Next Week's Program: 
4 August - Chris McKay - NASA

Upcoming Events:
 

AUGUST

18 August - TBA

25 August - Ed Zschau - Entrepreneurship

See Programs for all of the important dates.

To see Neighboring Club meetings go to Clubs

To our Website

Upon arrival, greeters Jerry Moison and Jeanne MacVicar, made us feel most welcome with warm handshakes and even warmer smiles.  The bell rang at exactly 12:18 pm and President MARLENE called upon BAIDRA MURPHY to lead the Pledge and SETH MANNING to lead us in song.  After a shameless plug for the Oakland A’s, SETH led us in “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

SHIV SHASTRI provided the thought for the day by reading a poem by John Milton.  Sonnet 19 very eruditely suggests we might slow down a bit and enjoy more of the gifts with which we are blessed.

President-elect SAM PESNER introduced two fellow Rotarians visiting us from Mobile, Alabama, and Cupertino.  JOANNE KAVALARIS, CHUCK LINDAUER, JULIE ROSE, SHELLY POTVIN, BOB ADAMS, PAT FARRELL and SAM PESNER introduced their respective guests.

President MARLENE took a moment to explain club members’ reaction to last week’s presentation.  Apparently, the presentation generated enough feedback to the Pres, she felt compelled to tell the membership that what was presented was not what was expected.  (Did that statement avoid any editorial spin?)  Your Rotator writer would be able to present more detail regarding this subject except for the fact that room noise prevented hearing anything more.  Just a suggestion, but when a speaker is at the microphone speaking, maybe we could show a little more respect by passing notes to each other rather than the other way -  just a suggestion.

President MARLENE then introduced MARY MARLEY, President of the Los Altos Rotary Endowment Fund.  MARY took a few minutes to explain the details of the Extraordinary Meeting held on July 26^th .  LAREF needs more input from members regarding goals and handling requests for donations.  Should the focus continue to be local charities? Should the group seek more balance in their areas of giving?  What are the priorities? 

Our Table Time this week was devoted to discussing LAREF priorities and community building efforts.  Sessions such as this go a long way toward helping members who are not associated with the inner workings of LAREF to understand the process used in deciding where the money goes.  It also helps clear up misconceptions about where the money we raise goes.  President MARLENE rang the bell and there were still questions and discussions.

Announcements: 

BELLA BERLLY is promoting the Friday Night Social to be held on August 12^th, to be hosted by the BRUNOs.  The BLANDINGs will host the next one in October.  Clip boards will be at the meetings.

SHIV SHASTRI relayed a request from District for members willing to host visiting scholars.  Please contact Shiv via email if you’re interested or need further information.

JACK HIGGINS presented President MARLENE a Rotary flag from his recent visit to the Dominican Republic.

ROY JONES, our resident clothier and hat pitchman, donated extra hats to softball team representative MEL KAHN.

Recognition:

You’ll fondly recall that last week’s fining/recognition session was rather unceremoniously halted by Money Master LEE LYNCH.  This week, JOHN MOSS was actually applauded as he strode to the lectern.  What seems to be a very clever way to get members to part with their money is to ask them to volunteer to give it away.  This week’s volunteers included DICK HENNING, DWIGHT MATTHEWS (who wasn’t even here), ROLAND PAYNE, PAT FARRELL, MARTY SPANGLER, JOANNE KAVALARIS and BO KEARNS.  And the things you learn when a member has the microphone -  such as when Pat lost something and Bo got married in the NY blackout.

The Program:

JOHN MOSS took the lectern once again, this time to introduce our speaker and the program.

According to John, Ted Garrett is arguably the best thing to happen to downtown Los Altos since Guy Shoup.      Ted is the Executive Director and COO of the Los Altos Village Association (LAVA), which is a community service organization as well as a business organization.

After spending a number of years in academia, Ted became an organizational consultant and management trainer.  In 1998, Ted was hired as executive director of the Mission Hills Business Association in San Diego. Three years later, he went on to become the first executive director of Mainstreet Oceanside, a volunteer driven non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and revitalizing downtown Oceanside.

In March of 2003, LAVA had the good sense to bring Ted to Los Altos.

Ted brings direction, life, and effectiveness to LAVA unlike anything it ever had before. In a remarkable flurry of activity and creativity, he has brought us "Movie Nights on Main Street", the "Taste of Los Altos" events, a greatly improved farmers market, the Downtown Revitalization Task Force, numerous beautification programs, lots of good press and other activities that have had a significant and positive effect on our downtown.

As Ted says,      his goal with LAVA is to “beautify, promote and energize the downtown area” because it reflects the pride and health of the community.  His slide presentation showed a number of new shops and restaurants and only one of the 94 hair and nail salons located downtown.

Ted handled a number of questions, the first of which was one regarding the number of nail salons.  After diverting a question to John Moss about the location of cell phone towers in downtown Los Altos, Ted addressed what LAVA is doing to attract high-end restaurants to the area.