Los Altos Rotary Club Home of the Annual Rotary Fine Art Show May 29 2014

As the Los Altos Rotarians gathered for the fifth from last (but who's counting) meeting in the reign of the benevolent (but just) Pres. JACK KELLY, they were greeted by Rotarians PAUL SCHUTZ, JOHN SYLVESTER, KATHLEEN NICHOLS and BRANDON SMITH.
 
PRES. JACK chimed the meeting to order promptly at 12:15, and called upon SANDY WHIPPLE to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. SAM HARDING gave us the Thought for the Day; three pearls of wisdom from Mark Twain .
"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
"To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence."
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
 
Songmeister JOHN SYLVESTER noted that we had just celebrated Memorial Day, and led us in a brisk version of "God Bless America."
 
President-elect KENDRA GJERSETH was off to Australia for the Rotary International Convention, so Future President Elect To Be, Jerry MOISON stepped to the podium to welcome visiting Rotarians, but we didn't have any this week. JOHN MCDONNELL and KATHLEEN NICHOLS introduced guests.
 

ANNOUNCEMENTS
Past Pres. JOHN SYLVESTER announced that a Kick Out planning meeting would take place after today's lunch meeting. The kick out dinner will be June 27th at the Los Altos Country Club. All members have already paid, but if you wish to bring a guest, it will be $85.
 
MARLENE COWAN reminded us that the Rotoract Club in Livermore is holding its BottleCAP Fundraiser on June 8 at 2 PM in Livermore Valley. There is a raffle to raise funds for the AIDS project in Africa, and MARLENE has tickets.
 
BILL MOISON announced that the golf tournament is on June 13 at the Shoreline Golf Links. Registration for golf begins at 9:30 in the morning. People are welcome to attend without playing golf, since there will be a barbecue dinner, followed by poker hosted by STEVE SHEPHERD.
 
JACK HEIDMILLER congratulated the club on the wonderful way that it had managed the Chef Chu booth at the Art Show, and stated that he is now recruiting volunteers to manage a similar booth at the Los Altos Art and Wine Festival on July 12 and 13th.
 
GARY WALDECK announced that there were still a few spots open for members to sign up for delivery to the Rotacare Clinic in the coming weeks.
 
KATHY BERRY announced that the team is forming for the Relay For Life taking place in June.
 
ROY LAVE announced that next Tuesday there will be a morning satellite meeting at the Jesuit Retreat House at 8 a.m. It is imperative that those planning to attend sign up ahead of time so that there is a proper amount of food for everyone who attends.
 
Pres. JACK announced to that he had received in email from a past Rotary International president announcing that he was raising funds for overseas projects, and that if you just send in $1500 to support the project you will get $3000 back. Yes, it's a SCAM.
 
JEAN MORDO announced that Rotary had developed a new pin to honor those who sponsored new members. MARY PROCHNOW, JOHN SYLVESTER, DENNIS YOUNG, JEAN MORDO and GARY WALDECK were honored for sponsoring new members, and Pres. JACK was honored for sponsoring two new members.
 

PAUL HARRIS FELLOWS
 
WYATT ALLEN came up to the podium to congratulate the club for its strong support of the Rotary Foundation this year.   WYATT first called ESTHER NG to the podium and congratulated her on becoming a Paul Harris Fellow. WYATT then called up CINDY WEMYSS and JOHN HAMMERSCHMIDT who were awarded the  Paul Harris +1 Sapphire pin for $2,000 in total donations. RON STEFANI was awarded the Paul Harris +2.  JEAN NEWTON was awarded the Paul Harris +4, and PAUL NYBERG and STEVE YARBROUGH were awarded the Paul Harris +5 for $6,000 of total donations.
 
WYATT then honored a large group of Rotarians who had achieved the Paul Harris +3 level, including BONNIE BURDETT, MARLENE COWAN, PAT FARRELL, KAREN FOX, AL LIGTENBERG, MARV PATTERSON, PHIL ROSE, and JOHN SYLVESTER.
 
Finally, WYATT announced that both DENNIS YOUNG and PAUL NYBERG had achieved the Paul Harris Society Certificate for donating $1000 in a single year.

FELLOWSHIP
Pres. JACK determined that this was a good time to allow the club to experience five minutes or so of unstructured fellowship.
 
At the end, RICH CASEY stepped up to honor JACK HIGGINS, who is heading off to Liberia next week to set up the beginnings of the Child AIDS Prevention program there.

RECOGNITION
Brand-new fine master FRANK ELMER debuted with a resounding success.  KAREN FOX during the President’s Club, as did ESTHER NG.
JOHN CARDOZA announced that he had yet another brand-new granddaughter, and joined the President’s Club.
Not to be outdone, MARLENE COWAN announced that she too had another grandchild and was off to start hiking in the Alps, so she joined the President’s Club.
PAT FARRELL also joined the President’s Club in honor of his granddaughter, who was graduating from Santa Clara University.
STEVE POMEROY volunteered to put in $35 in honor of his 35th anniversary and the fact that his daughter had gotten a job.
DAVE DEMATTEIS announced that it was his birthday so he was putting in $100 to join the President’s Club.
JERRY MOISON announced that his daughter was buying a new house in the area and volunteered to put in $20.
ROY JONES announced that this year was his 46th wedding anniversary, and paid $20.
 
FRANK then moved on to some serious fining with his Los Altos Jeopardy quiz.
 
CINDY WEMYSS was certain that Affirmed was the last Triple Crown winner in 1987. CINDY's dyslexia cost her $25, because it was 1978.
JOHN HAMMERSCHMIDT paid $25 because he was unable to guess that the largest employer in Los Altos is the Los Altos School District.
STAN SCARDINO guessed that LARRY CHU had made eight trips back-and-forth to bring chicken salad to the Fine Art Show, but it was actually 11.
DICK HENNING was called upon to guess what was the highest price paid for an item at this year's Art Show. It turned out that it was $9800 for an oil painting. FRANK also announced that one artist sold $22,000 worth of art during the show.
MARGE BRUNO was called upon to name the Los Altos sister cities, and knew them both, but still joined the President’s Club.
TRACIE MURRAY paid a fine because she did not know that there were 438 separate jobs for Rotarians at the Fine Art Show.
 
 

THE WEEKLY PROGRAM
GARY WALDECK introduced this week's speaker, Dr. Paul Tang of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. He has been honored as one of the 100 most powerful people in healthcare. His topic today was "Linkages (across generations)". His focus at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation is on aging and the community. PAMF is trying to position itself as a "health partner” for aging persons. It has founded the breakthrough website, myhealth.org.  Of the people dealing with the Medical Foundation, 80% of those people in their 60’s are online. But as Dr. Tang pointed out, the challenge is growing. The Baby Boom started in 1946, at the end of World War II and ended in 1964, when "the pill" began to lower birth rates. Baby boomers began to hit Medicare in 2011, and 10,000 new people enter Medicare each day. Medicare will be completely out of money by 2026. At that point, one in five people in the country will be over 65.
 
To deal with this emerging health challenge, Dr. Tang and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation are developing a new study of seniors,  which focuses on "what interferes with a healthy life." He pointed to one aging woman who observed that her biggest sadness was that "Your world dies before you do."  Dr. Tang said his mission is to “open new worlds” for the elderly.  He pointed out that as people retire and leave the workforce, they suffer a loss of self worth and begin to feel like a burden. He then pointed out that the largest predictor of early mortality is loneliness. This leads to a 45% increase in mortality, and a 60% increase in the likelihood of a disability. Statistically, loneliness is worse than smoking.
 
Dr. Tang then showed some of the information available on the Foundation website. One section is the Personal Profile, where patients can tell doctors what they believe the doctor should know about them.  Another section is to connect to ways to answer the simple question, "is mom okay?". They are developing a system that monitors electric use in-house, so that relatives will know that their mother or father is using appliances, but there will not be obtrusive cameras and monitors.
 
Another area is the Time Bank. This is an opportunity for people to put in time when they will do things to help other people, and then they can later draw on the time bank to get help for themselves, such as getting a person to drive them to the hospital or doctor. Already, the Foundation has several large Time Bank partners including the YMCA, several senior centers, El Camino Hospital and Beth Am Temple.  All of this work is being developed at the "Linkages Ecosystem” on the Palo Alto Medical Foundation website.
 
After a series of questions and answers,  Pres. JACK chimed the meeting to a close at 1:30 p.m.