MEETING OF AUGUST 9, 2001 By Cindy Luedtke
Editor: Dick Blanding
Webmaster: Steve Gruber
BEGINNINGS:
In honor of England, the country of the day, the meeting began with a rendition of "God Save the Queen" by resident pianist, BRUCE CANN.DON HULL delivered the thought of the day, presenting arguments for whether the word computer should be masculine (Easy to turn on, lots of data but clueless, once chosen and committed to, you find a better model) or feminine (Has its own native language in code, has tremendous ability to tap into long-term memory at just the right times, and has seemingly endless opportunities to purchase expensive accessories).
BECKY MILLER introduced visiting Rotarians and guests including a visitor from London, England complete with banner.
WHO WAS THAT BEARDED MAN? SAM PESNER, donning his new bearded look, and fresh from the African bush, (Ed. Note: is this pun intended?), spent a couple of minutes to describe his short visit to Johannesburg, South Africa. Members of the Sandown Club made Sam and his lovely wife, Lou very welcome. They paid a visit to two separate AIDS clinics in the area, one being the clinic that benefited from our own club's and district's funding.
Finemaster JOHN SINES expertly and diligently extracted funds from JAN SCHROEDER, MARGE GRATIOT, CRES and CAREW MCFALL and CLYDE NOEL. He was particularly ruthless with the McFall brothers for not really answering the question, "WHY" would one choose to spend their summer vacation in Texas? At least Carew gave it a good go.
SEE YOU IN LONDON
CLYDE NOEL, complete with stylish bowler and umbrella cane, asked several members of the club to describe their most memorable moments in England. HARDY JONES said to be sure to try to get to Bath, an outlying coastal town with a rich and long history. BILL REWAK suggests taking a train from London to Cornwall and on to St. Ives. There, you will be able to bask in the sun on one of three beautiful, pristine beaches. Be sure to visit an outpost of the Tate Gallery and see St. Michael's Chapel. BRIAN WARD, a native of Britain, passed on some important factoids about his homeland. England is full of beer-lovers, mystery novel readers, and really excessive, sometimes abusive pun makers. Brian gave us a dose of British pun humor involving weather and baseball eliciting the appropriate groans from the audience. SAM HARDING visited various museums in London. He says not to pass up on the Royal Mews. (Those of you not in attendance will just have to do a little homework on this one, if you don't know what it is!) DAN O'DONNELL, fresh from a trip to London, bragged about the great weather he had during his stay. He suggested seeing Westminster Cathedral and the Abbey (lots of dead people) and staying at the historic Hotel Cadogan. This historic hotel was at one time the haunt of actress, Lilly Langtree and the famous Oscar Wilde who once quipped "I have nothing to declare except my genius".AND WHERE IS THE PARTY LIFE?
If you plan to visit Great Britain in the next few weeks, be sure to drop in on
JACK and Janice HEIDMILLER. They're house swapping with the Bratmans whose comfy quarters are located in Wales, near Cardiff. If you can't manage the trip and still want a taste of Great Britain, why not drop in on Bob and Marilyn Bratman, whom you will find at the Heidmiller's house.TODAY'S SPEAKER was Karin Bivens, a resident of Los Altos and an expert on personal body fitness. Karin teaches fitness classes at Foothill and Stanford. She ran her first marathon at age 50. She has since run triathlons and is currently training for the Ironman competition to take place in Canada in the near future. The name of her talk was "Move to Improve".
Karin pointed out that there is a true lack of fitness in our country today. Sixty per cent of adults do not exercise regularly. A quarter have no physical activity at all. Forty per cent of adults aged 75 and older cannot walk more than a quarter of a mile, and a third cannot even lift a 10 pound weight.
How do you know if you're fit? Karin gave us several examples of functional fitness tests we can try at home to measure our fitness level against the norm for our respective age. If you wish to become more fit, you should think of the acronym F.I.T.T. That is, Frequency, Intensity, Time, and Type. Try aerobic activities at least four times a week, resistance exercises two to three times a week. It is important not to forget to flex and stretch your muscles daily. As far as intensity of aerobic exercise, try to reach and maintain a heart rate of 70% to 85% of your maximum target rate (Maximum target is approximately 220 minus your age on a per minute basis). Thirty minutes of aerobic exercise is recommended, but it doesn't have to be done all at one time to be effective. As far as diet, Karin recommends what the FDA recommends. She's not too high on the high protein fads of late. Try to have a diet of 50-60% carbohydrates, 15% protein (its suspected that too much protein can actually be detrimental to maintaining bone density) and 30%-35% fat at the maximum.
Hopefully, Karin's talk convinced a few of us to try a fitness program again in hopes of maintaining lifelong fitness. Its worth it, to obtain the long-term benefits of keeping your personal independence for as long as possible and improving the quality of your life in general.
President's Message You might remember back in June when we put out a survey. At the bottom we had asked this question: What are the three things you like best about Los Altos Rotary? The following response came from one of the members: 1-People. 2-People. 3-People.
Cres couldn't have said it better! During the short few weeks I have witnessed a tremendous amount of support from many of you. Frankly with the level of support you are giving me, you are making it easy for anyone to act as your president. You are leaders in a true sense.
I have a little story to share with you. Yesterday, after the meeting, our speaker Karin Bivens told me that one of the members had to leave early and the fact that this fellow Rotarian let her know in advance and apologized to her made her feel better. We all want great programs. At the same time, it seems we as listeners and as members of Los Altos Rotary can play a proactive role to help make the programs more interesting-and to make future speakers more eager to want to come to our club. In a sense one can say that the speakers we invite are customers of Los Altos Rotary. To provide an excellent customer service, as leaders we must remember that an unhappy customer will talk about an unfortunate incident with her/his friends many times over.
The speakers who come to our club know well that our time is valuable. So they put a good deal of effort to prepare for their talk. This brings them no financial gain. They come to our club because of the respect they have for every one of us. It seems only fair that we show respect to them too. So, when any one of us is hit with a time crunch and we absolutely have to leave early, I ask that you see the speaker to offer your apology and also to let me know. If we see the speaker as our customer, we can say this is a good start for a healthy customer relationship.
Many thanks for your attention and your support!
Firooz
Programs
August
August 16 - Gayle Tully, District Governor, visits Los AltosAugust 23 - Lucy Carlton, retiring Los Altos Police Chief, " Changes seen by a woman over a 32-year career in law enforcement.
September
September 15 - Persian Night
"Information in this newsletter is intended for the exclusive use of the members of the Rotary Club of Los Altos to facilitate the work of the club and to promote club fellowship. It is not to be used for any commercial or outside, unrelated, non-profit purposes. No publication of material in this newsletter should occur without the express permission of the club President or the Editor of the Rotator."
Copyright 2001 The Los Altos Rotary Club
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