Our Greeter today was Dan Crane, and he did a marvelous job.
Things backed up at registration this morning, Mitch Huston says it was because of RT. 22 traffic.
President Mike Gschwendtner rang the bell at 7:30 A.M. to open the meeting. Herb Klotz gave a very nice invocation.
President Mike began the meeting having the members recite the Four-way Test. We stood up and recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the U.S.
GUESTS:
Dave Dries, Spring Township RC:
Then Mike showed photographs from our last meeting including Mitch Huston and last week’s speaker, Kristie Fach. Mike noted that Kristie who represents the local Wildlands Conservancy might help us plant trees as requested by RI President Ian Riseley.
Then we saw pics of Bob Gordon and others from our YE student Marti’s going away party last Sunday. It was noted that Chris Blechschmidt ended up climbing a tree to retrieve an errant horseshoe.
And there was a picture of the Kingdom of Life folks looking for Herb (he forgot.)
And Herb showed a picture taken at the Centennial School in Sierra Leone where work is beginning on the next projects that we funded. Herb will keep us up to date.
NOTE FROM MIKE G.:
Please send to Mike any pictures you have from the previous week’s activities. They might be featured in the next meeting.
PAUL HARRIS FELLOW PRESENTATION:
Amir Famili was awarded a PHF and President Mike presented Amir with the certificate and lapel pin. Thank you, Amir.
MEET R.I. PRESIDENT IAN RISELEY:
Members may join and meet RI President Riseley on Saturday Aug. 12th in N.J. Contact President Mike.
JOINT RC EVENTS WITH WHITEHALL:
Herb announced that the Whitehall Area RC invites AW Rotarians to participate in two planned events:
1 – Work with Habitat for Humanity on August 5th,
2 – Gourmet shopping via a bus trip to NYC on November 18th.
SCHEDULE:
President Mike announces upcoming events at our meetings and a list of them along with the appropriate contact information appears each week in the A-W bulletin.
THURSDAY EVENING MIXER:
TOMORROW, July 13th at Eight Oaks Distillery with your guests. Let’s have a great turnout. Please sign up so we get a headcount to order the food. Cost is $10 p.p. Snacks will be available; cash bar.
ANNUAL AWRC PICNIC:
Sue Weber announced that the AWRC annual Picnic will be held at the Webers’ farm in Vera Cruz on Sunday August 13th starting at 4:00 P.M. A signup sheet is going around, and as usual AW attendees are asked to bring food or drink to share if possible.
NEXT WEEK:
Our Greeter will be Marlene Ritter and the program will. Be Eli Pabon, General Manager Amazon about North American Fulfillment, ABE2.
President Mike introduced our “Entertainment chair”, S-a-A, Mitch Huston, Mitch noted that “Everybody is a critic.” But nobody else wants this job.
LUCK OF THE DRAW:
Our Sergeant-at-Arms, Mitch Huston, conducted the raffle drawings.
The door prize donated by Dan Crane was won by Dale Heffner.
The $115 pot of the 50:50 was not won by Dale Heffner’s second ticket. There were but 3 marbles left in the bag. Now there are two; one is black and a winner.
LOWHILL FOOD PANTRY BUCKET:
Mitch forgot to put it out at registration. So he collected cash donations at this point.
Mitch fined President Mike for messing up Herb Klotzs new district title of District Governor Nominee.
HAPPY DOLLARS:
Halyna Stegura is happy that son Mike entered a 100 mile quadruple marathon in Akron, OH with 80 others and he finished 8th.
Daughter Christina is still on her bike and is crossing from Oregon into Idaho on her way to Denver. Then she may board a train and return home.
Sue Weber said that there is a Garden Club tour this Saturday.
Sue also bragged about Mustapha Jaffer’s son coming in 2nd in a poster contest covering all of PA.
Don Davis is enjoying his retirement after 10 tears as our Sergeant-at-Arms, and for some reason he apologized for Mitch.
Amir Famili noted that until recently Mustapha has hated gardening. But now he has a garden and thinks it’s OK.
Bob Gordon praised Chris Blechschmidt for his tree climbing ability. Bob also thanked Rev. Jeff Kistler for the excellent service for Vernon Fenstermaker last Saturday. We all agreed and applauded.
PROGRAM:
Our program today was some Members Reporting on What they Saw & Did at the Rotary International Convention in Atlanta, GA in June.
P-E Jeanne Shipe started by saying another title might be “How I spent my Vacation.”
Jeanne showed a series of pictures and told the story of 41, 200 Rotarians and friends -- 47 were from our District 7430 -- converging in Atlanta. The Mayor of Atlanta added a giant Rotary wheel emblem to the big Ferris Wheel. And the local newspaper had a page all about what Rotarians do.
Jeanne went 2 days early so that she could attend a special annual Peace Conference.
The Convention Hall seats about 20,000 people. So they conducted two duplicate official opening Ceremonies. The convention schedule each day offered 12 separate presentations for folks to attend. It was first come, first served seating, and rooms filled up quickly. The speakers were excellent and the subjects were interesting.
Sue and Bill Weber and Herb Klotz took turns talking about what they all agreed was a great experience. Sue said that each of us should attend an RI Convention at least once. The people come from all over the world with many languages spoken -- along with the common language of Rotary.
Jeanne mentioned the session that featured many Rotarians wearing the special clothing related to their country and culture. She mentioned meeting with a woman she had me a few months ago while attending a Rotary club meeting in Australia. And she attended a breakout session on Human trafficking, and one on Peace and Economics.
Herb said that he and Ronnee attended a Ricky Skaggs bluegrass concert. It was a great way to start the convention.
Herb also told of the Zone 32 / 24 Dinner they attended at the Aquarium that was very well done. We are Zone 32 and cover the northeast from NJ to Maine. We are paired with Zone 24 which is all of Canada and part of Eastern Russia. He and Ronnee arrived early and met with Dean Rohrs, the current Zone Director, and also with Jeff Cadorette from D7450 who is the incoming Zone Director next year.
Bill and Sue described the status of Polio Eradication, noting that it is estimated that there are about 16 Million people now living because of the Rotary Polio eradication campaigns.
Year-to-date there are only 6 reported new cases of wild polio virus in the whole world . This compares to the over 350,000 new cases each year in 1986 when we started this challenge. The YTD cases are 4 in Afghanistan and 2 in Pakistan. There have been zero in Nigeria, the only other endemic country.
Bill Gates made a presentation, and once again, their foundation will match 2 for one the dollars we donate to Polio eradication over the next 3 years. And there was a wealthy woman from India who presented Past RI President John Germ with a check for Polio eradication for One Million Dollars.
So far the sum of all donations to eradicate Polio is about $ 1.6 BILLION.
CLOSING:
We closed the meeting by reciting the saying “One profits most who serves best.”
