Hi Everyone. Greetings from your President Tom, President Elect Paul and your Rotary Board. Today marks about month since we last met and it seems like we are almost living in a different world now. We hope everyone is well and doing okay during these challenging times. Some of us have a pretty full plate right now dealing with the day to day crisis of COVID-19 while others of us are probably on our fifth round of straightening up the house and yard. In any event, we thought it might be good to share some updates about what we are doing and any positive stories that we hear about or even some humorous ones that might brighten these times a bit. Also, if anyone needs help with anything or if some of us are able to help out, we can make sure that our Rotary Family is well cared for. We will also provide you with updates of what or Club is doing to help out the community during this time.
With everyone’s help, we hope to continue putting this bulletin out each Tuesday while we wait for our meetings to start again. I hope that you will all share your stories, thoughts and other items of interest as much as possible. And include photos when you can. Please email whatever you like to Bruce Barsi (bbarsi@msn.com) and we will add it to our weekly bulletin.
So here’s the news for this week:
Rotary News
As we’re sure everyone knows, out Club meetings and events are canceled into the foreseeable future. It appears that the District has also cancelled most events for the next few months. We have not heard anything official about the RI Conference which is in Hawaii this year, and I’m sure they are closely monitoring the situation and will make a decision shortly.
Many of us attended the Chamber’s Celebration of Leaders event earlier this month where our Club was recognized as the Community’s Outstanding Organization. President Tom and President Elect Paul made us proud during their talk when accepting the award.
Given the seriousness of the current crisis and the need to help many members of our community that are struggling, the Board met on-line during the last week and has voted to immediately provide half of this year’s grant funds to the Community Services Agency to help serve their families. Our grant applications will close this coming Friday and the Board will then determine how to expend the remaining grant funds.
Ken Schwaderer is currently in the process of selecting our scholarship recipients for the year. Jim Spangler, Judy Hannemann and Bruce Barsi have worked with the local high schools to select recipients from each.
Possibly in a weak moment, President Tom stated that once the current situation settles down, we will have a huge party at the Clubhouse where Hart and he live. Pretty sure we will all be up for that and I hope we can make it the biggest bash in the history of the Mountain View Rotary Club!
Personal News
Bruce – Since I just came up with the idea of doing this today, you’re stuck with just my update for now. I hope you will all join me next week in sharing information so we can keep up with what everyone is doing.
So Suzanne and I have been pretty busy helping out with the child care for our two Grandchildren while both of our sons have been called upon to work long hours in their jobs caring for some of the victims of COVID-19. In between diapers, bottles and playing with trucks, I am also working with the other Coordinators of Cops and Gobblers to do a distribution of gift cards in early April to families that need the help. More on that as it unfurls. And last and probably least, I’m ahead of the game in my recovery from shoulder surgery (or at least I was until my physical therapy clinic closed). Just started running again and I’m looking forward to getting back on my bike.
Other Stuff
Just to bring a few smiles:
This is from a few weeks ago when they only wanted seniors to shelter in place, but do you remember when we were younger and made fake IDs so we could get into bars? These days we need fake IDs just to get out of our house!
Your Grandparents were called to war. You’re being called to sit on your couch. You can do this!
That moment when you’re worried about the elderly and realize that you are the elderly.
They said a mask and gloves were enough to go to the grocery store. They lied, everybody else had clothes on.