting nest-egg of roughly $12,500. In addition, we are all being asked to consider making an additional contribution to the do-good fund (a.k.a the Lamorinda Sunrise Endowment, or something like that - ask Cal Lee or Brad Davis or Paul Bettelheim if you really need to know that exact name of our 501(c)(3) do-good fund.

This does not mean that Lamorinda Sunrise is giving up on fund raisers entirely. The Dinner & Auction may very well reappear if and when economic factors allow it make sense. Pat also said that we will be exploring other possible means of raising funds to support our projects. Reading between the lines, that means that we all need to be thinking of potential ideas.

And no, selling Past Presidents for medical experiments is not a viable option.

Brad Davis gave us additional information. For example, analysis of the numbers from past Auctions shows that 7 or 8 Lamorinda Sunrise members generate about 92% of the gross income for the event. (It wasn't clear if this means 92% comes out those Members' pockets or out of the pockets of those Members and their guests - in the end, though, it really doesn't much matter.) So another factor that went into the decision-making process was that we need to find a way to spread the source of our fund raising more consistently throughout the membership.

On a related topic, Brad mentioned that the Dinner & Auction in particular and our fund raising in general needed more people to step and take leadership and active participation roles. He was too polite to say so, but the reality is that the Club as a whole has put too much reliance on too few Members (especially Brad, Ken Kosich and Tom Black, and my apologies if I am overlooking someone) to make the money that we use to fund our projects and grow the Endowment.

Brad also gave a quick history of how our Dinner & Auction funds have been used and the status of the Endowment fund. Historically, the net proceeds from each March's Dinner & Auction (and the Crab Feed before it) have been split 75% to the next Rotary year's projects and do-good stuff and 25% into the permanent Endowment fund. The idea has been to grow the permanent Endowment to the point where it generates enough interest so that we don't have to keep busting our humps doing fund raising. Thus, 75% of the net funds from the March 2008 event (which was during Paul Fillinger's Presidential year) is being used to pay for the projects for Pat's presidential year (i.e., 2008-2009), and 25% went into the permanent Endowment fund.

We have had pretty darn good success growing the permanent fund. The Lamorinda Sunrise Endowment Board of Directors (all of whom are Club members) has always adhered to a conservative, asset-protection strategy. Roughly 50% of the Endowment's assets have been held in cash and CD's, and the remaining roughly 50% has been held in various investments. The cash and CD side has not been hit at all in the recent market decline. The investment side has decreased about 30% in value. That means that the total Endowment fund has decreased about 15% - which is an excellent report considering what has happened to so many other investors. The Club owes many thanks to Cal Lee, Brad Davis, Paul Bettelheim, Steve Ware, Ernie Furtado and the various Presidents, past and present (each year's Club President is an ex officio member of the Endowment's Board) for the wise strategy that has left us far, far better off than many other investors.

Okay, take a deep breath. This item is over and you can move on to more fun matters. Thank you for your attention.

THE KIND OF NEWS WE LIKE

Mike Wilson has been a marvelous Red Badger. Now he will be a marvelous Blue Badger, as he was awarded his symbol of more or less permanent membership by his sponsor, Steve Ware. That Mike got a blue badge is not surprising. That Steve did not get fined during the ceremonies is.

THE LAFAYETTE CLUB INVADES, EATS

A major contingent from the Lafayette Club (a.k.a known as "Them") walked into Postino this morning, bold as you please and helped themselves to a heapin' helpin' o' breakfast. And that wasn't all they did.

Mike Heller stood up (really, he was standing) to announce the upcoming Crab Feed and Silent Auction being held by Soroptimist International of 24-680. February 7 at 6:00 p.m., to be exact. At the Lower Court of the Oakwood Athletic Club on Mt. Diablo Blvd just west of downtown Lafayette. Tickets are $35 per person, and you need to buy on in advance. Interested? Contact Mike Heller, or call 925-688-1480, or e-mail calprint@pacbell.net.

And the attack kept on. No sooner had Mike finished then Jay Lifson stood up (really, he, too, was standing) to announce that the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce will be honoring its Businessperson of the Year, the one and only Tom Cortright (oh, he's going to kill me if I misspelled his name), owner of Orchard Nursery. The festivities will be on Saturday, January 30 at the Lafayette Park Hotel. Contact Jay or the Chamber offices for tickets if you are interested.

Going completely against their respective characters, Bill Eames and Larry Ducent stayed seated and didn't utter a word. Smelling salts were distributed liberally.

THE ORINDA CLUB GETS DOWN AND GETS FUNKY

1949 was a whole 'nother time. Harry Truman had just pulled off perhaps the biggest presidential election upset in our history. Mao was moving in and Chiang was moving out. The Ruskis were testing their first A-bomb. And the Orinda Rotary Club was being formed.

Now it's 2009, and the Orinda Club is celebrating 60 years of Service Above Self. In honor of the occasion, they are throwing the Orinda Rotary 60th Anniversary Dinner Dance & Big Band Gala. April 4 is the date, 6:00 p.m. is the time, the Orinda Country Club is the place. So come enjoy the sound of the Mike Vax Big Band, featuring the vocals of Cami Thompson. $135 gets you in and eligible for door prizes. There will also be a raffle ($50 per ticket) for a chance at a $5,000 cash prize plus a chance to win a car.

Call David Pierce at 925-253-5424 or e-mail him at david.pierce@prurealty.com for tickets or information.

INTERCLUB MEETING COMING UP

Every year, the Orinda, Moraga, Lafayette and Rossmoor Clubs gather for a joint Inter-Club meeting. This year's will be on Wednesday, February 4 at Roosmoor. In particular, it will be held in the Fireside Room of the Gateway Complex of Rossmoor. Socializing with no-host refreshments begins at 11:30 a.m., lunch at 12:00. The program will feature McAvoy Layne as the Ghost of Mark Twain. If you are interested in what should be a good lunch, a chance to catch up with and/or make friends from other Rotary Clubs, and a highly entertaining program to boot, talk to John Fazel. You will have to have a ticket (1) to get into Rossmoor and (2) to get lunch.

AND IN CASE YOU DIDN'T HEAR . . .

The Reno Train Trip was down to one available slot, reported Chuck Kenney. But since the train will have left and returned by the time you read this, it sort of doesn't matter anymore, does it?

MYSTERY ROTARIAN

He climbed Mt. Ranier. He went through the Panama Canal in the Bridge of the ship - twice - as the guest of one of the pilots who steer the ships through. And he almost burned down Moraga trying to gopher-bomb his gophers. He is not nearly the menace to society that this summary might suggest. In fact, he is our very own Alex Arnold. Alex reports that he got to be on the bridge of Panama Canal-transiting ships as the result of some raffle he won while working for Xerox. Man, you just don't get perks at work like that any more.

PROGRAM

What is there to say about Paul Fillinger that hasn't been broadcast thousands of times on post office walls across the country? Not a whole lot, but that didn't keep him from trying.

As you may recall, Paul is our immediate Past President. Apparently, he felt the need to take revenge on us, so he put together a talk about My Presidential Year.

Program-meister Jim Brencic first let us know that Paul had given this self-same talk recently to the St. Helena Rotary Club, the newsletter of which reported that Paul had left them in "gales of laughter." This only goes to show that either the folks in St. Helena are softer touches than we are in the humor department or that Paul has been holding out on us.

Seriously, Paul gave the kind of program that I, as a reporter, absolutely love: lots of pictures and lots of jokes that make no sense whatsoever without having the pictures in front of you. That means that I am largely off the hook for trying to recount what he said, relying instead on the old "you had to be there" gambit.

Seriously, there really is no way to report what Paul said in most of his talk. Suffice to say that in between photographic appearances by Larry Ducent, Santa Davis, the German Coast Guard, and the Lopez sisters, St. Helena-esque gales of laughter were blowing out of Postino this morning for most of his presentation.

But it wasn't all laughs. Paul also talked about what he learned about Rotary during his year. Rotary is all about participation, about turning the singular "me" into the collective "we." It's about reaching out to create positive impacts you never knew you'd make.

To illustrate this, Paul told us about the week he spent at Camp Royal a couple of years ago. He had what he at first thought was a minor, unimportant job. (Not true, Paul - after all, those outhouses weren't going to clean themselves.) In the course of the week, he met Jesse. When he was in the fifth grade, Jesse had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. The treatment was apparently successful, but it left Jesse with a slight physical impairment. He was not, as Paul noted, a Big Man on Campus, rah-rah type leader. He mentioned doing something for the Camp Royal Talent Show, but was kind of afraid to go for it. Well, Paul is nothing if not a rabble-rouser, and he encouraged Jesse to get up their and show his stuff. Jesse's stuff turned out to be doing the dance from the movie "Napoleon Dynamite." With that encouragement, Jesse screwed up his courage and got up to dance - and his fellow campers went wild. Paul showed the video from the show, and Jesse's fellow campers rushed him, danced with him, and ended up shouting "jes-SIE, jes-SIE".

The next day, Jessie sought out Paul to thank him. "I didn't do anything," Paul said. "You are the star. You were the one who stepped up and did it." Jessie replied: "But you are the one who thought I could do it."

Paul also noted how the Moraga Club runs the concessions for a major swim meet every year. Paul and Glenda were there to watch his grandkids swim. And there at the concession handing out bags of popcorn was Cliff Dochterman. Past President of Rotary International Cliff Dochterman. The Cliff Dochterman who has been all over the world as part of the biggest Rotary initiatives that have ever been. And yet here he was, doing what seemed like the most mundane of things with his local home Club.

So what do Jesse, Cliff Dochterman and Paul have to offer us? Just this: that at the end of the day, Rotary is about participation. Big job, little job, it doesn't matter. By putting yourself out there, by looking for ways to participate, you will have a positive impact on the world.

After all, you never know when you will run into your Jesse.