Northwind August 6, 2015

Call to order:  President Sharon called the meeting to order in our new location at Gateway Center at our new meeting time of 12:30, and led us in the flag salute

Invocation: Jim Blaney provided invocation and expressed gratitude for the great lunch we all were eating today.

Visiting Rotarians: none.

Guests of Rotarians: Brian Lott attended as Marlene's guest for the beginning of the meeting and Deb Wiggs joined us as a guest of Julie. Deb is happy to be back in Whatcom County after several years of extensive travel around the country on business.  She plans to stick around awhile.

Returning Rotarians:  Laurie was returning from a trip to attend her nephew's funeral and spending time at horse shows (in the rain, outdoors) with her granddaughter.  Bill Grace was return from a trip to Denver and had excitement at the airport due to the Blue Angels disrupting flight schedules. Jim Sands is returning after several weeks away due to time conflicts. He is delighted to be meeting again at the noon hour and will be present regularly.

Birthdays:  Tim Villhauer is celebrating a birthday and we all wish him Happy Birthday.

Anniversaries: Sharon Robinson- 14 years, Greg Iwasaki -23 years and Stan Brunner- 41 years. Stan and the club go back to the beginning..or near there.

Announcements; we will be meeting somewhere new on 8/20/15 (TBD) for that week only.

Duck Ticket sales at Barkley Haggen all week.  Check with Pati for schedule..but basically go anytime.   Turn tickets and money into Sharon but please only give her full books and money to match.

Board meeting is 8/26 at Zervas office 4:00 PM. Board meetings will be the fourth Wednesday of the month at Zervas office for the coming year.

Sharon passed around a thank you letter from the Interfaith Homeless House in Ferndale. WCN RC assisted with the funding  for the expansion and renovations. Our contribution was  $10,500.

Adelante Foundation annual report was circulated showing an organization that has made great strides since its inception in 2002. WCN RC was an early contributor to the micro lending program and donated $244,575 in direct and matching grants between 2003 and 2008. The Wilma Hollinger Matching grant was the  largest grant in 2008 with a total of $175,100 of micro loans that continue to circulate and support women entrepreneurs; helping them support their families.

 

Ferndale Chamber of Commerce has an open house today to do the ribbon cutting on their new office location in the Ferndale Community Pavilion in Pioneer Park.  4:00 PM.

New member Induction:  Brian Lott, sponsored by Marlene Sexton, joined our club today. Brian is a former Rotarian from the Langley Central Rotary club and is a Paul Harris fellow. He has a passion for fund raising and will be a most appreciated asset to WCN RC.  His life story is exceptionally interesting and we look forward to his new member talk. He spends the winter in Puerto Vallarta and summers on Lummi Island, so we will need to take advantage of those fund raising skills during the summer months.  Seriously, you want to be there for his new member talk.

Happy bucks:  It seemed nearly everyone had happy bucks for our new member and the new time and location of our meeting and the great food. The lunch served to us was exceptional!  Bill Grace had a long story about his trip to see family and airport shuffle caused by the Blue Angels closing the Seattle air space down..he was happy and sad and I lost track somewhere.  Rocky continued the saga of his lost luggage but was appreciative of the personal phone call from the airline apologizing for losing his luggage and then finding it. Pati is happy about the Russell Wilson signing. Stan has mixed feeling bucks for the bombing of Hiroshima 70 years ago today…sad that it had to happen yet happy that it saved his life along with millions of other soldiers and civilians. He is happy to be alive and well and attending our Rotary meetings.   Brian is grateful for all the happy bucks paid on his behalf and happy to be a new member of WCN RC. He paid sad bucks for the passing of his much loved brother in S. Africa after a massive heart attack that took the family by surprise.  Marlene does not know whether to be happy or sad…Mark is out test driving the new boat purchased to take the grandchildren camping, fishing, crabbing, etc.  The happy part is the fun the boat represents; the sad part is the hole in the water that vacuums money.  She will be much happier the day they sell the boat (I speak from experience!) Laurie paid sad bucks for the passing of her nephew and something else about the Mariners..happy, sad, ???   Deb Wiggs was happy to be back attending the WCN RC meeting and that she can be more consistently involved given her current business role, but really she wanted to tell us about the very large crabs she and her cousins are catching in their secret "honey hole" such that they throw back any under 7 inches. Jim Sands is very happy (repeat very happy) about the new time and location and great food. Sharon was happy for new members, new time and location and that AV system works (until it didn't).

Fine Master:  Jim Blaney served as fine master today and efficiently raised fines by assessing anyone with brown eyes, anyone who is right handed and anyone younger than 93 and all those who traveled outside the US in the past twelve months.

Program:  Since this was our first meeting in the new location and we needed to test things out, we watched a couple of videos for potential 2015-16 service projects. The first one is the "Stop Hunger Now" campaign that is celebrating its 15^th anniversary of distributing healthy meals to hungry children in third world countries. Primary distribution is through school lunch programs.  The Bellingham Club is proposing that the five Whatcom County clubs join hands in a meal packaging project in February 2016. The goal will be to package 50,000 meals in 4-5 hours at a total cost of $15,000.

The second video was Matt Friedman's TED talk about human trafficking and what we can do about it. The first step is educating the world about the degree of enslavement in the world today (more slaves than any other time in human history) and the need for an army of ordinary people to get involved.  Caring is not enough; we must convert the caring to action. There are several actions that anyone can do described in his talk but the first is to inform and educate. There is a movie about the trafficking of women and girls coming in the next month or two; movie is called "Sold" and there is a trailer that can be watched on you tube. There are 4.5 million women and girls that are enslaved in brothels and most die from HIV AIDS.  The 36 million enslaved humans work in all manner of industries and 1.2 million are children.  The impact that the NGO's fighting the trafficking is miniscule, less than 0.04% on an annual basis. We need a paradigm shift and as Matt said, it will take an army of ordinary people as it did 150 years ago when slavery was outlawed. Slavery is still outlawed in every country so the enslavement is illegal but still pervasive; 4% of the enslaved humans are in the USA.

Drawing:   Brian did the honors of ticket drawing and Stan won the bouquet of dahlias from Pati's garden and a bottle of red wine from Bill's garden.  The ace remains in the bag so the pot is now at 995.50 for 50%.  Parsons..you better be there next week and buy raffle tickets!

Next meeting:  8/13 noon at Gateway Center; 4920 Rural Avenue, Slater Rd exit, just ten minutes from Bellingham.