Meeting on Feb 6, 2013
GREETER: Dr Peter led the pledge and inspired us with his professorial wisdom:
"Everything Begins in Faith and Ends in Politics" Charles Peguy (1871-1914)
"Our Country Right or Wrong; When Right, to be kept Right, When wrong, to be put Right" - Carl Shruz (1829-1906)
"Only the mediocre live up to their potential" - Jonathan Winters
GUESTS:
Will Walsh who wants to transfer to our club. Guest of Ken
INTERACT CLUB: Ava Sholl, Callie Monroe Watts, Caroline Blattt, Emma Peters, Jade Granger, Siena Tracerso
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Barbara made us aware of a few fund raisers of other clubs: Marin Evening Club Sat April 13th at 6:00 PM. Dance to the music of the Sandy Geller Trio (If you like to see a great dance, come to the event to see Pres Elect Chuck dance with his wife and maybe daughter that night. He is one heck of a dancer). $75 per person for dinner (Lobster and Filet of Beef) and raffle. Marin Evening is a major supporter of our Club for our International projects. It is one of the best clubs to go to have a make up. They are small like us, with one heck of an active group.
Barbara Also announced a May 18th Rotary Club of SF Chinatown Mad Hatter Tea Party. It should be lots of fun for $88 per person.
Pres Elect Chuck is forging ahead with the Ride4Vets . He arranged for a potential savings of $4,000 for our club for the ride if we can supply 20 volunteers for the Petaluma Club sponsored Ride on May 18th. By helping out, they will give free use of the website that they developed.
INTERACT DAY:
Pres Elect Elect Lisa introduced the six members of the Interact Club.
Pres Caroline
Treasurer Jade
Secretary Emma
Ava
Callie
Pres Caroline summarized some of the project that they are involved with. They had a big Bake Sale to raise funds the Toys for Kids program of the Unity Church which supports youngsters in the Canal Area. They volunteered for the Tri Athlete program which Cammie is involved with. Proceeds will go to causes in Marin County. They are also working with Journey for Good. The founders or this program will be at our Club for a presentation in March. One of the recent trips of Journey for Good was to Cambodia to assemble wheel chairs for the needy.
Cammie then auctioned items the group had made, cooked or assembled. This included a beautiful knitted shawl made just for the auction. There were also cookies, cakes, and chocolates.
The Interactors enlivened our meeting and we wish every meeting had as much energy as this one!! :-)
SPEAKERS:
Girard Choucroun and Robin Morikian of NCITE (Northern California Institute for Research and Education)
Ms Morikian introduced the group and Mr. Chouocroun, who is the Executive Director at NICRE gave an inspirational talk about the work or NCITE. Girard apologized for the irrelevant name but the cause is well worth it. NICRE is doing research at the VA Hospital (privately funded) in conjunction with UCSF. The goal is to find ways to help veterans in the program psychologically and physically. There 23 million veterans of which 2.5 millon are just from the 2001 to 2003 returning from the Middle East. One in five have some sort of post trauma syndrome. If we do not begin proper treatment now, we are going to have much larger and potentially incurable issues in the future as evidenced by several recent mindless disasters.
There are no magic solutions. The key is promote self care via guidance. The YMCA and UCSF have started a pilot program where physical activities including non-traditional healing such yoga and meditation are showing remarkable results in the early stages. This is not a solution for all veterans but, for many, it may be just the key towards their self help goal. As Bill Gates said praising Rotary for Polio Plus, you need precise measurement and statistics to go forward. This is exactly what UCSF and a group of 200+ doctors and support team are doing in evaluating the effectiveness of the programs.
There were many questions from the floor. It was an excellent and relevant program as so many of our own members are either veterans or have very close relatives that have been affected by combat, both recent and going back to WWII.