Meeting Recap for March 19, 2012
With March Madness in the air, and “How are your brackets?” starting a conversation or two these days, who better to have pay us a visit than the Sacramento Kings’ jack-of-all trades, Jerry Reynolds. More about Jerry later, but -- for our more impatient members --suffice it to say he was his usual, hilarious self.
Before Jerry we had Ted (anything goes with) White spring for the beer and wine, while Elfrena (Bruce, this time you drive the) Foord tickled the ivories at this week’s pre-gavel meet-and-greet. Walter (if you’ve lost it all, give me a call) Dahl provided an entertaining Thought of the Day (courtesy of Robert Louis Stevenson, and his poem on success), and then we met our newest member, Paul Kucharski, (who is actually a Rotary veteran, coming to us by way of the Truckee club). And let us not forget legal eagle John Oehmke, who hails from Downey Brand and was our Sponsor of the Day. John spent his $300-and-3 advising how he likes to help family business owners with their legal needs (and he can also help if you’re looking to buy or sell a business).
We had two reminders of the good that we do in the community – one coming from Jim Culleton, who reported on the one thousand third graders that we made happy recently, courtesy of their new (and very cool) pictorial dictionaries; and the other from Jan Stohr, who presented Eric Chong of the Sacramento Chinese Community Service Center with the final $10,000 of the $187,500 that we raised for them at our 2008 Bids for Kids (with major kudos to Jan and Dave Cohen, the 2008 BFK co-chairs). That $187,500 bought the SCCSC a 57-passenger bus, science equipment, literacy programs, trips to museums, universities and other places that their students (2,500 of whom live in poverty and attend 18 local schools) very likely wouldn’t have experienced without our help. That’s Rotary in action.
Speaking of Bids for Kids, it’s time to start ramping up for this year’s event! It’s our biggest fundraiser of the year, it will benefit our local Society for the Blind --it will be an awesome party-- and we need everyone in the club to get involved. How, you say? Let me count the ways: 1) traipse on over to: www.bidsforkidsauction.com, check out our online auction full of intriguing treasures, and start bidding; 2) after doing #1 above, put the site on your Facebook wall, your LinkedIn page, then e-mail blast all of your contacts and encourage them to visit the auction site as well (we’ll take money from ANYWHERE!); 3) donate something interesting; 4) advertise in the program (quarter, half, and full-page ads run $250, $500 and $750, respectively); and 5) easiest of all – send us your business card with a check for $150 (which we’ll also put in the program [your card, not the check]). Contact our tireless 2012 BFK Chair, Leesa Fons at leesa@healthpointcalifornia.com or (916-797-0555) for more info on any of these options. We need your help!
After some quick tithing, thanks to Don Meyer (who had some nice coverage in the Bee recently), and Katrina Salazar (whose kids are apparently as smart as she is, tearing it up in their respective educational pursuits), Jerry Reynolds took control of the podium and it was half-sports, half-stand-up comedy from there. Jerry’s musings were wide-ranging and humorous – from the potential of the current Kings players, to his views on the arena issue, to the secret to sex after 60 (darkness), and his advising that his wife’s response to his need for more space in their relationship was to lock him out of the house. Jerry was entertaining as always (he just doesn’t come around often enough). We’re brown bagging next week, so see everyone in two weeks, and do something for Bids for Kids between now and then! JBW
Photos by John Swentowsky, Swentowsky Photography