When the President's Away, the Members Will Play...

Well, it was an unusual meeting, to say the least.  The President was out sick (and reportedly had a note from either his mother or his doctor) and he threw PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP Ross Johnson under the bus to lead the last meeting before our three week holiday break.  Ross picked up the beat as if he had been President before (oh, that's right, he was...) and ably assisted by his fellow Club members, he did a creditable job.  

 

We were warmly greeted at the door by Steve Forseth and Pat Orelli (who only wants your money) and Tracy McLinn and so when stand-in President Ross opened the meeting with a verbal "Ding" ( we couldn't figure out how to open the podium to get the bell at first...) everyone rose and Ross asked .... Steve Forseth.... to lead the Pledge ( a task at which Steve excels...) and then for the lack of Gary Spainhower to lead the song, President for a Day Ross bestowed the honor on.... Steve Forseth.  I'm pretty sure that, without Steve, the Club would totally fall apart.

 

 

Anyway, that knocked out the preliminaries and we all sat down to eat a very good lunch of steak and chicken with refried beans and salad.  As you might imagine, the crowd became restless when the announcements appeared and they were pretty much what you expected, but were amplified by Brud Dufficy who chipped in with updates on the dictionary project and the B Street Theater play writing workshops.  Even the big guy got in a few licks, telling everyone about the rules surrounding Crab Feed tickets which he had passed out to everyone in the room.  Well, just when you thought it was time for the Sergeant, President Ross asked Jerry Smuts to get up and lead us in a few old Rotary songs, a tradition we thankfully discarded years ago.

 

 Well, Jerry got the crowd all fired up and we sang "R-O-T-A-R-Y" (that spells Ro-tareee...) and then followed up with a not ready for prime time version of "Smile" (and the world smiles with you...)  Luckily for us our guest speaker's first language was not English.

 

Shortly after the embarrassment concluded, Pat Orelli announced that there was $121 in the pot and then Tracy McLinn managed to pull Tom Redmon's number from the can.  Even at this unheard-of early stage, Tom narrowed his gaze, focused his thoughts, clenched his teeth and boldly reached into the can and pulled out.... the ORANGE BALL! (Oh crap...)  Way to go, Tom, I'm sure you deserved it in some apocalyptic way...

 

 

With that, it was time for Chapman to rise and shine as the Sarge for the last regular meeting of the year.  Assisted by Bag Lieutenant Mike Passof, the Sarge started off by noting that the two birthday boys missing from the previous week were none other than Pat Orelli and Tom Redmon, both of whom contributed to the pot.  Ray Wyatt was recalcitrant to talk about his wanderings only noting that he had been gone for a while.  Pat Orelli, on the other hand, gloried in his recent vacation and got to chip in as well.  Well, paint me red and call me a strawberry, but when the Sarge asked Tom Redmon if he had any plans for his winnings in the drawing, Tom said (in public, mind you) he wanted to contribute all of his winnings to the big Christmas party at Ross and Sandy Johnson's house on Friday.  What a guy; I now formally take back all that stuff I said about Tom.  Well, the Sarge had clearly run out of steam, so he asked if anyone had any happy bucks to throw in the pot and a number of folks did: Ross Johnson paid for the big Army win over Navy the previous weekend and a few others celebrated recent happy events, and that was pretty much it...

 

 

President Ross got up and then made speaker chair Anthony Chacon get up and introduce our speaker, Indu Shahi from Nepal.  Indu talked about the devastating earthquake that struck Nepal in April of 2015.

 

 He showed pictures of the damage and threw out some staggering statistics: approximately 10,000 people were killed and over 25,000 injured in the main quake and then the large aftershocks that followed.  The pictures of destroyed houses and the recovery effort to locate the living and the dead just wrenched at your heart.  It was a very moving presentation and at the end, Ross gave Indu the traditional library book, which happened to be about earthquakes, for donation to the library.

 

 Good meeting.

 

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all you Rancho Cordova Rotarians from the editor and staff of your weekly bulletin.  See you Friday night at Ross and Sandy Johnson's place...:-)