Written by Patrick Hart

                   

Greg Hill presided at this week’s meeting, and in a bit of a departure from our usual rendition of a song from our members, we played a video singing of the national anthem.

 

 

Doug Fendon bragged that his daughter has just had an article published in Accounting News.  Maybe if we are looking for a program sometime, we could have her do a reading.

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

 

Our installation banquet scheduled for June 24 has been canceled.  However, the golf that normally precedes the banquet is on.  Also our incoming president, Tom Zengeler, is planning a later celebration at his house with a tentative date of July 29.  

 

Back by popular demand Brad Gutzler continued with his game of two truths and a lie which revealed some fascinating information about our members.  Who would have ever guessed that Bill McDonald once attended a one room school with no indoor plumbing, or that Pat Schwartz pitched a no hitter baseball game, which his team lost.  Nor would I ever have believed that Robin O’Connor gave a concert on the Great Wall of China, if I had not heard it from her own mouth.  

 

 

Our speaker this week was Glen Svenningsen who told us about a project being undertaken by Engineers without Borders to replace a non-functioning water distribution system in Tzaput, Guatemala.  Tzaput is a small agricultural community whose principal crops are corn, beans, and potatoes.  In the past they have depended for water on a gravity powered tank which is five hundred feet above the ground and which is connected by a two thousand foot pipe to a natural spring at the bottom of a ravine.  Unfortunately, the pump moving the water from the spring to the tank broke in 2013, and in the intervening years the locals have been forced to buy their water from neighboring communities.

 

Glen is part of a team of Engineers without Borders, which now plans to remedy this situation, at an estimated cost of $75,000.00.  This will require replacing the old diesel operated pump with one run by electricity and installing new pipe, since the old pipe has broken apart beyond repair. The engineers also want to expand the new system from its current 40 outlets to 200 outlets, although some more testing will be required to insure that this many outlets are feasible.  Since the source of the water in Tzaput is a natural spring, there has never been an issue with water quality; however, the project is planning to install some filters in the system to offer additional protection from such a threat.