Next Week's Program: 

Kay Payne - The New de Young Museum

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Welcome back and Happy New Year, Los Altos Rotary Club!  Here’s hoping you all had a wonderful Holiday Season and can still remember most of your New Year resolutions.  The energy of a new year was passed on to us by our greeters, GEORGE ESTILL and VICTOR ECHEVARRIA.

PRESIDENT MARLENE rang the meeting to order and immediately called upon JACK KELLY to lead the Pledge after making sure he knew the words.

Song leader ALAN LAMBERT,  ever the perfectionist, chose to correct a previous rendition of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” by dividing the choir appropriately and leading us in the proper presentation.  Good job, ALAN.

The Thought for the Day was delivered by PRESIDENT-ELECT-ELECT JOHN MOSS.  The focus was on the glories and wonders of youth which even included a quote by the famous Leroy Robert Paige, more commonly known as “Satchel.”

PRESIDENT-ELECT SAM acknowledged the performance of the Texas Longhorns for their accomplishment the night before and then proceeded to announce visiting Rotarians.  In attendance we had Arley Marley from Sunnyvale, Kay Keeshen from San Jose and Walt Dardenne from Almaden Valley.  Our Rotarians then introduced their guests.

Next week’s program will be Kay Payne, wife of our Roland, discussing the new de Young Museum.  Speaking of Programs, SAM also announced that the Program Committee will meet after next week’s meeting to plan the upcoming year.  All those interested parties please attend; no reservations necessary.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
If you want to get something published (preferably something about Rotary and the good works you/we do), call KATIE NUTTER.

The RED BADGE AUCTION is coming.  March 23, 2006, to be exact.  Twins GIGI CARTER and KIM COPHER (at least they had on matching outfits and not by coincidence) will have two presentations showing phase two of Rotary’s support for Hurricane Katrina community rebuilding efforts.  Your donations to the silent auction and to the live auction are most welcome and most needed.  One suggestion from the twins was to check your holiday gifts for items you might find useful for the auction.  In other words, there may a good use for those things you wondered about.

President-elect Arley Marley from Sunnyvale Rotary passed out flyers and talked about their 12^th Annual Crab Feed and Auction coming up on February 25, 2006, from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm.  It’ll be held at St. Cyprian Church, 1133 W. Washington Ave. in Sunnyvale.  Tickets are $35 per person now and $40 at the door.  Proceeds benefit Sunnyvale community efforts.

DICK HASENPFLUG is looking for participants for the Rotary Audit Committee.  He wants to make sure the club committees are conforming to the elements of the Four Way Test.  Please see Dick if you are interested in helping with the on-going audits.

JOAN ROSSELLE pronounced the Peet’s Coffee Christmas Eve  effort to be a rousing success.  Peet’s gave free coffee to customers and accepted donations on that day.  After the pots were drained and cash tallied, $2,195 was donated to the RotaCare Free Clinic.  Congratulations and thank you one and all who participated that day. 

PRESIDENT MARLENE donned her Santa suit a couple of times to deliver gifts of dictionaries from our club to local schools.  Loyola and Springer were the most recent beneficiaries of her visits and were most appreciative.  Your most generous gifts in the form of gratuities to our lunch servers will be delivered shortly; thank you once again.  The Rotary Holiday Party was acknowledged as another successful event with proper praise given to the major players, the bartenders and musicians.  If you are ever so inclined to exhibit your reading skills in front of an appreciative audience, please be informed that Child Care Advocates needs you.  See Marlene.

On a sad note, MARLENE announced the passing of Rotarian Rudy Grziwok on January 2^nd.  He was a member until he resigned in 2002.  A sympathy card will be circulated next week.  A memorial service will be held Tuesday, January 10th at 12:30pm at Spangler's Mortuary on San Antonio Road in Los Altos. 

MORE SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM PRESIDENT MARLENE SO PAY ATTENTION:
Los Altos Rotary Club and Los Altos Chamber of Commerce are teaming up to present the Rotary-Chamber After Hours Business Mixer at Rambus on January 18^th from 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm.  Please remember to bring your business card for a chance at the door prize drawings. Also be prepared to give your name to the Rambus parking attendant for entry into the underground parking facility behind Rambus.  Rotarians are special!

BILLY RUSSELL's Volunteer Service Award was reported in District Governor's newsletter (pg 2).  Saturday, January 28th at the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose is the District Mid-year Meeting (a must for Presidents, Presidents-Elect and Club Membership Chairs and Committees).

If one of your many New Year resolutions is to improve attendance and you should happen to miss a meeting, make-up opportunities abound.  There are LAREF meetings, LARC Board Meetings (next one Wed afternoon Jan. 11 from 3-5 pm in Heritage Bank's Community Room), ) World Community Service meeting (next one Tuesday morning 8 am Jan. 24 at Northern Trust),  Community Roundtable of local Kiwanis & Rotary clubs (Friday  morning Feb. 3  from 7:30-9:30 am with speaker Peter Hero, Community Foundation Silicon Valley).  Partners for New Generations (PNG) invites you to their next meeting and still needs middle school tutors (see Sandie Whipple).  Any other LARC committee meeting where minutes are taken or another Rotary Club meeting is a make up opportunity.  It's your responsibility to request make-up credit from Club Secretary John Cardoza.  He loves giving credit where credit is due.

Recognition master DENNIS YOUNG  did a fine job extracting cash by simply asking for it.   For one, MIKE CABOT became an Explorer in recogniton of his (and his wife's) first child, Ella.  For another GEORGE ESTILL because Dennis thought any good Travel Agent should be happy to be an Explorer. George was happy.  Others paid for their guilt, their age, their new offspring, their long-distance running ability; even the fine master himself threw in a few bucks for a reason I didn’t record.

PRESIDENT MARLENE also mentioned the District Newsletter, on the District website.  Go to:  www.rotary5170.org for further information, and a copy of their newsletter. 

PRESIDENT MARLENE announced the program for today was CLUB ASSEMBLY and turned the meeting over to “Double Duty” DENNIS YOUNG who either is or was treasurer of anything that needs treasurering.  Topic one:  Dennis presented a short but exciting course in financial planning using terms only he and selected others understood.  As I understand it, some of your financial planning problems can be solved by giving a good percentage of your money to Dennis and he’ll do something with it.  Seriously, Dennis explained what Los Altos Rotary Legacy (LARL) is and that it is an opportunity to continue supporting your club's projects through planned giving.

Topic two: PRESIDENT MARLENE led a discussion about “doable” hands-on projects that can be done by our club that will leave a lasting contribution in our community.  She read her list of many projects that have been explored and rejected because they cannot be completed in this Rotary year, require skilled professional labor or are very expensive.

She followed that list with the “doable” ones for the day’s discussion.  The actual list:

1. Painting the exterior of Bus Barn building with adjacent restroom and office buildings (2 days+).
2. Paint the poles supporting roofs in breezeways of Hillview Community Center.
3. Paint the back wing of the Grant Park building in south end of town near Newcastle.
4. Plant trees & groundcover on the large island by Montclaire School (Stonehaven & St. Joseph).
5. Neutra House at LA Community Foundation - scrape off green paint after contractors remove most of it (not a lead-based paint, so not a safety hazard).
6. Neutra House - landscaping (digging, planting, etc.).
7. Regular or one-time trash pick-up on main downtown streets or parking areas.
8. Others (one-time or ongoing)?

Each table reported its top two suggestions which were promptly recorded and will be summarized for presentation at a later date.  Please stay tuned.