Los Altos Rotary Club Home of the Annual Rotary Fine Art Show January 22 2009

BEGINNING A NEW ERA
Rotary President SETH MANNING rang the bell at 12:15 p.m. to begin the first Rotary meeting of the new era in the United States of America.  BOB ADAMS led us in the pledge.  CLARI NOLET invoked the thoughts of our new President Barack Hussein Obama by announcing a new era of responsibility.  We must give our all to a difficult task – as Rotarians know well, we must volunteer. That is the “price of citizenship.”  KURT HUEG led the song, “America the Beautiful”.

DENNIS YOUNG: “Welcome Back!” proclaimed President Seth.  It was good to see our friend at the meeting so soon after having cancer surgery.
 
President Elect TRACIE MURRAY welcomed visiting Rotarians and Rotarians with guests including Jose’ Solera, husband of former Los Altos Rotarian Meg Solera, SAM HARDING and guest Steve Katz, MARLIS McALLISTER and her guest Ester Ng, BAIDRA MURPHY and her guest Cammie Brody, JOHN MOSS and his guests, daughter and granddaughter, Jennifer and Cathy, from Australia.
 
Membership Chair JOHN CARDOZA reported we obtained 11 new members for a resulting net five-member increase in membership growth this year.  The club needs new growth to thrive and John urged all members to invite their friends to visit Rotary.  Remember to pick up a “Be My Guest” ticket from the front desk and use it to pay for your guest’s lunch.
 
John also advised that DAN O’DONNELL and he are serving on the RotaCare Clinic’s administrative council.  RotaCare needs help processing and labeling the new prescription drugs they receive and could use several volunteers for this daytime job.
 
ANNOUNCEMENTS
TRACIE MURRAY announced the Winemaker’s Dinner, Friday, February 6, 2009, 6:30 p.m., at Aemono Restaurant, at the Art Institute of California-Sunnyvale, 1120 Kifer Road, Sunnyvale.  Proceeds benefit the RotaCare Clinic and a scholarship fund.  Contact Mary Bradley 408-981-4021 or the restaurant at 408-962-6444.
 
JACK HEIDMILLER announced the annual Sister Cities celebration 6-8:30 p.m. Thursday, January 29, 2009, at the Garden House in Shoup Park catered by Chef Chu with entertainment by Bus Barn Follies. Contact Alison 650-283-9553.
 
ROY LAVE reminder everyone who commented on the bylaws changes that the committee you now are a part of will be meeting to discuss the revisions.  Contact Roy.
 

MAKEUPS
Club Secretary, STEVE ANDERSON reminded Rotarians that, make-ups are easy and all you need to do is send him an email of where you made up!  Make-ups can be done at any other club, Rotaract, Interact, District 5170 functions, LARC, www.Eclub.com, LARC committee functions and by delivering meals for RotaCare.  There really are no excuses for having bad attendance when it’s so easy to make up a missed meeting.  Good attendance is important in Rotary.               
 
 
LAREF GRANTS PRESENTED
RICK GLAZE, Los Altos Rotary Endowment Fund Chair, presented three checks for the following Rotary-supported projects:
1 – Scholarships $1,700, JANE REED and PP MARGE BRUNO accepting for AAUW.
2 – Partners for New Generations: $10,000, PP BOB ADAMS and MONA ARMISTEAD accepting.
3 – Rotary Aids Project, $5,000, RICH CASEY and JOHN MCDONNELL accepting.
Congratulations to these great programs!

 
OPEN BOARD POSITIONS
President Seth announced that there are three open Board of Directors’ positions to serve in the following two Rotary years (7-1-09 through 6-30-11).  If you are interested in volunteering for the positions and would like to run for the board, let Seth know.  Nominations are open from the floor, but be sure to notify the person you are nominating ahead of time. 
 

FINE FINEMASTER
BONNIE BURDETT, helped grow the club’s operating capital by serving as finemaster for her first time.  She did a great job, and asserted her new authority well by collecting money from President SETH, MEL KAHN, and BILL MOISON for “fining without a license” and their mischief in general.  Using a football theme, Bonnie was able to finagle fines from KAREN FOX, MONA ARMISTEAD, CINDY LUEDTKE, ROY LAVE, SAM HARDING, DENNIS YOUNG, TIM BYRD, and NANCY SIMON.  LARRY CHU in addition to his prior fining from President Seth, stuck his neck out and likened Bonnie to a former teacher of his in exchange for a few more bucks.  BARRY GROVES, who was not present, was acknowledged for his willingness to make a presentation on behalf of Partners for New Generations at all three Sunday services at Los Altos United Methodist Church this past weekend.   Then Bonnie picked up a dollar or two from ROLAND PAYNE, CINDY WEMYSS, MARLIS MCALLISTER and DICK HENNING.  She had an excellent start on her new fining career!
 
PROGRAMS IN A PINCH
TRACIE MURRAY introduced program volunteers JOHN SINES, the oldest practicing attorney in Los Altos, KATHY BERRY, municipal law, and RANDY GARD, patent law, filled in admirably for our in-lieu program.  All three spoke anecdotally about the work they do.
 
Kathy began with an interesting history of Almaden Quicksilver Park.  Kathy worked for Santa Clara County when the interesting case involving the clean up of the old mercury mines arose.  She defended the County in the lawsuit from the State which sought to charge the County with the $42 million mess. 
 
The whole story begins in the 1850’s when a captain in the Mexican army noticed the Native Americans were using cinnabar to paint their faces a bright red color.  He thought that might be a valuable resource and filed a claim known as the Berryessa Land Grant.  It was later sold to a British company which started mining mercury in the area south of San Jose.  Mercury was important because of its property of sticking to gold which helped the 49ers during the gold rush times. 
 
A conflict arose between two of President Lincoln’s cabinet members about the property who were trying to do something about the mine, one of whom ended up being a shareholder in the property. At that time, California was in danger of seceding from the Union, so Lincoln wisely took the side of his cabinet member to support keeping the State – and its mine – in the Union.  Over the years there have been many owners.  When the property ended up in County hands, it was polluted with mine debris that required expensive clean up.  After the lawsuit was settled, some of the prior mine owners were sought out and were made responsible to help pay the cleanup costs.  The County opened the park to visitors in 1998.
 
RANDY GARD dispelled some of the mystery about patent law. 
He claimed the only thing more boring than being a CPA is being a patent attorney.  His job involves obtaining patents, not suing over the misuse of them.
 
Some common misconceptions about patents: 
1) If you have a patent you will get rich – like the guy who invented the windshield wiper.  Not so.  Of the thousands of ideas patented each year, only a few actually make money.
2) Every patentable idea has to be revolutionary.  No so.  Most patents are for incremental changes in ever evolving product designs.
3) Ten percent of all patents come from Santa Clara County, but not all patents are high tech.  He then showed a timer that magnetically attaches to baby food jars to tell mothers how long the food has been open in the refrigerator. This may be a low tech money maker in the near future.
 
JOHN SINES, then told the story of one of his early cases. 
Husband asked wife number two to find an apartment for ex-wife and the two kids.  Wife one had bad credit, so wife two co-signed on the lease.  Wife one failed to pay the rent, so landlord sued wife two for $8,000 in back rent.  John won the case because he got the landlord to admit that during the course of the lease, landlord had increased the rent without wife two’s consent.  Since wife two was a surety, her consent was required.  Case dismissed.
Postscript: Wife two asked husband to pay John’s bill, husband said no, he wasn’t the one sued.
 
End of stories.  End of meeting.

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