Los Altos Rotary Club Home of the Annual Rotary Fine Art Show April 28, 2011

President DENNIS YOUNG called the meeting to order with a welcome to the “Best Rotary Club in the World.” PP “Dr. Sam” or SAM PESNER led the pledge of allegiance.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
JANE REED, who just returned from the tornado zone of Missouri, Arkansas and Tennessee, was thinking about friendship. “You meet great people along the road and a cheerful friend is like a sunny day”, she said. So she quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem about success that includes “to laugh often and much” and “appreciate beauty” and “leave the world a little better place. This is the measure of success.”

Old Susannah was the song of the day led by JEANNE MACVICAR because her granddaughter likes to sing it in the bathtub.

Dennis thanked Greeters VAL CARPENTER, NANCY DUNAWAY and STEVE BIANCHI; photographer STEVE POMEROY; Sergeant at Arms LEW FRASER, MIKE ABRAMS and FRANK VERLOT; and cashier LARRY CHU, JR.

VISITING ROTARIANS…
Taking President Elect MONA ARMISTEAD’s place this week was President Elect-Nominee, JOHN SYLVESTER, who arrived at the podium to scattered applause to ask visiting Rotarians to stand for introductions. Since there were no visiting Rotarians, John presented a club banner to Dennis from his recent trip to Hawaii. 

…AND GUESTS
DICK BLANDING introduced a couple from Maine and GARY ROSS introduced Steve Gazarra, who is in real estate,

OUR NEXT PROGRAM
Next week our speaker will be Linda Conover on “The Silver Tsunami.”

ANNOUNCEMENTS

DENNIS YOUNG said DAN O’DONNELL camped out overnight to be the first in line to tell us that he still needed some volunteers to help with the RotaCare food deliver on May 4 and in June.  Please see him if you can help.

JOHN SYLVESTER reminded us of the fun and fellowship which will await for us at Borel Bank on Friday evening at a party hosted by STEVE FICK for Rotarians and Guests.  He also reminded us that there would be a program committee meeting at First Republic Bank on Monday for anyone who wants to join.

With raffle tickets in hand, CINDY LUEDTKE said she wanted to sell buckets of them ahead of time and asked us to help so we could raise $12,000.  They are only $5.00 apiece and you can get a deal at five for only $20.00.  This nominal amount will offer a chance to win one of two trips to Napa Valley or a trip for two to Mexico.  The proceeds are for the WCS school-building project in Haiti.  Much help from LARC members are needed to get them all sold.  So take a few books of five with you and sell them to people you see between meetings. There’s not much time left.  The drawing takes place on Sunday at the end of the Art Show. 

FRANK VERLOT announced there would be a special meeting for World Community Service to talk about the budget on Tuesday, May 3 at 8:00 a.m. at Main Street Café.

May 1 is the opening of the City of Los Altos Gilbert Smith Home from noon to 4:00 and JANE REED would like to invite people to come.  You can shop at the boutique featuring some of the items from the Los Altos History Museum Store.

Don’t miss an event on June 3 that has been going on 35 years or more according to PP LARRY MADSEN.  It’s the annual Los Altos Rotary Golf Tournament, BBQ and Poker game and will be a fun affair.

STEVE POMEROY, taking a photo of himself, wants us to work at the art show and has a list of open jobs.  He still needs help in almost all areas and wants everyone to know that they need to sign up for two mandatory shifts.  Please let Steve know what you can do to help.

TRACIE MURRAY reminded us that the Los Altos Chamber of Commerce Business Expo was April 28.

According to President Dennis, if you need a club banner to exchange, please let him know in plenty of time to get one for you.  Did you know that the current club banner is the second banner design and a club member whose daughter is a pretty good swimmer designed it?  That would be LARRY MADSEN.

The District Celebration will be May 6-8 so be there or be square!

TATYANA KANZAVELI gave her five-minute talk and said she had a boring life, but it didn’t seem that way.  She was born in Baku, Azerbaijan. As a child she was busy taking swimming, music and chess, but settled in on chess at age nine.  She became a champion chess player and participated in many prestigious tournaments, playing professionally along with chess great Gary Kasparov, and making chess a life long avocation.  She shared some of her family life and environment from the time when President Nikita Khrushchev was president and visited the U.S. in 1959.  He brought back a box from America and asked his fellow countrymen to duplicate it. Tatyana’s father accepted the challenge. He was the engineer who made the first air conditioner prototype for the Soviet Union. They moved into an apartment with all the bells and whistles.  Her mother worked full time and loved to cook for everyone.  Tatyana said her mother’s life was her children and family.  Tatyana has a brother who is 18 months older and they used to fight all the time, but ended up being best friends.  One day their lives changed dramatically, almost overnight, due to the war.  They ended up coming to the U.S. as refugees. Tatyana was lucky to find a job at Price Waterhouse and also worked in startups as well as owning her own business.  She says she is very fortunate to make it to this country and very grateful to receive such support when their family needed help.

A FINE TIME

It wasn’t that fine of a time for people who weren’t up on the history of Rotary International as JERRY MOISIN extracted some dollars to get people to join the President’s Club.  PAUL NYBERG said he would join since two of his granddaughters were graduating, one from college in Hawaii and one as an R.N. in Los Angeles. DAVE CASAS has reached a milestone with his last child going off to USC so he joined the club again to get a second hat.  Modest LARRY MADSEN finally got to tell everyone that his granddaughter was selected MVP of the Cal Women’s Swim Team that won the National Championship so he joined the President’s Club, too. Oh and by the way, he also bought a new car, but wouldn’t say what kind.

PAT FARRELL, who just returned from a visit to Paris as a guest of the Ambassador from Korea (?) said his granddaughter graduated from the University of San Diego and just got hired as a math teacher at Mitty High School.

STEVE WHEELER, with a little help from friends BAIDRA PROCHNOW and BEVERLY TUCKER, knew that Paul Harris founded Rotary in 1905.  LAUREN HERBSTMAN and JOE CORRAL should have asked Baidra for help to answer their questions but then STEVE YARBROUGH stood up and offered $100 to be allowed to introduce the speaker.  There was loud cheering and applause.

THE ROTARY PROGRAM

Steve introduced Dr. Natalie Batalha, a professor of physics and astronomy at San Jose State University and the Deputy Science Team Leader for NASA’s Kepler Mission.  Dr. Batalha holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of California Berkeley, a doctorate in astrophysics from UC Santa Cruz and did her post-doc fellowship in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  As a member of the NASA Kepler team, she is leading the study of the origin, evolution and destiny of life in the universe.

Her talk “Catching Shadow’s, Kepler’s Search for New Worlds” was fascinating.  She is working on a program that is designed to gather information from potential, habitual, earth-size planets that will give us clues about life elsewhere. They are using Kepler’s laws of planetary motion to measure brightness as a function of time and launched a space telescope on March 6, 2009.  For Dr. Batalha it shows there are endless possibilities, that humans can do anything.  They have discovered many new worlds.  One called Kepler 11 is about 800 light years away; another Kepler 10 is only 560 light years away. It contains a star like our sun and a rocky planet that is Earth-like but not habitable because it is so close to its star so the surface is like molten lava.  Dr. Batalha said that celebrating Earth Day 2011 this year she was reminded that in space there are no borders and that we are all connected throughout the universe.  Incredible things are possible and this is her poetic thought:  One day from the shores of a new world, we will gaze at the sea that took us there and it’s waves will be the stars.

President Dennis thanked D. Batalha for her excellent talk.

The meeting was adjourned.

THIS THURSDAY'S PROGRAM:

Los Altos Hills resident Linda Conover is an educator, author and presenter with a BA and MA in Educational Psychology.  She and her brother John Jenkins have developed an eldercare guide and website to take the mystery and stress out of eldercare for the caregiver, aging parents, relatives and friends.  

Linda and John’s parents had been in declining health for years. The siblings struggled with health, financial, legal and lifestyle issues as they tried to help their parents to continue living as well as possible while their health continued to deteriorate.  They realized that they needed an overview of the entire aging process and how care giving eventually becomes a part of that process; what to do at each stage and how to move through each transition; and how to access information and services that would assist them.

The LiveSmart Eldercare Guide was created from their story of gathering information and arranging services to assist their aging parents.  Linda and John are dedicated to providing other caregivers with timely information via their LiveSmart Eldercare Guide and quality related products that they have found helpful in making daily life easier and more enjoyable for both the caregiver and senior.  See http://www.livesmarteldercare.com.