Being met with smiling faces at the door is always a good sign.  CRES MCFALL, BOB ADAMS and BONNIE BURDETT certainly fulfilled that requirement.

SCOTT FLEMING led us in the pledge with equal authority.  Then it started to go downhill.  It isn’t that CRESS MCFALL didn’t try.  But the song today lacked some of the normal zip.  Then it really went downhill when STEVE SHEPHERD tried to lighten things up with a little ‘golf’ humor.  Where is PESNER when we need him?   Remember the old adage about ‘Location is everything’ in real estate?  Well, ‘Delivery is everything’ in joke telling.  But thanks anyway, STEVE.

“If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play at it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf.”  (Bob Hope).

We had a couple of visiting Rotarians, one all the way from San Jose, and the other from Whidbey Island, off Seattle.  We also had a number of guests, to round out a full house.  Great turn out.  One of the ‘guests’ was none other than NELS BURDETT, a past LARC member from 1991 to 2003.  If the last name seems familiar, he is the father of Red Badger, BONNIE.

“Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing”. (Dave Barry US columnist & humorist)

MEMBERSHIP – President JOHN MOSS had some good news and some bad news.  First of all, here’s the bad news.   JOHN HAMBLIN has resigned his duties as Membership Chair because of his new involvement with Tessla Motors in San Carlos.  MIKE HARRIGAN has resigned from the club for the same reason.   AMELIA HO has resigned from the club because of her involvement with the Olympics in her native country of China.  We will probably hear more about that at some future date.  Also, DOMINIC NICOLI has resigned because of pressing business. 

“Golf and sex are about the only things you can enjoy without being good at.” (Jimmy Demaret)

And now for the good news!  LARRY CHU has agreed to take on the responsibility of Membership Chair (which he has done in the past when he was Director of Membership).  In addition, we welcomed one new member, FRANK VERLOT with the traditional standing ovation. 

When our visiting Rotarian from San Jose, Victor Reid, made an announcement, he mentioned that their club lost 35 members last year.  Of course they have 3 times our membership, but still that is a lot of slots to fill each year.   

AND, on top of that, two red badgers, CLARI NOLET and MARV PATTERSON finely received their official RED Badge after being welcomed into the club back in August. 

“Only the income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has.” (Will Rogers)

ANNOUNCEMENTS:   There was a spate of announcements.  The lineup for the announcements looked like someone was giving away free tickets to Stanford Football. 

• KAILAS CHIDAMBARAM was first with his reminder of the need to sponsor children who are burn victims through the Coaniquem Burn Center in Chile.  This is last week’s announcement:  KAILAS CHIDAMBARAM was appealing to Rotarians to make a donation by sponsoring a child in the Burned Child program. Any donation will benefit the Coaniquem Children Burn Centers in Chile.   You are also invited to an elegant event, fundraiser at the Blackhawk Museum in Danville on the evening of October 5th.   If interested, give KAILAS a call.
• Next NANCY DUNAWAY entreated us to get behind the upcoming Red Badge Fundraiser.  NANCY and RICH CASEY presented a little fine master look-alike that caught most members by surprise.  The penalty was they had to buy at least two raffle tickets.  Some already had, (MONA ARMISTEAD for one) and other’s promised to do so.  Here’s the scoop:

*  Sunday 9/23 (next Sunday)
*  5:00 PM Pre-Party at Borel Private Bank (remember pre-parties at    college?) – beverages and heavy hors d’oeuvres
*  "A Chorus Line” at Bus Barn Theatre at 7:00PM. 
*  Cost $75 – Proceeds benefit C.H.A.S.E. (Community Hope and Sober Events). 
*  See the June 21^st Rotator for more information about CHASE

• Our San Jose Rotary visitor, Victor Reid,  came to our meeting to request help for the Los Altos High School Boosters’ – Pumpkin Patch Fund Raiser.  The Pumpkin Patch is looking to borrow a motor home or trailer for about 20 days, beginning Oct 12 and ending the 31^st.  Parent volunteers need a shelter while watching over the pumpkins.  Please call Victor Reid at (650) 888-8446 or Karyn Plank at (650) 814-8595 if you can help. 
• KAREN FOX wants a gutter repair person, and would pay part of your annual fine if you gave her a lead.  Oh, she also presented Pres. JOHN with a banner from Mt Vernon, VA. Rotary Club where she made up recently. 
• COETA CHAMBERS needs a host for a female French high school exchange student for the last half of the academic year (Jan thru June, 2008). 
• JOAN ROSSELLE is looking for silent auction donations for our A’ SANTE! This is our cooperative annual fundraiser for our RotaCare Clinic.  The Wine and Cuisine Tasting event will be held on October 24th at the Historic Del Monte Building (Murphy at Evelyn) in Sunnyvale.  $50 per person.  Please plan to attend and donate an auction item if you are able.
• CLYDE NOEL is looking for a few good men and women to fill out the L.E.A.D.S. seminar series.  Check this link to get more information, or just call or email Clyde. 
• President JOHN mentioned that, thanks to the abbreviated interim approach to the handbook, it was distributed today.  If you were at the meeting, you should have received one.  Additional copies are available (FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY) for $5.00 each.

An updated version with pictures will be distributed in a few months.  In addition, by then, we should have made a decision on the direction we will take with the online version.  There are a lot of clubs out there that have an online membership directory that works well for them.  We are still in the investigative process on this issue. 

“Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.”  (Will Rogers)

RED BADGE – 10 MINUTE TALK  -  I must say, our new members get better and better all the time.  BONNIE BURDETT certainly is no exception.  A few highlights:

Native of the Bay Area

Natural organizer:  bike rallies, penny carnivals, etc.

Student Body President

Expelled for trying to start a new clothing trend.  (Just keep off Southwest

Airlines, Bonnie)

UCSB graduate in business. 

Worked for Alza and eventually became VP of Investor Relations. 

Met her husband, Ben at Alza.  Ben died of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) in August of 1994 when her two children, a son and a daughter, were 1 ½ and 9. 

She has since set up the J. Benjamin Eckenhoff Fund which organizes and sponsors the annual “Ben Ride”.  More information about the ride can be found in a 1999 Town Crier article here.  Her goal is to get the foundation corpus to $1,000,000.  The fund is currently at $700,000, so this is a reachable goal.

At a recent District 5170 cabinet meeting, she met Arley Marley (husband of our MARY MARLEY, and Past President of Sunnyvale Rotary Club).  Coincidentally, Arley is deeply involved with Project Share Life , which is a Rotary District 5170 project to expand the database of potential bone marrow donors to assist Leukemia victims.  Look at their website.  This project is in keeping with the goals of the J. Benjamin Eckenhoff Fund.  So, a red-badge requirement to attend a District meeting led Bonnie to become co-chair of this important program within Rotary.   

She rather be involved in sports than shopping.

Her business classification is Fiduciary Services (Company named;  Prime Fiduciary Services)  specializing in services for the elderly or special needs clients. 

IT WAS A FINE TIME WE HAD:  BAIDRA MURPHY, in addition to being photographer, was the designated ‘hit person’ of the day.  First she picked on a select few, JOHN SINES, JOHN MOSS, JEANNE MACVICAR, and DWIGHT MATTHEWS.  They  were all  selected because they were already members of the President’s club (Star for the Day?) and  were allowed to point to the person to their right to take the hit.  Next time, people, choose your seats carefully.  This went on and on, hitting DAN O’DONNELL, SETH MANNING, DAN HOLDEN, ROLAND PAYNE, and a special “Mom” recognition for  MARY PROCHNOW.  DENNIS YOUNG paid dearly for earning the Summit Award from the Housing Industry Foundation. MARGE BRUNO and CINDY LUEDTKE paid in tribute to GINNY LEAR, winner of this year’s Silicon Valley Association of Realtors Community Service Award.  All tolled fines totaled around $400.  Not bad. 

CREATIVITY -  Its always a challenge to write about creativity creatively.  In this case, our speaker today, Geoff Ball Ph.D. provided the creativity.  So I’ll just report.  Geoff  Ball and Associates is a company specializing in expert facilitation and process leadership. 

Initially he asked us if we thought we were creative.  Then he went on to show those of us who didn’t think we were creative, how to add some creativity to our thinking.  We all have heard the statement, ‘think out of the box’ but Jeff showed us some very concrete examples of people really thinking out of the box, and what creative ideas were spawned by that process.

He said that humans are inherently creative.  But he also stated that we are often limited by assumptions and beliefs we carry with us.  These long held assumptions and beliefs become road blocks to creativity culminating into “It can’t be done”, “That won’t work” , “We don’t do it that way”,  “I never saw it done”, and all the other creativity-limiting statements we seem to conjure up.

Instead, try thoughts like, “If that won’t work, what will?” or “I know I can do it.”  Or give yourself three alternatives and examine each.  He suggested the mantra, “Do- Watch-Sleep”, which means, “Try it, watch someone else try it, then sleep on it”.  How many times have we tried and tried to think of something, but it just wouldn’t come. But, in the middle of the night, or in the middle of some other thought, the solution comes to you. 

Just last week one of my sons and I were trying and trying to think of the name of the little brown stuff at the bottom of a frying pan, and couldn’t.  We are both good cooks and should have known.  Two days later, in the middle of a completely unrelated conversation, I said “Faun.”  And without missing a beat, he says, “Yep, that’s it.”

Dr. Ball ended the mind-stretching presentation by having us all pledge to be more creative. 

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” (Albert Einstein)