Los Altos Rotary Club Home of the Annual Rotary Fine Art Show August 16 2012

After President JOHN called the meeting to order precisely on time (must be that perfect rhythm he has developed with his jazz quartet), we all joined in a song learned long ago, Home on the Range;“Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam”. Kind of makes a person feel like a cowboy or even a farmer, the theme of today’s speaker.

We relished (no pun intended) the Thought for the Day, when ALISON SALISBURY quoted Julia Child who would have just turned 100. It went something like, “When you’re in the kitchen cooking, nobody sees that you dropped the chicken on the floor.” Or perhaps it was an updated version, “What happens in the kitchen stays in the kitchen.”

Thanks were expressed to the several greeters, sergeants-at-arms, cashier, and others who made today’s meeting run smoothly.

Rotarians with guests today included

• SHELLY POTVIN with her dad
• PAT FARRELL with his grandson
• BONNIE BURDETT with her father and her fiancé, Harn Soper who is also today's speaker
• MARY PROCHNOW with former LARC member Steve Hunton
• Pres JOHN with Gary Landis, a guest of the club

Next week’s speaker will be Ruth Patrick with the topic, The Women-in-Need Escape Network of Silicon Valley. PE JACK requests members’ feed-back on speakers.

Announcements

RON LABETICH and PAUL SCHUTZ called for volunteers to donate soft drinks and desserts for the Aug. 18 memorial service honoring Los Altan Marine Captain Manoukian, recently killed in Afghanistan. Many members expressed their sincere condolences to the Manoukian family.

JULIE ROSE invited members to join the Los Altos Chamber of Commerce tour of Ireland April 7-16, 2012, organized by All Horizons Travel and Collette Vacations.

 PP MARLENE COWAN announced the meeting of Los Altos Rotary AIDS Project’s public relations group at 1:30 today.

Events Chair KAREN GESSERT and son announced the August 17 Wine and Cheese Social at MIKE and GaeAnn SPENCE’s home. She also invited us to a Relay for Life fundraiser Aug. 21, 5 pm at Maltby’s.

Red Badger PAUL GONELLA began his Ten Minute Talk with “Thank you, your Majesty.” Pres JOHN could get used to that! PAUL is a retired educator, and his love for teaching middle school pupils was clear.

 Though born in Merced, he has spent 41 years teaching and coaching in Los Altos schools. Because he felt teachers do not earn enough money or respect, he switched for some time into real estate and solar energy, but returned to the classroom and became Vice Principal for Discipline at Egan School.

Since retiring in 2001 he has been active in a raft of community organizations including the Community Foundation, LA History Museum, Senior Center, LA Legacies which subsidizes some city programs, Chamber of Commerce, and Vega Volunteers. As he put it, “The prodigal son has returned from the hot, dusty fields of Merced.”

A kinder, gentler Finemaster LARRY CHU managed to reel in many, modest wedding anniversary fines.

• First, it seems that JUDY OTT has joined the President’s Club “unbeknownst to her”; it was something about writing a larger fine check than she planned.
• LARRY himself joined the President’s Club in recognition of the nice article about LARRY CHU, SR. in the San Jose Mercury News.
• PAUL GONELLA, already a member of that elite club, paid just $5 and ALLISON SALISBURY was similarly nicked for $5.
• Then began the roll call of anniversaries. When called upon, LOUIS BOREL sadly announced that, on their 49th wedding anniversary, his wife Jacqueline was diagnosed with cancer and is now undergoing chemotherapy.
• PP AL TRAFICANTI and his wife NANCY, an Honorary Member of LARC, are today celebrating their 54th anniversary, and AL joined the President’s Club in recognition of it.
• MATT CABOT announced that he will celebrate his 50th anniversary at Chef Chu’s, and no fine was levied! However MATT put $50 in the bucket to celebrate the occassion anyway.
• GARY BROWN paid $35 for his 35 years of marriage. FRANK ELMER and DAVID CASAS were called upon together to pay a $20 fine for their anniversaries though DAVID made it clear that ”We’re not married to each other!”
• CRES MCFALL paid $20 in honor of his 46 years of marriage.
• BILL PALMER got them all beat with his 67th anniversary last July 15.
• PP BOB ADAMS joined the President’s Club in celebration of his very eventful August: this month he and Lois celebrated their 57th anniversary, sold their house and moved into the Forum, and will soon depart for 5 weeks in Australia.
• STEVE SHEPHERD is celebrating his 41st anniversary and moving the Northern Trust office to 4500 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park. He also shared the good news that his daughter Jennifer just received an engagement ring in Paris and will soon be emptying his wallet for her wedding.
• Director of Fellowship BEVERLY TUCKER has just completed nine grueling months of training for the Iron Man Canada race in which she will compete carrying the names of 78 friends and family members affected by cancer. LARC members are invited to send her names of their loved ones dealing with cancer. To honor them and to celebrate the completion of her training, BEVERLY joined the President’s Club.

Program
 
BONNIE BURDETT introduced her fiancé Harn Soper, President of Soper Farm, and his topic: Farming Sustainably and Living in an Uncertain World. Though he studied music at the University of Iowa and worked in high tech marketing, he now concentrates on switching his family’s farm in Iowa from commercial corn and soy production to organic farming.
 
“Back to the future farming” is the term Harn used to describe sustainable farming in an uncertain world. It’s a challenge, especially when shoppers must choose between short-term cheap food and healthier food in the long term and the voters demand “quick fixes” in farm legislation.
 
Water is a valuable commodity: 1,000 gallons of water are required to produce a t-shirt and 10,000 gallons to produce a pair of leather shoes. Meanwhile, commercial confined animal feeding operations in China discharge 7 million tons of animal waste per day into waterways. Southern California needs water, and the second largest water estuary in the USA is northern California’s Sacramento River. Our challenge is to transport clean water that is in very short supply to where it’s most needed, but to what cost to a fragile environment?
 
ATP (adenosine triphospate) is a critical component in our soil and is needed by every plant and animal cell to absorb nutrients, but we are not mining enough phosphate to replace that which is removed from the ground during harvest. In fact, our best agricultural land is diminishing: 1.1 acres/person were farmed in 1960 but only 0.6 acres/person produced food in 2010. During World War II agriculture became mechanized and food was shipped out to hungry GIs and Allies in tins. The American GIs were judged to be underfed, so food production stepped up. By the 1970s former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz warned the nation’s farmers to “Get big or get out!” As a result the small family farm has all but disappeared and the “ghettoization” of rural American began. Soper noted that “This nation has gone from scrawny in 1940 to fat in three generations", a marvel in agricultural production but not without unintended consequences in our health.
 
One unintended consequence of “get big or get out” is that $148 billion are now spent annually to fight obesity in America. Another unintended consequence is the fast rate of soil erosion: 4.5 tons of top soil is lost per acre each year to run-off.  Another challenge to our culture of industrialized agriculture is our massive food recalls due to sickness spread through confined animal feeding operations, resulting in 70% of all antibiotics in the US being fed to livestock, and eventually consumed by the American public.
 
Soper aims to counteract these dangerous trends by converting part of Soper Farms to sustainable organic farming with grass-fed livestock, free-range poultry, and organic crop rotation. He notes that the demand for organic farm products is four times greater than the amount of land now in organic production, so organic products which are healthier in the long term will cost more in the short term. As more organic farms come online, costs will go down. And in the end, we will all win.

THIS THURSDAY'S PROGRAM:

Ruth Patrick's topic is "Domestic Violence in the Affluent Community."  
Most domestic violence resources focus more on women of limited means. There are specific challenges associated with domestic violence in more affluent areas and she found that these issues were not being addressed. 

She interviewed over 30 providers in the field of domestic violence and out of those interviews, she created a project called called WOMEN's SV or Women-of-Means Escape Network, Silicon Valley.  Her project was recently awarded grants by the Los Altos Community Foundation to develop it further.

Ruth  Patrick has a Master's degree,  a teaching credential, and is also a state certified domestic violence advocate.   Her background is in education, social research, and domestic violence advocacy.