THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable," thus spoke John Kenneth Galbraith, via Claire Roberts.

A WHOLE PASSEL OF GUESTS AND VISITING ROTARIANS, in that order...

Connie Linneman - Bringing John back from the desert

Holly Burke - Joins Buddy in cheering on the Pan Am crew

Mary Marks - back for umpteenth time with sister Phyllis no less

Chris Laszcs-Davis - John Fazel's repeat guest

Jessica - New red badger Ron's guest from US Bank

Pan Am contingent

Nancy Hult Ganis - Speaker

Louise Diracles - Orinda, flight attendant and in original video to sell show

Sandy Sparby-Clarke - Napa, also flight attendant

Jim Blankenship - East Bay Banjo Club (these guys are good!!!)

Tom Jenks - Pan "Ammer" from Berlin and friend of Buddy's

Rotarians  

Marilyn Cunningham, Walnut Creek Sunrise

Mike Ball, Unfortunately for Mike, linked to Brad Davis

Anna Stevenson - making this a regular occasion, noon club

Alicia Cragholm - noon club with perfect attendance at our club

VARIOUS OTHER GOINGS ON

Good call Kevin

Kevin Cragholm accused Cal Lee of playing a masterful Beethoven piece earlier in the week to an appreciative audience, alas without wearing his Rotary pin. Kevin was so awed by Cal's performance that he paid Cal's fine for him. Next time you do this Cal it will be entirely on you.

If you say so, Brad

Brad Davis finally performed the induction ceremony for John Kallio after seemingly months of allowing John to visit without paying for breakfast. This was in part due to John's sponsor Gary Fulcher being AWOL about half the time. Anyway, Brad picked a good day to do this, in that John is a 26 year Senior Captain flying for United, while at the same time we are honoring good old Pan Am on today's program. Might we say this event has been up in the air for some time now? No? I didn't think so. John lives in Lafayette and came to us via a visit to Gary's awesome man-cave/canoe extravaganza, which will certainly be explained at a later date.

How cool is that?

It seems Hays Englehart has something to announce at every meeting these days. Today it was the Motorama world of wheels "cool car cards" to be put on windshields of any cool car spotted in the streets, with an invitation to show it at Motorama on June 17th at Postino restaurant parking lot. You get to decide what qualifies as a "cool car," though you may be "over-ridden" by Hays or Jim or Krysten.

Claire Roberts gave one of the better five minute rookie presentations to help define who she is. She was raised by parents who met as English teachers at a Jr. High School at Hunter's Point. Being good Irish Catholics, they managed to have four children in

Claire plays Santa's elf too

just four and a half years. Claire earned a Business Degree at San Francisco State and is a consultant in the financial services industry. She specializes in the areas of Risk Management, Fraud and Data Security. Claire is a trustee in the Delta Sigma Pi business fraternity, specializing in the fund raising and volunteering in training of leaders and recruiting. This is where she met the about to be crowned LSR President, Mark Roberts. They were married in 1985. Claire has 16 cousins, all living in the Bay Area. They are a very close-knit family. For Claire, family is most important.

PROGRAM

Buddy/Holly greet Pan Am

Former Pan Am pilot Buddy Burke was busting his buttons to introduce guest speaker Nancy Hult Ganis this morning. Nancy is co-founder of Out of the Blue...Entertainment (Big Daddy, Mr. Deeds) with her husband and business partner Sid Ganis. Together they produced the highly acclaimed, award winning feature film Akeelah and the Bee for Lionsgate Films. She is the producer for Pan Am with Sony Television for ABC...a period drama about the iconic airline and its stewardesses at the dawn of the jet age...inspired by her own post college experiences as a Pan Am Stewardess.

Nancy has done it all

Nancy began her journalism career in the newsroom of KQED (PBS) in San Francisco as a segment producer/writer covering foreign affairs and public policy issues on education, health care, civil rights and gender issues. She progressed to prime time documentaries and eventually became Director of Special Projects for the Bay Area's CBS affiliate.

After moving to Los Angeles she headed marketing for Carolco Pictures and continued to produce programming for PBS. Nancy also served as a media consultant for various political figures, campaigns and non-profit organizations. Nancy holds a Masters Degree in journalism and a Bachelor's Degree in History from UC Berkeley where she is currently on the Board of Advisors for the Goldman School of Public Policy. She served as a trustee for the UC Berkeley Foundation Board for seven years and as an advisor to Dean Orville Schell at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. She is also a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Nancy's intent this morning was to walk us through how to go from the process to the screen for a newly created television show. She explained the background that led her to create, with her husband and Sony TV, a feature program which made it to ABC last fall. After completing her under-graduate work at Berkeley, Nancy really wanted to expand her education. What better way to accomplish this than to take off to see the world as a Pan Am stewardess? That seven year experience changed her life. She viewed the role of the Pan Am stewardess as membership in a quasi diplomatic corp. They were required to speak a foreign language, be sophisticated hostesses, treat the passengers as though they were guests in their homes, stay at first class hotels and function as all-around ambassadors of good will for the airline and the countries they represented.

Upon her return to grad school, Nancy was stunned by how unaware here fellow students were about the world. This revelation spawned the idea for bringing the Pan Am story to Television. She decided to interview stewardesses and produced a nine minute video that she brought for us to see and which ultimately sold the idea to the networks. Then the fun began. It took three years to obtain the rights to use the name and the Pan Am logo for the show. Sony TV gave up after one year's effort, but Nancy continued on and finally persevered two years later.

ABC won the competition between networks to air the show and thus began a brand new experience for Nancy with network television and Holywood politics. She soon learned that network TV is all about selling advertising space and it matters not whether the story is even relevant. She also learned that writers are really the ones who control the content of the show. The target network audience is 29 years of age. The writers are also young, which means they have no background upon which to draw realistic story content. The Pan Am series was recently named number one in DVD sales, with purchasers being made by much more mature audiences. Not good news for the series' future. She said what the network really wanted was a show about "Desperate Stewardesses."(Nancy confirmed via email a day later that ABC cancelled the series for next year).

Sadly, it all comes to an end

Nancy summarized the Pan Am experience as one of elegance, a magic carpet ride, incredible excitement around the world, bringing of life-saving supplies to troubled parts of the world and dealing with the first generation whose parents fought each other in World War II. Pan Am women still support CARE!

Pan Am could not overcome the disadvantages it incurred in dealing with competing airlines by being unable to fly domestically and suffering significant landing fee penalties in the U.S. The downing of the Pan Am plane over Lockerbie, Scotland was the company's death knell.

Thank you, Nancy, for reviving for us "old-timers" fond memories of the glory years of world travel.

Editor's note: As a former Pan Am frequent flyer, with one million + miles, that was a first class flying experience that far overshadows any other...before or since.

CALENDAR

Friday 5/25, 7am - 25th Anniversary Celebration

                   TGITLFOTM - 5:30 pm - Furtado Mansion

Friday 6/1, 7am - Kara Boatman, the euro zone 

Friday 6/8, 7am - Lesher Center Director Michael Butler

Tuesday 6/12, 7am - Board meeting

Friday 6/15, 7am - Motorama revealed

Sunday 6/17 9 am - Motorama, Postino Parking Lot

Friday 6/22, 7am - Gabriel Angelo - Magical musical story

Friday 6/29, 7am - Jim Margraff exposes himself

Friday 7/6, 7 am - Antje Jahnke - Procrastination

Tuesday 7/10, 7am - Board meeting

Friday 7/13, 7 am - Club Assembly

Friday 7/20, 7 am - John Yoo, Legal Counsel, George W. Bush

Friday 8/3, 7am - A woof and a meow

Friday 8/10, 7 am - Economist Tappan Monroe

Tuesday 8/14, 7am - Board meeting

Friday 8/17, 7am - Dan Borenstein & Pensions continued