Sunrise Bulletin Vol 30 Issue 50 (Jun 13, 2016)

Dave Lorenzen - Website

Rich Randolph - Program Summaries

Dicksie Tamanaha - Sunrise Stuff

One of the most prevalent features of our culture is that there is so much B.S. Everyone knows this and each of us contributes his share. We tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize B.S. and avoid being the victim.

So, now let’s talk fishing.

Fishermen are notorious for their fish tales. “Yesterday was awesome…you should have been there. I just lost a huge one!”

Doley will share with you stories, adventures, tales and particulars of the sport of fly fishing.

Hazel has a good grip ~~ Grandpa can teach her to swing!

Ravindran moves audience with personal story

RI President K.R. Ravindran shares a personal story of triumph over polio at the closing session of the 107th Rotary convention.

RI President K.R. Ravindran closed the convention in Korea on Wednesday, 1 June, with a poignant story about his mother's fight to survive polio at age 30.

When Ravindran was 11 years old in his native Sri Lanka, his mother awoke one day feeling weak and short of breath. Sitting down to rest, she found herself unable to move. The polio virus had quickly invaded her nervous system, resulting in paralysis.

She was placed in an iron lung at the hospital to enable her to breathe, and was told that her chances of walking, or even surviving without a ventilator, were slim. But most Sri Lankan hospitals were not equipped with ventilators in 1963.

Ravindran's grandfather, a Rotary member, hosted a club committee meeting in his living room the evening after his daughter was rushed to the hospital. Rather than simply offer consolation, his fellow members went to work, using their business acumen and professional connections to find a ventilator.

One of the members was a bank manager who called a government minister to facilitate a quick international transfer of funds. Another member, a manager at SwissAir, arranged to have a ventilator flown in. The next day, it arrived at the hospital.

"There was so much red tape at the time in Sri Lanka, but somehow, those Rotarians made it all fall away," Ravindran told the packed audience at the KINTEX Convention Center in Goyang city.

Ravindran's mother spent a year-and-a-half in a hospital bed, but her condition gradually improved. She eventually left the hospital walking -- with a walker, but upright, on her own two feet.

"Fifty-three years ago, my mother's life was perhaps one of the very first to be saved from polio by Rotarians," Ravindran said. "We have saved millions of lives since then.

"Tonight, I stand before you as her son, and your president, to say that soon -- perhaps not in years but in months -- Rotary will give a gift that will endure forever: a world without polio."

At the convention's general session the day before, Rebecca Martin, director of the Center for Global Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had described how close we are to polio eradication. Earlier that day, Rotary released an additional $35 million in grants to support global efforts to end the crippling disease.

This year's convention, one of the largest in Rotary history, attracted more than 43,000 attendees from over 150 countries. Ravindran, in his final speech to members as their president, emphasized what it really means to be a Rotarian.

"There are people on this planet whose lives are better now because you traversed this earth," he said. "And it doesn't matter if they know that or not. It doesn't matter if they even know your name or not. What really matters is that your work touched lives; that it left people healthier, happier, better than they were before."

Looking ahead to next year

Following Ravindran's remarks, members of Ravindran's Rotary Club of Colombo, Sri Lanka, and RI President-elect John Germ's Rotary Club of Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA, took the stage to exchange club banners, a tradition that unofficially marks the changing of the guard.

Germ told the audience that Rotary is about to begin the most progressive year in its history.

"You told us that we need to change and become more flexible so that Rotary service will be attractive to younger members, recent retirees, and working people," Germ said. "You spoke with clarity, and groundbreaking legislation was passed this year at the Council on Legislation.

"Clubs now have the opportunity to be who they want to be, but at the same time remain true to our core. I'm pleased to share with you that Rotarians all over the world are responding with great excitement."

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Ryan Hyland

1-Jun-2016

Altruism: Individual serving

From the June 2016 issue of The Rotarian

The sun rises on a new school day. In rural Ganguli, India, 450 students climb aboard school buses. Five years ago they couldn’t have gone to school because the distance from their village was too far to walk.

In San Agustín, Ecuador, students used to attend classes in the town morgue when it rained, because their school had no roof. Since 2012, hundreds of children there have learned to read and write in a real classroom.

Quietly orchestrating these and other projects was Vasanth Prabhu, a member of the Rotary Club of Central Chester County (Lionville), Pa. When he was growing up in India, education was not free, and he saw how hard his father worked to pay for schooling for eight children. Understanding how school can change a person’s life keeps Prabhu working to provide education to those with no access to it, he says.

“I feel that everyone is a diamond in the rough,” he says. “But it must be cut and polished to show its brilliance.” So instead of spending his money on luxuries, he is using it to bring out that brilliance.

There are three ways we can deal with enormous problems and our emotional responses to them. We can let them overcome us until we feel too paralyzed to act. We can bury our heads in the sand. Or we can act. And when we help others, we often find that we benefit as well.

“Taking action allows me to exercise passion,” Prabhu says, “to give it a good place to go.”

James Doty, director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University, wrote Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart. “We’re adapted to recognize suffering and pain; for us to respond is hard-wired into our brain’s pleasure centers,” says Doty. “We receive oxytocin or dopamine bursts that result in increased blood flow to our reward centers. In short, we feel good when we help.”

Caring for others brings other benefits, too. “When we engage in activities that help, it also results in lowering our blood pressure and heart rate,” he notes. Research shows that it can help us live longer. And the good deeds we do can inspire others.

On the flip side, Doty says, “People can create mistrust or fear by implying that another group is threatening our safety. When that happens, fear or anxiety makes us want to withdraw into our own group and not care for others. Hormones are released that are detrimental to long-term health. But generally speaking, most people will be kind and compassionate to other people.”

For years, Peggy Callahan has told stories that are hard to hear. A documentary producer covering social justice issues, she’s also a co-founder of two nonprofits working to help people who are enslaved or caught in human trafficking. But perhaps paradoxically, her difficult work brings her happiness, and, thanks to neuroscience research, she understands why. “When you do an act of good, you get a neurotransmitter ‘drop’ in your brain that makes you happy,” she says. And there’s a multiplier effect: “Someone who witnesses that act also experiences that, and remembering that act makes it happen all over again.” She wondered how she could leverage that.

The result was Anonymous Good, a virtual community and website where people post stories or photos of acts of kindness they’ve carried out, observed, or received. For each act posted, website sponsors make a donation to feed the hungry, free people who are enslaved, plant a tree for cleaner air, or dig a well for clean water.

“One act of good is much more than simply one act of good,” says Callahan. “It’s part of a much bigger force.”

Like Prabhu and Callahan, P.J. Maddox – a member of the Rotary Club of Dunn Loring-Merrifield, Va. – has felt the joy of tackling issues that seem too big to face. Rotary projects she has supported include funding a nurse-led clinic in war-ravaged rural Nicaragua. She has also mentored and made a Youth Exchange trip possible for a student otherwise unable to participate because of hardships at home.

“Some problems are so complicated and huge, it could be easy to say, ‘Why bother?’” Maddox says. “But in addition to Rotary’s power of collective talents to make something happen, I realized that the outcome of these projects wouldn’t have been what they were if I wasn’t there. I realized that a single human being can change the world.”

As the sun sets around the globe – as students in India head back home on the school bus, as pupils in Ecuador close their books for the day, and as people in many places are well-fed, free, and happy – the world looks a little different. Because one individual extended a hand, there are people newly ready to change the world tomorrow.

Carol Hart Metzker is the author of Facing the Monster: How One Person Can Fight Child Slavery and a member of the E-Club of One World D5240.

Rotary Club of Santa Rosa Sunrise - Founded June 30, 1986