Los Altos Rotary Club eNewsletter "Rotator"

Thought for the Day: SAM PESNER gave us all something to think about in the form of a funny story about ethics: A lawyer had a client consultation. The client was very happy with the consultation and paid the lawyer $100 cash. Sometime later the lawyer discovers that there were actually two $100 bills stuck together. Query does the lawyer tell his partner?

Song for the Day: Happy was the feelin’ that we got-ot-ot when HARN SOPER on guitar, with accompaniment from RON STEFANI on banjo, and JOHN SYLVESTER on saxophone, channeled the ‘60’s with a folksy rendition of “Colors” by Donovan.

Visiting Rotarians:
ARLEY MARLEY introduced DOUG CAROTHERS visiting from the Sunnyvale Rotary.
President JACK KELLY introduced Sam Grinnells from Cupertino Rotary.

ABBY AHERNS introduced NATALIE TAAFE, as a guest of the Club.
JOHN SYLVESTER introduced DALE DESMOND, a fellow musician from the Jazz ConneXion.
LINA BROYDO introduced DR. CHARLEEN ARCHIBEQUE

JOHN SYLVESTER announced there will be a brief kickout meeting immediately following today’s Rotary meeting.

HARRY PRICE announced the May 9 wine and cheese social at DICK BLANDING’s house from 6 pm – 8:30 pm. A clipboard for signing up was passed around.

HARRY PRICE asked how many club members were interested in seeing Paul McCartney will close down Candlestick Park with a last concert there on August 14, 2014. If there is enough interest, we may be able to hire a bus to take everyone to and from the concert.

MARV PATTERSON announced Fine Art in the Park needs 3-5 people each for two crews to mark the park on Thursday, May 15. Meet at 9 am at the Gazebo in Lincoln Park.

FRANK ELMER invited Rotarians to sign up for the remaining open slots for Fine Art in the Park. FRANK generously provided sign up sheets in the lobby, or please go online to sign up.

STAN SCARDINO announced that the Red Badgers are selling emergency backpacks for $100 each. The backpacks are designed to care for 2 people for 3 days in an emergency situation. All proceeds help provide funds for a new kitchen and restrooms at Hope’s Corner, located at Trinity Methodist Church, Mountain View. The new kitchen will provide an expanded free breakfast program on weekdays, and open the possibility of a non-profit bakery to provide food service training and employment.

FRANK VERLOT announced raffle ticket sales to benefit Child Aids Prevention in Nepal. The Nepal Child Aids Prevention project follows on the success of Child Aids Prevention efforts in Liberia and will allow access to improved medications and aids prevention methods in Nepal. Tickets are $5.00 each or five tickets for $20. Tickets will be available on tables at Rotary, and will be sold at Fine Art in the Park.

ROY JONES announced he has Rotary t-shirts for those Red Badgers who have not picked theirs up. ROY also announced there are still openings for drivers for the Shuttle service for Fine Art in the Park so please sign up.

MEL KAHN announced that May 3 at 3:30 pm (plan on arriving at 3:00 pm) is the official dedication of the gym at Los Altos High School as the Dushan “Dude” Angius, Jr. Gym. During his 20 year tenure at Los Altos High from 1955-1975, Dude served as chairman of the physical education department, director of athletics, director of student activities, counselor and principal. In June 1989, then Rotary President Dude Angius shared his family’s devastating experience when his son contracted AIDS, leading to production of The Los Altos Story. DICK HENNING will be the MC for the dedication. We hope to have a large turnout of Rotarians for this wonderful event.

MARY PROCHNOW announced she is accepting donations for the DUDE ANGIUS scholarship fund. The goal of the fund is $50,000 and they will reach the half-way mark by the date of the gym dedication on May 3.

LINA also announced that the Obama administration unveiled a job site for veterans, see the article in this date’s Mercury News.

STEVE SHEPHERD shared a special showing of “Swing It” to announce the Rotary Golf Tournament on June 13, 2014 at Shoreline Links. Registration is at 10 am. Please sign up for golf, dinner, poker or all three!

Fore! more information see the Golf Tournament Flyer

We had a special announcement from DOUG CAROTHERS, Past President of Sunnyvale Rotary, to present our own ARLEY MARLEY, (past member of Sunnyvale Rotary and past District Governor), of the PAUL HARRIS award. DOUG invited Los Altos Rotarians to visit the Sunnyvale Rotary Club at its new location at Hope International Church, 521 East Weddell Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.

ANABEL PELHAM shared her amazing story with us. ANABEL’s family is Celtic in origin, and she was appropriately born on St. Patrick’s Day! Her dad was a Navy pilot and was stationed at Pearl Harbor during the attack. ANABEL was born in Wailuku, Hawaii, and she has two brothers: James and John. ANABEL’s mother suffered from hemophelia, and eventually moved to Florida for recuperation. The family followed but ultimately, ANABEL’s parents divorced and her dad became primarily responsible for raising the family. ANABEL’s dad was committed to social justice. Consequently, as ANABEL grew up she became somewhat of a rebel in high school, reading Thoreau, writing a controversial column for the high school news paper, and joining the non-violent civil rights movement. ANABEL attended Pensacola College, where she met her husband and majored in sociology. After marrying, they moved to Orlando, and watched the Apollo rocket fly off to the moon. She was accepted to a graduate program at San Francisco State University and she and her husband moved to San Francisco. After SF State, ANABEL was accepted to UCSF medical school program on aging and sociology and was later hired as a tenured teacher at SF State. In the 90’s ANABEL and her husband divorced and she moved to Los Altos. Although she never had children, ANABEL sponsored a child in India whom she thinks of as her own. She semi-retired from SF State in 2013 after 35 years and is now dedicating her time in Los Altos to the aging in place center. We are lucky that ANABEL chose Los Altos as her home!

Fines:
Finemaster and PE KENDRA GJERSETH kept the duck bucket moving, putting several more Rotarians into the President’s Club:

Presentation:

LINA BROYDO introduced our speaker, Dr. William Meredith. Dr. Meredith is music history teacher, Beethoven Scholar-in-Residence at San Jose State University, and Director of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, which houses the largest collection of Beethoven materials outside of Europe. He is the editor of The Beethoven Newsletter and author of numerous articles on the musician. Dr. Meredith was awarded the German Academic Exchange Service Grant to research Beethoven’s sketches and other autographs at the Staatbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz in West Berlin and at the Beethoven archive in Bonn, and Smith Graduate Research Fund to assist in dissertation studies and research. In addition, Dr. Meredith performs as piano soloist and joined us today to share some insights about Beethoven.

Dr. Meredith immediately endeared himself to our club’s attendees by declaring that, while he has spoken at many Rotary Clubs, ours is the most fun! People often ask Dr. Meredith why the Beethoven Center is located at San Jose State, and he replies, “Well, because Beethoven went to school there . . . .” The real story is that when real estate developer Ira Brilliant, who had been a lifelong collector of letters and memorabilia of Beethoven’s, offered his collection to the University of Arizona – they turned him down! So Mr. Brilliant offered his collection to San Jose State University and of course they gladly accepted. The only other Beethoven Center is Bonn, Germany. One of the wonderful things about the Beethoven Center is that they have a collection of instruments that were played during Beethoven’s lifetime. Dr. Meredith explained, for example, that the Moonlight Sonata cannot be properly played on modern day instruments because if played as written by Beethoven, the reverberation of the chords lasts too long and destroys the tonality of the music. Dr. Meredith demonstrated this by playing a portion of the Moonlight Sonata on the Garden House piano. But if you play it on a 15th century instrument such as the ones they have at the Beethoven Center, the symphony sounds as it was intended by Beethoven.

Dr. Meredith brought with him a lock of Beethoven’s hair, and shared how it was he ended up with locks of Beethoven’s hair. He said one year Sotheby’s put a lock of Beethoven’s hair up for auction. The price was not so far out of reach for a college professor, so the Beethoven Society bid on it an got it. Dr. Meredith had some medical testing done on the lock to discover what chemicals were used by Beethoven during his lifetime, as the chemicals remain in the hair as a historical record. Among other things, the testing revealed alcohol and lead. It was known that Beethoven gave locks of his hair to people during his lifetime, and immediately after his death, people came and took locks of his hair before he was taken off to be buried. Dr. Meredith told a funny story of a woman who wanted a lock of Beethoven’s hair, but her Beethoven friend didn’t want to ask the musician for his hair, so he cut the beard off a goat and gave it to her, telling her it was from Beethoven. She placed it in a locket and at a social event attended by Beethoven, proudly showed off the lock of hair. Beethoven thought it was so funny that she had goat hair instead, but generously provided her a lock of his real hair.

One of the locks of hair obtained by Dr. Meredith came in a frame with information and a sketch of the Beethoven. A bonus of the framed lock was that the back revealed a previously unknown sketch of Clara Schumann on the reverse side. Dr. Meredith also obtained from Betty Hummel a framed lock of Beethoven’s hair and Goethe’s hair, plus pictures of Hiller, a music book, and a painting of Hayden’s birthplace.

The Beethoven Center holds concerts and lecture/recitals throughout the year, and also puts on tours to the places where Beethoven lived and worked. There will be a Singing Beethoven concert program of Beethoven’s choral music on May 7, 2014 at 7:00 pm. The center is open weekdays from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm and Saturdays from 1:00 to 5:00 pm. Thank you, Dr. Meredith, for an entertaining presentation on the Beethoven Center!

Stephen Wu, a Los Altos Rotarian, is a partner with the law firm Cooke Kobrick & Wu LLP in Los Altos and advises clients on a wide range of technology and business law matters with an emphasis on intellectual property, information security, privacy, mobile computing, electronic discovery preparedness, records management, and computer-related investigations.

Steve is also involved in emerging areas of technology law such as artificial intelligence, robotics, cloud computing, human-computer interfaces, big data, the Internet of Things, augmented and virtual reality, and 3D printing. He is working for the Daimler and Benz Foundation on a thought leadership publication on autonomous driving.

Steve served as the 2010-2011 Chair of the American Bar Association Section of Science & Technology Law, and founded many of the committees in the Section. The American Bar Association published his book, A Legal Guide to Enterprise Mobile Device Management: Managing Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Employer-Issued Device Programs, in August 2013. He has written or co-written five other books on information security and the law. Steve currently serves as Chair of the High Technology Law Section of the Santa Clara County Bar Association.

He is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and Harvard Law School. He lives in Los Altos with his wife, Marialce. He is a member of the Youth and Vocational Services Committee at Los Altos Rotary and co-chair of Cub Scouts Packs 76 and 78 Liaison.

Los Altos Rotary Club

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