Last Meeting July 26
It was a chock-full
meeting this week at Rotary, with a cornucopia of topics covered, from old
favorites, to missing Presidents, to green banks, green energy, smart kids,
smart meters, kilowatts and Klingons.
On to the old favorites, in the personage of Past
President Rob Scherer (term of 2002-03) who was simply splendid in his pinch
hitting role as President for the day.
Bringing back memories of yesteryear with his witty, fast-paced style
(the only thing missing was his favorite target, the beloved Ludy), Rob had the
assembled throng in stitches from the opening bell and never let up.
Playing the “old vet” card (noting wryly that our
embryonic President had only two meetings under his belt before needed a
break), PP Rob, with the cunning of a CIA operative (ok, a CIA operative with
Google Earth at his disposal), took us on a quick search of the planet and
zeroed in on President Scot’s exact whereabouts -- a certain condo in Maui,
where Rob produced as proof a satellite photo of Scot jogging on the beach with
nothing but his shorts and pastor’s black and white collar (ok, so maybe – just
maybe – the body that Scot’s head and collar adorned was not actually that of
our newly-inaugurated President).
Ken (no sheep but he’s still a) Shepard provided us
with the thought of the day, and after the pledge and a healthy dose of
conversation time, Meeting Sponsor John Shelby spent his 300-and-3 (dollars and
minutes) updating us on how his Five Star Bank has become green in its handing
out of the greenbacks (from Prius courier cars to green energy funding).
Sticking with the financial theme (and the in
absentia President Scot’s love of interactive maps), PP Rob enlightened us
on the local economic stimulus that the Club provided to our fair city
recently, flashing up on that monstrous new screen of ours the location of the
seven fine establishments that were visited during the club’s recent dive bar
trip (this author has it on good authority – namely, dive-bar tripster, Diana
Borroel – that the Chamber Room took the prize for diviest of the locales
visited). Rob figures that $20,000 was
injected into the city economy, courtesy of our soggy Rotarians who partook,
and he was pleased to report that they may have recruited two new members as a
result of their visits, once said prospects complete their parole and get new
teeth (as Rob reminded the membership today, be kind to all of our prospective
new members – at least until they join the club).
Switching to Rotarians who brought all of their teeth
with them, Katrina Salazar and Eric Solis introduced us to this year’s RYLA
(Rotary Youth Leadership Absolutely cannot remember what the “A” stands for)
student leadership attendees -- high schoolers Alex Contreras, Kristy Thielen,
and Dominick McClain – impressive youngsters, indeed. As evidence of the kind of quality people
that RYLA helps produce, the lovely Ms. Salazar was herself a RYLA student not
that many moons ago, and is now our RYLA committee chairperson (it’s a circle
of life kind of thing). Katrina and Eric
advise that there is room on both the RYLA and YIP (Youth In Prison – ok, ok,
just kidding – Youth Incentive Program) committees, so if you’d like to focus
your club volunteering efforts working with some fine young folk from our area,
contact Katrina and Eric.
Several announcements followed --time to try and keep
up with Jim Phillips in Yosemite again, call Doug Kraft if you’d like to do
some good while attending this Sunday’s River Cats game, and don’t forget about
Hal and Beverly’s barbecue on the 8th -- and then one of our
furthest travelled guests, a Klingon War Lord, commandeered the mic. There was a slight language problem at first,
but fortunately the elegant and worldly Leesa Fons was on hand to interpret (Klingon
is just one of the many languages that Leesa speaks, apparently), and we
learned that Mr. War Lord was commanding us to sign up for next week’s Brown
Bag (and he sounded SERIOUS, so you better hurry and sign up [call or e-mail
the office]).
After 5 minutes of tithing – actually 3 minutes, and
then Rob stared silently at the gathering until someone spoke up and gave some
more (notably, John Balluff, who gave a C-note on the condition that Rob
continue to not speak for the remainder of his time) – her honor, Kim (here come
the Judge) Mueller, introduced our guest speaker, John DiStasio of SMUD. A 28-year veteran of Sacramento’s power
company, John is the current CEO of SMUD, and he updated us on energy matters
of all sorts – from smart meters to hydro electric, wind and solar power, to
the $127.5 million of Federal stimulus money that SMUD received to create an
entire “smart grid” at Sac State, and the future ability of homeowners to sell
energy back to the grid (such as from the battery on one of John Shelby’s
Prius’s). Very informative, enlightening
and educational.
No meeting at the Radisson next week (but it is Brown
Bag, so sign up or you may have one ornery Klingon on your hands), and a job
most excellently done this week, Rob.
JBW