Los Altos Rotary Club Home of the Annual Rotary Fine Art Show Spetember 25th, 2008

President SETH skipped and hopped through his printed agenda to include thanks to our greeters CLYDE NOEL, STEVE POMEROY and PAUL SCHUTZ.
 
LAREF President DENNIS YOUNG gave his Thoughts about friendships: “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” and “Do not save your loving speeches for your friends till they are dead; do not write them on their tombstones. Speak them rather now instead.”     
It was a good day for guests. Our numerous visitors included Rabbi Jay Miller (Burlingame Rotary Club), Gina Quing (the Peninsula Clergy Network), John Hammerschmidt (Tom Liston’s neighbor), Casey Fitzpatrick (CEO of Greentown Los Altos), Don Ray (also of Greentown Los Altos), Bob Cabrillas (John Cardoza’s HP friend and interpreter at the RotaCare Free Clinic), Beverly Tucker (Recreation Director of Los Altos) and George Zentina of Coldwell Banker. Looks like those “little invitation to lunch” cards are effective! The writer regrets any misspellings, but includes guests’ names so we can greet them the next time they visit.
 
An Oct. 2 paving project on University Avenue may change our parking arrangements, so watch your emails for an announcement from PRESIDENT SETH. 

Membership Director JOHN CARDOZA inducted two new members into our club: PAT HYLAND, sponsored by JEANNE MACVICAR and TOM POTTERFIELD, sponsored by President SETH.  This Rotary year our club has already grown from 148 to 152 members. JOHN’S goal is to gain 20 new members which would represent a net gain of +5, and we’re ahead of schedule, he announced. Last week’s seven guests seem to all be interested in future membership in LARC.

& The long line-up of announcements included:

BILL BALSON seeks donors for the Red Badgers’ Bookplate Project.

Past President MARLENE encourages us to attend the one-day Stars (STRS) seminar on Sat, Nov. 8 at Bay 101 Club in San Jose to learn club leadership, communication and budgeting skills. Contact President SETH if you’re interested and the Club will pay your fee.

RICH CASEY visited the Sparks, Nevada club and brought back their pennant along with a recommendation for their budget buffet.

KAILAS CHIDAMBARAM reminded us to support the COANIQUEM Burned Children’s Fund by purchasing $10 raffle tickets and attending the dinner and guitar concert on the evening of October 4th.

The Coaniquem Burned Children's Foundation was established in 1979 in Santiago, Chile to offer physical, psychological & spiritual treatment to children who have suffered bad burns due mainly to poor conditions in Latin-American homes. The BCF has treated over 70 thousand children and presently treats 9,000 annually.

Their Annual Fund-Raiser is to be held Saturday, October 4th at the Grand Pavilion, 300 Island Drive, Alameda from 4:00-7:00pm. Tickets are $50.00 per head and will include a classical guitar performance & refreshments. In addition, tickets for various charity drawings for the main prize of two airline tickets to Santiago, Chile. will be sold at $10.00 each.
Over the next two weeks, Kailas will be requesting your help to make the Fund-Raiser a success.

The Club presently sponsors three children at $600.00 each annual cost. All funds were raised from generous club members without tapping into club funds. We hope to support three or more children this year, so please help by calling Kailas at 408-358-4272 to pledge your support. He will have tickets & invitations at our regular Thursday lunch.

FRANK VERLOT of WCS announced two travel opportunities: January 25 to Belize to learn of Rotary projects in Latin America and to Mexico in late November to visit the Pro Mujer micro credit project in cooperation with Cupertino Rotary. Contact FRANK at fverlot@hotmail.com.

PP BOB ADAMS announced (with a little help from a friend) that PNG (Partners for New Generations) needs a digital camera. He reminded us to attend the Oct. 9 gathering at Mountain View High to see former LARC member RICH FISCHER and his PNG mentee Jose Antonio Vargas who is now a Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.
 
PP JOHN MOSS plans to deliver the new LARC Handbook to the printer early next week, so all members should respond to him ASAP whether their contact information is correct or needs updating. 

Guest Casey Fitzpatrick, Executive Director of Greentown Los Altos informed us of several waste-reduction initiatives at City Council’s Environmental Commission. The Greentown business initiative is now sponsored by 11 green-certified businesses. The Greentown schools’ initiative goal is to produce zero waste lunches. Other goals are to reduce land waste and reduce vehicle miles driven.

ALLART LIGTENBERG, our District Water, Health, Hunger, Solar Chair, introduced himself today as a “solar fanatic”. With Past President SAM PESNER at the computer, they showed a Rotary Foundation video on matching grant projects for water harvesting around the world. ALLART encouraged us to contribute to The Rotary Foundation (TRF) which is “better than putting money in the stock market!”

JOHN SYLVESTER recognized many for a small fee.  JOHN himself ponied up $36 to commemorate his son’s 36th birthday, which was JOHN’s age when Pete was born. DAN HOLDEN is now available for financial consulting since the two companies where he recently worked suffered financial disasters (not caused by Dan).  KAREN FOX recently traveled 27,000 miles to return to LARC and so offered $27.  SHELLY POTVIN announced the expected arrival of her second son next February and volunteered $20. Newly inducted TOM POTTERFIELD celebrated his school’s class of 2008-09 PhD students by offering $20.  Not to be left behind, newly inducted PAT HYLAND announced in her high school Principal’s voice that she was offering $20 to celebrate her birthday last Friday. PP DICK DUHRING, DAN O’DONNELL and STEVE FICK paid because they couldn’t answer JOHN’s baseball questions. They must have been real curveballs! Only TOM LISTON got the right answer, but he paid anyway.

Rod Diridon, our program speaker, was introduced by President-Elect TRACIE as the son of an Italian immigrant railroad brakeman and “father” of modern transit service in Santa Clara County. Actually, Rod has chaired over one hundred national, state and local community service programs, mostly related to transit and the environment. He is Executive Director of the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) and has somehow found time to also serve as President-Elect of the San Jose Rotary Club.  He has worked in cooperation with Past President ROY for years on Santa Clara Valley transit issues. Dean Chu, former Mayor of Sunnyvale and representative to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission also attended today’s program.
 
Rod’s Power Point presentation showed that the USA is the only industrialized nation in the world lacking an extensive high-speed rail system, which has proven to be the only safe and cost-effective mass transport system through 25 years of experience with the French TGV and 45 years of experience with the Japanese Shinkansen trains. He showed photos of rolling stock from Japan, China, France and Italy where the Chair of Ferrari is also the Chair of the Italian high-speed railroad, “where it had to be both fast and pretty!”
The California High-speed Rail, if approved, will be completed in 2020 and will carry 60 million riders annually. It would cost $33 billion in 2007 dollars and travel 220 miles per hour. The route would eventually connect San Francisco, San Jose, Gilroy, Sacramento, Stockton, Merced, Fresno, Bakersfield, Palmdale, Los Angeles, Anaheim, Irvine, Riverside, Escondido, and even San Diego. Best of all, it is expected to have a net positive cash flow for operations, like high-speed railroads in every other industrialized country in the world.

A mid-Peninsula station might be located in Palo Alto or Redwood City and would connect to BART and the Muni in San Francisco. High-speed trains will remove nearly 70 million passenger trips from our highways every year, use only 1/3 of the energy of air travel and 1/5 of the energy of auto travel and thus reduce dependence on foreign oil.
 For just $55 (in 2005 dollars) we will be able to travel from downtown San Francisco to downtown Los Angeles in 2 hours, 36 minutes or from San Jose to LA in 2 hours, 9 minutes. Shorter trips will cost less, not more, and riders will be able to use their cell phones while riding the train. From 2008 to 2050 California’s population is expected to double, so either our highways and airports must be expanded, or a high-speed rail system with gradually increasing numbers of trains could replace those other temporary fixes. For years, this writer has relied on European trains for business commuting and looks forward to the day when Californians can enjoy an equally convenient high-speed transportation system.
 
  

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