Thought - Plant peas of mind, peas of heart, peas of soul. Squash gossip, squash indifference, squash grumbling, squash selfishness. Lettuce be faithful, kind, patient, and lettuce love one another. Turnip for meetings, for service, and to help one another. Take thyme for each other, for family, and for friends. Water with patience. You reap what you sow.
Tax & Accounting Minute - The Wall Street Journal reports that KPMG in the Netherlands had an audit test cheating scandal. The problem may be that they are "too big to fail." Our Big 4 Accounting Firms are not allowed to merge, becoming 3. Thus, they also believe they will not be indicted and lose their license to practice because that would also leave only 3. The risk goes out the window. KPMG was fined $25 million.
News -
Saturday we'll be at Tim Hayes's house from 9:00 to noon. His address is 5025 Patric Way.
We received a card from Valerie the Chocolate Lady that was our speaker on Valentine's Day. She was delighted to meet with us.
5:00 tonight is the board meeting.
Speaker - Today we were honored to host Dr. Rich Wampler, an inventor of heart pumps. He is from Indiana, so he is modest about his accomplishments, but they are many. He spoke about being an inventor. In 1988 he invented the first implantable rotary blood pump; he's now invented two pumps that are FDA approved. His first patent was awarded in 1986. He's grateful for those in his circle who trusted his "crazy ideas." Six million people in the USA have impaired heart function. One million of those are treated with devices. There are only about 3,000 donor hearts available for implants. Dr. Wampler was inspired by an Archimedes Screw that was pumping water for a woman overseas. Sometimes it's difficult to be an inventor. Edison said, "There are no rules around here - we're trying to get something done." Einstein said, "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research." One of the amazing blessings of an artificial heart is that there are no rejection issues; they're made of titanium and ceramic. Dr. Wampler's company is MagVad LLC. They need capital of $1.5 million to get their newest heart pump made, which is small enough to use in children.
Raffle - Carroll Dudley won the chocolate. He gifted it to our speaker.
Attendance (19) - Don Brodeur, Bob and Chris Deering, Lewie Donhost, Carroll Dudley, Jim Fritzsche, Dick Hall, Allison Hamaker, Lamond Harrison, Tim Hayes, Kipp Johnson, David Jones, Bill Loscotoff, Keith McBride, Maria Mengotti, Amy Ruggles, Randy Smith, Kevin Wilcox, and our guest speaker.
Upcoming events:
4/17: Board Meeting 5:00 Zoom
4/20: Planning Meeting at the home of Tim Hayes, 5025 Patric Way
4/23: Breakfast at Ettore's 7:00 am
4/23: Evening meeting with Carmichael - speaker Alan Gallaway, "Autism in the Workforce."
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