Los Altos Rotary Club Home of the Annual Rotary Fine Art Show Aug 19 2010

President ,DENNIS YOUNG, still not entirely sure where to place his podium, chimed the meeting to order at 12:15 p.m. 
 
Arriving Rotarians had been greeted by JERRY TOMANEK, VAL CARPENTER, and red-badger, TED SORENSON, with hard-working LARRY CHU manning the pay station. 
 
MEL KAHN led the pledge, and ESTHER NG provided the thought for the day; “Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, life is about dancing in the rain”.  JEANNE MACVICAR led us in song to “By Moonlight Bay.”
 
VP MONA ARMISTEAD was ready to introduce a slew of visiting Rotarians, but we had only one. BOO BUE introduced his Rotarian friend, Rob Bennett, visiting from San Carlos.
 
STEVE SHEPHERD, MARY MARLEY and JULIE ROSE introduced guests, and LARRY CHU introduced a special visitor, a visiting scholar from Hong Kong, studying at Foothill and interested in Rotary.
 
MONA also announced that just a few days after giving a wonderfully entertaining talk to our club last week, Earthquake goalie, Joe Cannon, injured his foot. A GET WELL card was passed around. 

CLUB ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Pres DENNIS made a couple of announcements for the club.  First, the Avenues of Service event on October  21st.  All members, especially directors and Red Badgers, are strongly encouraged to attend to learn about the many different programs offered through Rotary.  Our club pays the way of any member attending the Avenue of Services event.
  
  DENNIS also announced an important event being presented by our “adopted” club, Los Altos Sunset.  On Saturday, August 28, they will sponsor the Breakfast & Blood Drive event in Mountain View.  Click on the link to see the flyer in pdf form.
• DAN O’DONNELL thanked everyone who signed up to deliver food to the Rotacare Clinic in the next few months, and suggested that each driver bring along another Rotarian who had not been to the clinic before.  Each club member should see the great work being done at the clinic.
  
  
• MARY PROCHNOW reminded us of the Macy’s Passport Program.  For $10, you can receive a card giving you 20% off all purchases during the Passport weekend.  All of the proceeds from the sale of the cards go to support the Rotary AIDS Project.
  
  
• FRANK VERLOT announced that the World Community Service Committee will be meeting next Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. at First Republic Bank.
  
  
• KAILAS CHIDAMBARAM announced that the annual fundraiser for the Coaniquem Burn Center will be coming up on September 26th. The center treats children throughout South America who have suffered serious burns, often the result of open fire cooking in their own homes in its impoverished villages.   KAILAS will be selling raffle tickets.  Every year, your club has raised enough money to support at least two children being treated at the center.  Our late friend, BRUCE CANN was an enthusiastic supporter of the burn center, and we can all step up to fill in the void left by his passing.
  
  
• Past Pres. TRACIE MURRAY reminded us that we should all sign up for the Greenathon, by registering online and answering a few questions about home energy usage.  We still need 51 additional signups, and if enough people sign up, the club can earn up to $10,000.  It’s that easy!
  
  
• KAREN FOX reminded us that on Friday, September 17th, the Community Service Agency is sponsoring the annual “Home Town Heroes” event.  The honorees are LARC members, ROY LAVE and PAUL & Liz NYBERG.  DICK HENNING will be master of ceremonies.  Make your reservations now.
  
  
• JOHN SYLVESTER reminded everyone that there is a wine & cheese “social” Friday night, 8/20, at SAM HARDING’s house.
  (Last Friday.  See below for a bunch of pictures that PP SAM PESNER sent our way:

FINES AND FINANCIAL EDUCATION
Pres DENNIS announced that RICK GLAZE was whining his way up to the podium to “recognize” members. 

• DON HULL volunteered some recognition to speak of his exciting ride in a new 500hp ZK Corvette.  DON then let it slip that the owner was VON PACKARD; both DON and VON ponied up $10 for the celebrated ride.
  
• MATT CABOT volunteered that he had just returned from a wonderful vacation in Eastern Europe, and MATT put in $48 in celebration of his 48th wedding anniversary.
   
  

• RICK called on VP MONA to quiz her on “deflation.”  MONA chose the ever-popular “all of the above” response, and paid $20. 
• DICK HENNING was quizzed about “inflation” and followed MONA’s lead with “all of the above” resulting in a $20 fine. 
• RON PACKARD figured out what a corporate bond was, and paid only $10. 
• JEAN MORDO, fine financial genius himself, easily handled the definition of “muni-bond.”  JEAN decided to pay $80 to join the President’s Club and get the hat. 
• MARY PROCHNOW, given the second chance to figure out “deflation” (Rick only has a limited list of questions) still missed and paid $20. 
• Financial maven, STEVE SHEPHERD, puzzled mightily, but finally guessed right on that “inflation” query, and paid only $10, mostly because he’s tight.
  
 

THE WEEKLY PROGRAM: Ted Lempert of “Children Now”
DENNIS announced that we were starting the weekly presentation a bit early, because the speaker had a lot of information to impart, and this was abundantly true.
 
Ted Lempert is a former San Mateo County Supervisor and member of the California State Assembly.  But his life passion is education.  He is President of Children Now, a non-partisan organization dedicated to providing reports on the state of education in California.  The annual “Report Card” of Children Now is recognized as the most reliable and influential report on the current quality of California education.
 
Mr. Lempert pointed out that one policy that consistently receives broad support from voters of all parties and groups, is that we should provide equal educational opportunity for each student to be able to reach his or her full potential.  Despite this near unanimity on policy, California consistently has failed to achieve this goal.  He pointed out that there have been dramatic changes in education since the “age of children” back in the 1950’s and 1960’s.  Today, half of the parents of children under 18 are single parents.  In addition, our teachers must fight all types of influences, including television, the “new media” on the internet, and now, cell phones in school. 
 
Mr. Lempert referred to the “Report Card” on each table. Members can locate it online at http://www.childrennow.org/reportcard. There are 9.4 million children in California representing 13% of all children in the nation.  Children are now poorer than the average.  30% come from families where no parent works.  The dropout rate is now greater than 30% and this loss of education skills is creating greater economic losses than the current financial crisis and recession.  The impact of poverty and single families hits brain development.  Over 85% of brain development occurs by age 4, which makes quality pre-school and day-care critical.  Wealthier families can send their children to adequate educational facilities, but lower income and working parents cannot.  Thus, the “achievement gap” between the wealthy and the poor has continued to grow.
 
Mr. Lempert also pointed out that our children are suffering from a health crisis.  One in three kids is overweight or obese.  75% of the ads directed at children are for junk food.  Obesity is costing the State of California $7.7 billion per year.  Over one million kids do not have any health insurance.  Dental problems also keep many kids out of school. 
 
Our children also struggle in the state’s foster care and justice systems.  Juvenile offenders released from jail have a 70% recidivism rate in California.  In Missouri, it is 75%.
 
In Mr. Lempert’s view, many of the problems stem from the fact that the system is overrun by special interest groups.  He pointed to the recent passage of health care legislation. Proponents of the plan went to the hospitals, the unions, the lawyers, the pharmaceutical companies, and other groups, to get into law, what each interest group would allow.  The same is happening with education. Each special interest group gets its way in Sacramento.  But “kids” are not a special interest group.  So, Mr. Lempert and his group are trying to connect all the varied groups that exist throughout the state and support children and children’s education, to try to mobilize these many groups into one unified action group.
 
After a very lively Q&A session, President DENNIS chimed the meeting to a close a couple of minutes late at 1:32.

Program THIS THURSDAY:  A long bright future: Long Life in the 21st Century

Laura Carstensen, Stanford Professor of Psychology, will speak on planning for a lifetime of happiness, health and financial security.

Laura L. Carstensen is Professor of Psychology and the Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Professor in Public Policy at Stanford University, where she is also the founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, which explores innovative ways to solve the problems of people over 50 and improve the well-being of people of all ages.

She is best known in academia for socioemotional selectivity theory, a life-span theory of motivation, and with her students and colleagues, has published well over 125 articles on life-span development. Her research has been supported by the National Institute on Aging for more than 20 years.

In 2009, she authored A Long Bright Future: An Action Plan for a Lifetime of Happiness, Health, and Financial Security. She is a fellow in the Association for Psychological Science, the American Psychological Association and the Gerontological Society of America.

She has chaired two studies for the National Academy of Sciences, resulting in The Aging Mind and When I'm 64. She is a member of the MacArthur Foundation's Research Network on an Aging Society.

She has won numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Distinguished Career Award from the Gerontological Society of America. She received a BS from the University of Rochester and PhD in clinical psychology from West Virginia University.