MEETING OF NOVEMBER 1, 2001 By Steve Yarbrough
Editor - Dick Blanding
Webmaster - Steve GruberPresident Firooz was punctual as ever this week. Even though he did not have a speaker for the day, a series of announcements by Rotarians kept us all well informed about what kind of volunteer opportunities and contributions we can be making to help our club's various projects.
While Firooz was being punctual, fellow Rotarians were being punctured for flu shots by some very helpful nurses. It didn't hurt too much!
The meeting began with a salute to Japan and the playing of the Japanese National Anthem. We were also treated to a an intriguing five minute talk by a lovely native of Japan, who teaches Japanese language at Foothill College. She informed the club of the ceremonial purposes of the kimono, which she beautifully displayed, and the significance and intricacies of the green tea ceremony, including how to turn your tea bowl to honor of your host.
Mona Armistead kicked off Rotary Foundation Month with an informative talk about the benefits of the Rotary Foundation and how the Los Altos Rotary Club has used the foundation to leverage grants for many international service projects. Mona announced a program of a matching grant of $50 from the club for the first 10 new double sustainers to take advantage of this offer. She said it was first-come, first served, so make your donations now! Her goal is to have every member of the club participating in making progress toward their Paul Harris Fellow. Rotarian Lee Lynch was honored for being a Triple Paul Harris Fellow!
Ed Sox made important comments about the value of getting involved in the Partners for New Generations program and announced that 100 mentors for students are needed this year. So, if you have the time to work with a local student, please contact one of the committee members to volunteer. Partners for New Generations is supported by Los Altos Rotary, Mountain View Rotary, and the Los Altos Community Foundation.
Fine Master Walt Scholey deftly picked the pockets of several Rotarians including our newest member "Trippy" Bob Fenwick. Walt fined Dick Duhring for excellence in golf, and John Sines was nicked for keeping such good track of the Rotary tree in the Rotary Plaza at State and Main. John was actually fined for breaking into what might pass for a smile.
Perhaps most important of all, the Red Badge Committee provided every member with a nicely designed booklet which describes the many wonderful Red Badge Auction prizes which will be sold to the highest bidders next week! Rob Holden called and asked that every member study the booklet carefully to decide which items you want to bid on. Last year, the auction raised $11,000 for the Sandown South Africa Aids clinic. This was coupled with matching grants from the district and the foundation and expanded in more than $40,000! So be ready to bid!!! . Remember that the auction starts before the meeting with a silent auction at 11:30 a.m.
Los Altos Rotary also welcomed three new members. Congratulations to Chuck Lindauer, Herb Marshall, and Pascal Le Menn. Glad to have you aboard!
Webmaster's Notes: Here are some things that you might want to know about our website, which was started in 1999 to promote the art show:
1. Do you know what the club's web address is? No? There's no reason to memorize it, just go to Google.com, which is a search engine, and type in "Los Altos Rotary Club." (How do you get to Google? Just enter http://www.google.com on the top line of your browser.) Why Google? It has an uncanny ability to find things, including our Rotary Club. We can also be found through many other search engines.
2. Now try an experiment: Type the words "Rotary Art Show" into Google and see what it finds. There are probably hundreds of Rotary art shows around the world, but our show is number one on the list.
3. How about another experiment: Type the words "Rotary Club" into Google and see what you get. There are 30,149 Rotary Clubs, so we shouldn't expect much, right? But we are 13th on that list.
4. Now let's take a look inside the website. If you are using Internet Explorer, get the club website on your screen, and then click on "view" at the top of the browser. Then click on "source" and you will see Notepad open with many lines of gibberish. The gibberish is the source code for the website, meaning it tells your browser and computer what to put on the screen. Two lines near the top use the words "description" and "keywords." Those lines, known as META tags, help to influence search engines when they are deciding how to categorize our site and where it should be ranked, among other things. Every website that wants to do business with search engines should have these tags.
5. High rankings on the search engines have brought us some modest success, and we are running more than 3,000 pageviews a month. (A pageview is one person looking at one page on our website.) For October the number was 3,288 pageviews, but in May we had 5,000 pageviews because of the art show.
6. How does all of this help us? The Internet gives us the cheapest, most effective means of communicating with the community. It provides advertising for the art show that is nearly free, and it allows us to tell the world about our projects, our goals, our meetings, our officers, our members, etc. You want proof? We have had several people contact us through the website who would like to become members. In fact, one of our current members joined because he learned about the club through the website. Do you know who he is?
Programs
November
November 8 - Red Badge Auction - silent auction begins at 11:30 a.m.
November 15 - Deputy Consul General Walter Leuchs of Germany, " The Forthcoming European Transition"
November 18 - Wine Tasting
November 22 - Thanksgiving
November 29 - To be announcedDecember
December 6 - Consul General Popov of Russia "Russia Today"
December 13 - Mary Hiland, CEO of Alliance for Community Care, "Combatting stigma in mental illness."
December 19 - Rotary Holiday Party at the Jesuit Retreat House
December 20 - Main Street Singers
December 27 - No Meeting
"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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