The Flywheel
Archive issue

NEXT MEETING: July 19, 2013

Co-Gen Electricity in California's Future

NOTE: This meeting will be held at La Strada Restaurant (map), not the Richmond Country Club.

Our speaker will be Bill Day, president of Longview Energy Associates. Bill is an engineer and expert on co-generation and retired manager of General Electric’s co-gen manufacturing division. He will speak about the opportunity co-gen provides for the economic development of North America’s ‘new’ natural gas treasure trove.

MEETING OF July 12, 2013

Welcome

New Richmond Rotary president, Liliane Koziol welcomed everyone to the Richmond Rotary Club! Red badger Gonzalo Ochoa led us in the pledge and Horace “Stoney” Stonework led us in a moment of silence for freedom, peace, and justice on earth. Herb Cole gave us the thought for the day – “always try to be helpful; if you see someone without a smile, give them yours.”

Liliane announced that Ron Burton from the Norman, Oklahoma club is the new Rotary International president and that his theme for the year is “Engage Rotary, Change Lives”. The new district governor, Steven Lack, presented Liliane with a brand new 2013-14 banner.

Liliane invited Stoney to the podium where she presented him with his new president-elect pin.

Visiting Rotarians

We were honored by the presence of the following visiting Rotarians:

• Thomas Cameron – Oakland
• Doreen Covell – Pinole
• Mac Lingo – Berkeley
• Vishwas More – Alamo

Rotarians with Guests

Other guests included:

• Ken Koziol – First gentleman of the Richmond Rotary Club
• Andry Koziol – First son of the Richmond Rotary Club
• Herb Behrstock – President of the UN Association of the East Bay
• Mark Cassettari – International House
• Josiane Siegfried
• Melanie O’Reilly
• Sean O’Nuallain
• Danielle Yvette Sellers
• Neville Guard

Liliane introduced this year’s board of directors. (The board meets the 3^rd Thursday of each month.) The board members are:

• Alan Baer
• Alan Blavins
• Sid Chauvin
• Pam Jones
• David Keystone
• Stoney Stonework
• Connie Tritt
• Tom Waller
• Mike Winter
• Jim Young

Announcements

•    Poker night is scheduled for August 16th at 6:00 PM at the home of Alan Baer at 3001 Barkley Dr. in Richmond. It’s a $50 buy-in and all proceeds go to the John Nicol Scholarship Fund.
•    August 31st is the A’s tailgate party and game night. So far 32 have signed up and Rafael has a few more tickets, so get in on this great deal! The post-game fireworks are sponsored by Chevron.
•    Liliane announced that Nick Despota had received kudos on the Flywheel and that other clubs are considering it as a model for their newsletters.
•    Liliane introduced our scribes including Tom Waller, Alan Blavins, David Keystone, Lynn Martin, Mark Howe, and Lesa McInstosh. She encouraged others to join our ranks.
•    Dan Tanita is now the official Richmond Rotary representative for the RotoCare Clinic project. She thanked E.J. Shalaby for previously performing this role.

Recognitions

Happy and Sad Dollars

• Sid – happy dollars for knowing two, count ‘em two, Jefferson Award winners including Dan Tanita and his neighbor across the street, and for his sister having turned 89 years young!
• Jim – happy dollars for the upcoming Chamber/Rotary mixer on August 8^th at the Richmond Country Club, and for seeing the elusive Glenn Daggs!
• Rafael – happy dollars because Liliane was able to introduce him to the ambassador from Mexico and he is so proud to have someone so well connected as our president.
• Josh Genser had both happy and sad dollars. Happy for all the great fish he caught while fly-fishing in Montana, but sad dollars for the three recent deaths of members of his temple.
• Bob Dabney – had happy dollars for a wonderful trip to La Playa del Carmen where he lay on the beach and snorkeled!
• Erle Brown – had happy dollars for enjoying a whole month in Europe! But he warned, don’t spend too much time in Norway – it’s expensive. He spent $68 for two hamburgers.
• Herb had happy dollars for his five wonderful days at the Rotary International conference in Lisbon, but sad dollars because while on a tram his wallet was stolen. Between that, illness, a general strike, difficulties with currency exchanges, and other various catastrophes, Herb is happy to be home!
• Jon Lawlis – happy dollars for having had such a great time in Lisbon (apparently he did not suffer the same ill fate as Herbie!).
• Glenn Daggs – happy dollars in celebration of Liliane’s ascension to the presidency and a thank you to Jim for the year he just finished; and for seeing all his old friends and meeting some new ones too.
• Joe Bagley – happy dollars that Cliff Dochterman is here today.

Norm’s Nonsense

The Prime Minister of Israel invited the Pope to play a game of golf, and since the Pope had no idea how to play, he convened the College of Cardinals to ask their advice. “Call Jack Nicklaus,” they suggested, “and let him play in your place. Tell the Prime Minister you’re sick or something.”

Honored by His Holiness’s request, Nicklaus agreed to represent him on the links. The Pope, again on the advice of his staff, appointed him a Cardinal to make the arrangement seem more legitimate. “So how’d you do?” he asked eagerly when Nicklaus returned to the Vatican.

“I came in second,” was the reply.
“Second! You mean to tell me the Prime Minister of Israel beat you?” howled the Pope.
“No, Your Holiness,” said Nicklaus. “Rabbi Palmer did.”

PROGRAM

"The International Side of Rotary," by Cliff Dochterman

Liliane introduced district governor, Steven Lack who wished everyone a Happy New (Rotary) Year and tipped his hat to Liliane as our new club president. He brought us a case of Rotary Adventure Beer from Chico where this year’s district conference will be held on October 18-20 and where 12,000 meal packets to feed 12,000 people will be assembled. He also encouraged us to participate in an upcoming raffle which will benefit both the Rotary Foundation and the individual clubs. He thanked the club for supporting the water project in Burkina Faso. This year’s project is to build a school with six classrooms for a village in Burkina Faso, a project entitled “Project Brighter Future”.

Steven then went on to introduce our keynote speaker, Cliff Dochterman. He introduced Cliff as a “living legend, a real treasure in the world of Rotary”. Cliff has been a Rotarian for 50 years having originally joined the Berkeley Club. He went on to serve as the Rotary International president in 1992-93 during which time his theme was “Real Happiness is Helping Others”. He was educated at U.C. Berkeley and the University of the Pacific.

Cliff began by telling us that he’d visited the Richmond club 45 years ago when he was district governor. He welcomed Liliane to her new post. His topic today is “The International Side of Rotary”.

Rotary is the most international organization in the world – there are Rotary clubs in more countries than there are countries in the U.N., and there are over 34,000 clubs worldwide. Rotary may have been founded in Illinois, but it grew roots here in California where the second club was established in San Francisco, the third established as a joint club between Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda, and the fourth in Los Angeles.

U.S.-based Rotarians account for only one-third of all the Rotarians in the world. In the early days clubs typically engaged in local activities only, and one which nearly all Rotary clubs engaged in was working with handicapped children. Eventually, so many clubs were serving handicapped children on a local basis, that the project was unified and spun off into the Easter Seals program. In the 1960’s clubs began to look at the whole world as the “community” and U.S.-based clubs began collaborating with international clubs to do projects outside of the U.S. It was during this period that the Rotary Foundation began providing matching grants for these international projects. In 1966 the concept of “World Community Service” was developed and clubs were encouraged to link up with clubs abroad. But the biggest step by far was when an Australian RI president decided that Rotary International could and should do large projects that individual clubs or even groups of clubs could never do on their own. The RI leadership decided to submit a question to clubs around the globe – if you had a million dollars what would you do with it? The Philippine clubs replied that because they had a high rate of polio that they would vaccinate everyone in the Philippines in order to eradicate it. That’s when the polio eradication program was born. By 1987, RI had raised $240 million and partnered with the World Health Organization (WHO) with the vision to eradicate polio.

In future years, other big projects were born including the “Gift of Life Program” which brought deformed and injured children to the U.S. for needed surgeries; the “Foot Program” which provided thousands of children low-cost prostheses; the “Hunger Plus” program which collects and distributes tons of dehydrated food to famine-plagued areas; a cataract surgery program; the “Wheelchair Foundation” providing over 200,000 wheelchairs to those who can’t walk; and various other projects that build schools and shelters, establish blood banks, provide microcredit to budding entrepreneurs, and help people to grow food.

Cliff ended with a story about a call he got one day when he was RI president from a club president in Austria. The club president was asking for help with the refugees and chaos created by the civil war in Herzegovina. They needed everything – food, clothing, blankets, medicine. Within five weeks, Rotary worldwide raised $8 million, gathered the supplies and equipment, and transported them to the region via planes flown by Rotary pilots from Canada. The U.N. sent a letter thanking him and Rotary for having saved the lives of 100,000 people from starvation or freezing. As Cliff said, Rotary is more, so much more, than a weekly social event – someone somewhere is having a better life because each of us is a Rotarian.

Lynn Martin- Your Roving Rotary Reporter