Los Altos Rotary Club Home of the Annual Rotary Fine Art Show August 6th 2009

 Smiling Greeters JEANNE MacVICAR, JOHN HAMMERSCHMIDT, and JULIE ROSE welcomed us all warmly to the 6th meeting of new President TRACIE MURRAY’s year, while versatile CRES McFALL handled the financial duties in the lobby.
 
At the stroke of 12:15, Tracie clanged the meeting to order and asked ROY JONES to lead us in the flag salute.  Thoughtmaster JERRY MOISON inspired and/or amused us with 5-6 quotes from an online periodical he reads regularly, which undoubtedly explains why he is so amusing and/or inspiring.  The one that got the biggest laugh was from that well-known philosopher Yogi Berra:  “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never know when you get there”.
 

Songmeister KATHY BERRY showed a particularly novel approach to the job by arriving too late to distribute the lyric sheets she had prepared to “You’ve Gotta Have Heart”, by fining herself $20 for this transgression, and singing the song solo.  Happily for her, a surprising number of us (mostly baby boomers) knew the words and sang along.
 
Only one Visiting Rotarian was with us, and many were well-acquainted with Bob Smithwick from Palo Alto, a Co-founder & former Trustee of Foothill College.  Members with guests included SAM HARDING (Jason Sanborn), BAIDRA MURPHY (Tonya Brilon), JEAN MORDO (Shawn Kelley), and ALLART LIGTENBERG (Sasha Kramer & Melissa Sheppard).
 

ANNOUNCEMENTS
President-elect DENNIS YOUNG asked all members bringing guests to the meetings on 8/20 (Larry Stone on "Professional Sports in Santa Clara County) or 8/27 (Andy Dolich- CEO of the 49ers - on "Your San Francisco 49ers in Santa Clara County".) to let him know via e-mail so we can be sure to have adequate lunches and salads.
 
President TRACIE MURRAY thanked Jean & Barbara MORDO for hosting a wonderful party at their lovely home last Friday.  She also reminded us that there would be a LAREF Board meeting that night, and that all were welcome to attend (a good way to get make-up credit for missed meetings).  And speaking of make-up’s, remember that RI policy requires each of us to attend a minimum of 50% of Club meetings.  There are lots of ways to get credit for making up a meeting you miss.  For example, RotaCare delivery counts.  See the Handbook for complete list.  Lastly, Tracie called on HEINZ HOLZAPFEL to present a club banner he brought back from attend a meeting in Munich.
 
DAN O’DONELL thanked all members who signed up for RotaCare last week.  September & October are now fully booked.
 
KAREN GESSERT made us aware that LEW FRASER had a heart attack, but he is now resting comfortably.  She then circulated a Get Well card for signatures.
 
SANDY WHIPPLE reminded us all that invoices for annual dues have been sent out, so if you haven’t paid yet, please do so – you’re in arrears!  Also remember that the tally for fines ended on June 30.  It’s a new fiscal year, and the counter has reset to zero on a new $100.
 

GUEST SPEAKER #1
Sasha Kramer, the Co-founder of SOIL (Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods - www.oursoil.org), returned to give us an update on her activities in Haiti and to thank us for our financial support.  Sasha is an ecologist and human rights observer who was born here, lived in many other places, but came back to earn a PhD in Ecology from Stanford.  While doing a post-doc in Haiti, she noticed major sanitation, water, and public health problems, as well as serious soil depletion of agricultural areas.  Her solution was to build special toilets designed to take human waste and turn it into valuable compost for agriculture use.  The 4 large public toilets will service 1000 -1500 people, and after one year the human waste provides fertilizer rich in nutrition for agriculture.  LARC, with a $1,000 grant, is supporting a Rotary Matching Grant project for SOIL from PARC.
 

RECOGNITION  JEAN NEWTON FRAGUGLIA announced that Summer is a fine time for a vacation, so we will focus on that.
 
But first we did the birthdays.  MARY PROCHNOW paid $20 but was disappointed that GUY FARTHING wasn’t here, since he has the same birthday.  TRACIE MURRAY, being a lady, said she couldn’t reveal her age, but made a generous pledge of $47 – hmm.  BTW, President Obama has the same birthday as Tracie, but he wasn’t here to fine.
 
Next came the golfers, and it’s fair to say that everyone had a grand time during this hilarious segment.  But for many non-golfers in the room, much of the jargon used was totally indecipherable.  STEVE SHEPHERD & JACK KELLY won some kind of a 2-man competition (better ball?) with a low score of 68, which was 3 below par.  Everyone thought they should cough up $68 to celebrate, but they chintzed out and pledged $35 each.  LARRY CHU offered to pay $20 for the privilege of pointing out that the 68 was a net score, and their gross was at least 120.  LARRY MADSEN added that Steve had also won a chipping contest for a $100 prize, so Steve upped his pledge to $100.  And DAVID BERONIO also got in for $20, but nobody remembers why.
 
And finally came the vacationers (who were supposed to be the main theme of this event anyway), and miscellaneous others.  MARLIS McALLISTER paid $50 to celebrate the new Eagle scout (Garret) in her house.  JANE REED and her husband are leaving next month for a 3-month drive around the country in their Prius, and she hopes they’ll come back together as well.  We hope her pledge of $25 helps to lock in this outcome.  CINDY DAY is looking forward to 6-weeks in Hawaii and celebrated early with $50.  ALLART LIGTENBERG happily reported that his PSA score was looking much better after 2 months of radiation, and he also pledged $50 in honor of Sasha’s return visit to LARC.
 
JEAN then had the nerve to call on your intrepid Rotator Writer, who was handling the job for the first time and scribbling faster than he had since college history class.  Finding himself at an uncharacteristic loss for words under the circumstances, he spoke briefly (perhaps an all-time first) about a planned weekend with children and grandchildren.  There’s some rumor that he promised to pay some paltry fine, but this needs to be substantiated by someone who was listening better than he was.
 
GEORGE STAFFORD talked about a “staycation” and pledged $20.  JERRY TOMANEK is retired, so every day is a vacation.  But he regaled us with a story about a trip to a town on the Olympic Peninsula where Twilight was filmed and where the place was teeming with teen-age girls, and for this pleasure he pledged $20.  HEINZ HOLZAPFEL just returned from a trip to Austria, France, & Germany with a banner for the club and $25 for the duck.  MEL KAHN had a reunion with some High School buddies in Jackson and pledged $20.  Evidently he was still drying out from the trip, because he forgot to mention he had just celebrated 45 years of marriage.  BTW, MEL good-naturedly put up with the same “being short” joke that he has heard a thousand times.  Your writer thought this was a bit tacky and instead wants to congratulate MEL for taking off a little height!  JERRY MOISON claimed some kind of golf reciprocity and paid $20.
 
 
GUEST SPEAKER #2
Russ Jones, representing LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition), is a 39-year veteran of the “War On Drugs”, and he says quite bluntly that we are losing the war!  He presented many cogent facts and statistics to support this argument.  LEAP’s premise is that our existing drug policy is really a “War on People”, and that by making drug possession illegal, we have created a situation where the profit motive has fostered and reinforced a mega-industry of suppliers.   Explaining that the major objective of the War on Drugs has been to reduce or eliminate death, disease, crime, and drug use, we have failed on all counts.  Worse yet, we have spent incredible fortunes on this war and have ruined many lives with arrests for minor, no-victim offenses.
 
The solution that LEAP recommends is to de-criminalize drugs.  Alcohol, prescription drugs, and other potentially-addictive substances are regulated, but addiction issues are treated as a medical, not a criminal, matter.  When the profit motive in distributing drugs illegally is removed, the drug cartels will have no incentive to remain in business.  Given how inexpensive it is to produce (i.e. – grow) the products, and how much can be charged for the illegal substances, the market is ripe for exploitation by the unscrupulous.
 
Here are a few of the noteworthy factoids from Russ’s talk, but for much more information on the entire subject, check out the LEAP website at http://www.leap.cc.
 

• The world market for illegal drugs is estimated at $400 billion, with a higher gross profit than in any other industry.
• There were 2 million U.S. drug arrests for possession in 2008.  One can be treated for and get over an addiction, but one’s record is blemished forever by a drug conviction.
• We have 4% of the world’s population in the U.S., but we have 22% of the incarceration.
• Our prior experiment with prohibition of alcohol failed miserably for all the same reasons we see again here.
• Russ’s trips to China, Tibet, and the USSR demonstrated that even totalitarian regimes could not eradicate this problem.  Why should we believe we can do so in a democratic society?

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