THE LAMORINDAN 2-12-10

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Dave Watson offered this win/lose thought from Billy Graham: "When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost."

GUESTS AND VISITING ROTARIAN

Chris Laszcz-Davis - Environmental Engineer
Miramonte High School students
Phoebe Schmidt
Celia Rosas
Brandon Bashin-Sullivan
Kristen Plant - Miramonte Public Speaking Teacher
Larry Sly - Food Bank Director, Concord club

BIRTHDAYS, ANNIVERSARIES AND CELEBRATIONS

Joe Bettencourt - 11 year anniversary, HOME TEAM activities cause celebration postponement, but all is well!
Paul Fillinger - Glenda's birthday featuring her very own Diablo Symphony Concert - $50
Thomas Peeks - Unfairly fined $5 for unattached badge responded by kicking in $10 for the insult
Krysten Laine - 15 year anniversary of her and hubby Rene's Urban Suburban Company - $25
Gillett Johnson - No badge and open insubordination - $20
Thomas Raeth - Tamara's birthday, TLC at home and Bon Jovi Concert in the offing. $35

HOME TEAM GOES FOR THE GOLD

Joe, Rich Shearer, Hays Englehart, Alex Arnold, Chuck Bove, Buddy Burke, Rick Ashburn with dad Richard and son Cole ventured out on the first Home Team official foray into senior citizen assistance. On Saturday, February 13th, they were able to set up times to assist four seniors with various tasks that had been neglected in their homes.

Their tasks included but were not limited to:
· Table repair
·   Weather stripping
·   Kitchen sink faucet and dripping repair
·   Install fire alarms
·   Repair shower head leak
·   Remove nails exposed in the threshold
·   Mechanical replacement in toilet bowls
·   Tree pruning and much more

Their first experience produced a few conclusions:
·   Ask permission from seniors before taking pictures
·   We can fix anything with gray tape, wire and WD40
·   Short lists at the beginning somehow seem to expand
·   These projects are definitely worth doing, are very well received and so far there are four more pending appointments for the next Home Team repair date.

One of the seniors visited responded with a thank you letter to Terry Englehart (Hays cousin) who had spoken to the club the previous week about "Senior Center Without Walls." The letter was from Bea...one of Terry's member participants who needed help. This says it all!

"HI Terry, I cannot thank you or "Senior Center Without Walls" enough for all your help.

Last Saturday morning three angels came to my house and indeed earned their wings. Hays, Buddy and Alex from the "Rotary Club." They are a wonderful team. I gave them a list of eight things that needed to be done and they filled seven on the list and worked and tried very hard to fix the eighth one. Your sweet cousin Hays replaced some parts without charge and best of all he replaced and fixed the cable from my TV so that I am able to use my headphones and now I will be able to hear music on my TV since I do only watch Closed Caption, so here I come "Dancing with the Stars."

All three of the men were very, very polite and a very happy group. It was a pleasure to meet them."

I am beholden to all of you.
Blessings,
Bea

P.S. I forgot to mention the beautiful long stem Red Rose that Hays presented me on his way out as he wished me a Happy Valentine. I was so surprised that it almost brought me to tears. It made a very quiet day memorable for me. Oh yes, I do thank you both for a very nice gesture.

TGITLFOTM IS ON FOR FRIDAY NIGHT

Krysten and Rene have saved the day by offering the Urban Suburban offices at 3328 Mt. Diablo Blvd, 5:30 P.M. Friday February 26th. Bring beverage and hors d'oeuvres and stay for a tune-up (maybe the musical variety?) Remember, there is no morning meeting next Friday. You are all supposed to be at the Inter-club gathering for lunch on Thursday, 11:45 at the new Lafayette Library.

WHITE BALL RAFFLE

Yes! David Eisenberg pulled the winner, but not before a bizarre white ball escape attempt by diving out of the bag and rolling under a table. It was hunted down and rudely returned to its rightful place by Jim Brencic. Dave's seeing-eye fingers reached in the bag and calmly discerning the difference from its blue ball brethren...voila... snagged the illusive white sphere.

Dave's joy was short lived, however, when he was told that the prize money was not in the building. In fact it may have been in Oregon with Treasurer Ernie for the weekend. You can bet Dave will plead the case for his rightful possession of the moola at the earliest opportunity. Good luck with that.

THE GREAT MOTORAMA WINE BOTTLE CAPER

You have been warned. Skip McCowan has the number of each member of the club and it is 20, with a $ sign on the front end. He is collecting one bottle of wine with a minimum purchase of $20, and a suggested retail price more like $40, from every member. Said bottles of wine will go into a barrel to be raffled off at the LSR Motorama Fund Raiser on June 20th.Skip will accommodate those members who aren't interested in bargain shopping for a bottle of wine and will take their $20 instead.

So far he has had zero response to this request. Skip claims to have 12 billable hours already devoted to this task. So let's see if we can get him up to the 100 hour level by the end of March to achieve 100% success, just to test his commitment to the task.

THE PROGRAM

Kristen Plant, Miramonte High School Public Speaking Teacher, brought with her three of her star students to participate in the Four Way Speech contest this morning. She began with a brief summary of the Public Speaking Program which began 30 years ago with just six students. Now there are 130 students enrolled with Kristen teaching five classes a day in what is now a four year program at the high school. They actively participate in speaking tournaments throughout the year and have attained top 1% status nationally. Last week, in Berkeley, the speaking team finished 9th out of the 200 teams competing.This is an elective program at the high school.

Because of the severe $5 million budget shortfall within the Acalanes High School District the entire program is in jeopardy. There is an upcoming parcel tax campaign to try to save it and ensure that this valuable, highly successful program does not end on its 30 year anniversary. After urging our support for the campaign she turned the students loose to begin their own competition.

Phoebe Schmidt led off by putting modern day applications of instant communication via cell phone, texting, face book, to the Four Way Test. She argued convincingly that it fails all of the tests.

It is not fair to all. Only 48% of the population has access to the technology primarily due to cost. It leads to further isolation of individuals with too much "all the time" access which makes it hard to live in the moment. It does not build good will. In fact it leads to cyber bullying. It is harmful to all by dumbing-down the language for children with constant use of abbreviations, non-use of proper punctuation and diminishes reading and writing skills. It has a negative effect on values by distracting people from the real world with the virtual world.

Phoebe closed with the suggestion that next time we decide to text, or use a BlackBerry, just make a phone call instead.

Celia Rosas' subject for examination was whether anti-drinking assemblies at school work. She used the example of a young Miramonte student who died tragically last year at a party. Celia criticized the media for immediately blaming binge drinking by the student as the cause without knowing the actual facts. His blood alcohol level was actually .03%. Celia claims this is the wrong way to deal with underage drinking.

She went on to describe anti-drinking assemblies that only focus on the horrible effects of underage drinking by emphasizing graphic accident scenes and other scare tactics. This approach has not been beneficial or fair because statistics show underage drinking has not been deterred. It has not built good will but has further divided drinkers from non-drinkers and has made innocent people the poster children for bad behavior.

Celia proposes the right way to approach this issue in assemblies is by bringing together panels of lawyers, doctors, police officers and school administrators who can demonstrate the positive effects of appropriate behavior when it comes to the use of alcohol.

Brandon Bashin-Sullivan took on the agri-business complex in his presentation. He premised that 80% of the nation's food is grown and sold by a handful of large corporations. There are constant battles with the FDA over the use of additives and other potentially harmful ingredients in our food.

So the answer via the Four Way Test is self sufficiency via Victory Gardens. The truth is we can control what we eat if we plant it and grow it ourselves. This eliminates the revolving door of regulators versus growers and is fair to all by eliminating deception in packaging. Working in a garden, sharing and eating in the neighborhood is good for all and encourages fellowship. And the de-regionalization of food eliminates the mono culture of over-planting large plots of land with the same food product which eventually depletes the nutrients in the soil. Centralized agriculture is fundamentally wrong.

Brandon wants us to buy at the farmers' markets and plant our own gardens. If it is good enough for the White House, why not for all of us?

This was another stellar performance by three very gifted students. Alex Arnold tried valiantly to give them a three-way tie for their presentations. However, that does not follow the rules of the game. There had to be a decision for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. It could have turned out three different ways. However, Brandon, Celia and Phoebe ultimately finished in that order. But make no mistake...these are three winners!

The students were highly praised by everyone. In this reporter's opinion this "elective" high school subject is every bit as valuable as the "required" subjects in education. It would be a major blow to students to have it fall to a budget constraint. Let's hope that can be averted.

CALENDAR