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FOUNDATION ISSUE OCTOBER 12, 2024
VOL. 5 NO. 10
MR. FOUNDATION MEETS MR. PREZ
NEWS-NOTES-NONSENSE
On Thursday JoeS did a great job of providing an overview of our club foundation and answering questions from the peanut gallery. Here are the major points of Joe's presentation-The currently titled East Alton Rotary Foundation, a 501(c)3 charity, currently holds about $200K in assets. It was originally established to provide scholarship funding. That mission will not change. When the clubs merged in 2020 it was agreed that the foundation would maintain it's current title. At the five year post-merger mark MarkV will work with the state and IRS to institute a name change to the Riverbend East Rotary Foundation. The current board, JoeS, MarkV, BradP, MarkSp, SherryT, SandyS, want to expand our community involvement by designating $15K every other year to help fund a community project within our service area. Four fundraisers will be used to help fund this effort. The first project will be to help purchase an electronic sign board that would replace the static one currently outside the Keasler Rec Center. Reestablishing a mentor program for our scholarship students is also in the works. The goal is to get the students more involved with our club. Joe concluded by observing that if each one of us does a little bit, we will accomplish a lot! With that in mind, it's time to signup for our Chili Dinner and golf tournament.
Within the past few days The Telegraph has featured front page profile stories about member PatA on the 3rd and potential member NancyW on the 8th. Congrats to both!
Next week District Governor Dan O'Brian will be joining us. Wear your green!?
Early arrivals included DarrenC, AllenH and Prez Bill.
The signup sheets for both the Chili Dinner and golf tournament are making the rounds. Pick your shift now!
Prez Bill opened with a Big Bang.
We welcomed GlennB as a potential member.
WE STILL NEED GOLFERS JoeS told everyone that golfers are notorious slow to prepay for a tournament. That being noted, if you know of a team that plans to play let Joe know ASAP so he can reserve the correct number of tee times and order the right amount of grub. He also encouraged everyone to get busy encouraging your golfing/duffer friends to get a team(s) together and recruit sponsors. The end of October is not that far off.
Here are the details about our upcoming club foundation golf scramble on October 25th. Registration starts @ 11 with a shotgun start @ noon. A foursome will cost $400 and include a BBQ lunch and steak dinner. There are five sponsorship levels available from $100 to $1000. He then distributed flyers and encouraged everyone to share them with the golfers you know, friends, family and social media. It's going to be a fun day on a beautiful late October Friday. All proceeds will be used for community enhancement with a goal of making a $15,000 contribution every other year. Make checks payable to our legal name East Alton Rotary Club Foundation. All checks need to go through JoeS so that all sponsorships and teams are correctly recognized. Thanks in advance for your support.
Post-nooners included GeorgeM, DaveA and JohnP.
CherylM told JoeS that his recent foundation email nudged her to attend. Whatever it takes!
The slide right in crowd included BradP, PaulH, ChrisH and JohnP.
AllenH was indeed surprised to see DarrenC.
JoeS had some very good news about our 5th & 6th grade basketball tournament. In conjunction with the Wood River Parks Department and East Alton School district the tournament is now schedule for December 14th. There's also a good possibility that an additional tournament for 7th & 8th graders may be scheduled.
Prez Bill never misses an oppoortunity to pass the basket. He fined everyone a $ for being there.
Our Chili Dinner is this coming Friday @ EAWR High School. You can bring your prepackaged desserts to next week's meeting, drop then at Mark's office or at our tent on event day. Please bring your home made desserts to the tent on Friday. See Mark's email from Thursday for all the details.
We had 23 members dining on cheeze stuffed tortellini, Rotary g-beans, rolls, salad and cherry cheesecake pie.
JoeS and AllenH each chose cards that did not resemble the joker. The $258 jackpot rolled. KendraG won the scratchie.
57% of Eastender News subscribers opened the last newsletter.
BEFORE THE MEETING...
...OR AFTER
IT'S ALL ABOUT GETTING IT DONE
Type caption here
ALL THINGS TRIVIAL
In the Ozarks, a celebrity goat is popular with visitors-and said to resemble which guitarist?
A-Andres Segovia
B-Billy Gibbons
C-Eric Clapton
D-Keith Richards
(The answer is found near the end of the newsletter)
Today is National Gumbo Day
What is the most-visited tourist spot in the U.S.?
Grand Canyon
Times Square
Lincoln Memorial
Mount Rushmore
With an average of 40 million visitors every year, Times Square is the most visited public tourist site in the U.S.The iconic location is made up of six pedestrian plazas in Manhattan. Originally named Longacre Square, it was renamed in 1904 after the New York Times moved its headquarters there.
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
Sourced from the Make-Up and Banner newsletters
October 2020
The WR club heard a presentation about the Legendary Mustang Sanctuary.
MarkSp told the EA club that the proposed merger information would be presented to the WR club at their next meeting.
RHS Junior Rotarians Valerie Nyswonger and Kortni Laws broke bread with the WR members.
The EA club was offering Zoom opportunities to program presenters and club members. Scholarship interviews would also be conducted via Zoom.
TommieM, SherryT and LoriP all failed to claim the 50-50 jackpot.
MikeK and PatA were working on a proposed Dick Bell scholarship for students planning on entering the construction industry.
SherryT distributed a handout outlining the Ameren energy saving package.
MikeK proposed scheduling a group outing to the Heavenly Bed location in Alton to assemble beds.
PHOTOS OF THE WEEK
DATELINE:RI
Former Australian MP shares impact of Rotary Youth Exchange
By the Honorable Melissa Parke, former Rotary Youth Exchange student, former Australian Minister for International Development, and Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)
I grew up on an apple farm outside a small town called Donnybrook in the southwest of Western Australia. When the Donnybrook Rotary Club advertised they were seeking applications from year 10 students to spend a year abroad, I was very excited. I applied and was ultimately selected to be hosted by the Rotary Club of Maubeuge in northern France.
I had never been outside the state or travelled on a plane before, so it was a grand adventure from the very beginning. I saw snow for the very first time the day I arrived! This was a big shock given that it had been 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) the day I left Australia.
I had wonderful host families in France and learned another way of life, a different culture. I also learned to appreciate champagne, cheese, and a good baguette, as well as to speak French. Little did I know at the time that speaking French would come in very handy in my career.
Upon my return to Australia, I trained and worked as a lawyer for a number of years before taking up a role as an international lawyer with the United Nations, where I lived in places like New York, Kosovo, Gaza, and Lebanon. I worked as the deputy chief of staff and legal adviser in the UN International Independent Investigation Commission in Beirut, investigating the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and other terrorist attacks in Lebanon. to continue reading, link herehttps://t.ly/eP3mE
AND I QUOTE
"We need men who can dream of things that never were."-John F. Kennedy
"A person without imagination is like a teabag without hot water."-Alan Fletcher
"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good."-John Steinbeck-East of Eden
"Optimism is a happiness magnet."-Mary Lou Retton
SMILE
Birthday humor-
You know you’re getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.Bob Hope
Pie can’t compete with cake. Put candles in a cake, it’s a birthday cake. Put candles in a pie, and somebody’s drunk in the kitchen.
Jim Gaffigan
Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest. Larry Lorenzoni
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age. Robert Frost
For all the advances in medicine, there is still no cure for the common birthday. John Glenn
I know I’m getting old. My last birthday cake looked like a prairie fire. Rodney Dangerfield
BY THE NUMBERS
According to Gettysburg College, average Americans spend 90,000 hours of their lives working
35% of workers say they expect Social Security to be a major source of income after they leave the workforce, while 58% of retirees say it actually is a key source. Compare that to 401(k)s. 50% of workers project that their 401(k)s, IRAs or other retirement savings accounts will be a major source of retirement income, but just 29% of retirees say this is the case-Gallup
Shoppers last year returned 17.6% of items they purchased online, valued at more than $247 billion and more than double the percentage of goods returned in 2019-National Retail Federation and Appriss Retail
Americans’ saving rate was down to 2.9% in July 2024, less than half what it was in late 2019-Federal Reserve
More than 40% of cat and dog owners have named a caretaker in their wills or plan to do so, according to an American Pet Products Association poll this year
U.S. short-term rental prices increased nearly 20% compared with 2019-AirDNA
(Trivia answer B)
THE OBJECT OF ROTARY
The object of Rotary is to encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise and, in particular, to encourage and foster:
First:The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service.
Second: High ethical standards in business and professions, the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations, and the dignifying of each Rotarian's occupation as an opportunity to serve society.
Third: The application of the idea of service in each Rotarian's personal business, and community life.
Fourth: The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.
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