How Can You Tell If It's Halloween?

Well, here's the main way...

 

 

Well, it was an unusual meeting to say the least, but then that's what makes Rotary so engaging.  As Forrest Gump once famously stated, "You never know what you're gonna get..."  The meeting started off innocuously enough with Bob McBee doing greeter duties from his chair at the back of the room and when President Brett got everyone organized and reading from the same sheet of music, we heard Pat Orelli recite the 4 Way Test from memory, a remarkable feat given the state of Pat's memory, and then PP Sean Twilla led the Pledge, followed by chorus master Gary Spainhower leading the song.  Not long after that, we heard the Prez recite some obscure quote from author Stephen King, who once apparently opined that it was better to be rich and weird than poor and normal (or something along those lines... I don't 'zackly remember...)

 

  

 

We had a visitor today: Tom Blinn, who up until recently was a member of the Sacramento Rotary Club but has retired and lives in Rancho Cordova and is looking for a new Rotary home.  Welcome Tom; we hope you'll come back and see us.

 

 

We smartly moved on into announcements and there were the usual ones with a new one or two mixed in:

 

  1. Don't forget to spend your Christmas dollars at Smile.Amazon.com

 

  2. Interested in International projects? Go to the forum  on November 4 at Faith Presbyterian church from 9:00 to noon and hear all about them.

 

  3. Our Thanksgiving Food Locker project is on November 20 all morning and we can use some help with handing out food... please come and lend a hand

 

  4. We're tending bar at the R.C. City Hall Holiday Party on December 1 and need bartenders; a signup will be going around

 

  5. (New one) Dec 10 is Rotary Night at the Kings at the new arena downtown.  This could be a fun event; you should go.

 

About this time, treasurer Tracy circulated around the room and asked visitor Tom Blinn if he'd draw the ticket for the lucky drawing contestant and sure enough he drew Sharon Ewing's number, and since there was only one white and one orange ball remaining, as one might expect, Sharon got the orange one and a grand prize of $257!

 

 

  Way to go Sharon!  (We all agreed that it was a damn shame that Clarence was the Sarge today and so one can only imagine the 'social' impact of the following fining session)

 

With the pot disposed of, it was time for the Sarge and today it was PDG Clarence aided in the endeavor by bagman Ross Johnson.  The Sarge began by nicking President Brett for forgetting the scheduled Foundation presentation and the Prez paid.  So Clarence invited PPPP Paul Schubert up to the front of the room and presented him with his Paul Harris +5 pin.  Well done, Paul!  Pin infractions? This time it was President Brett and Ross MacCarty who got the nod, even though Paul Schubert was sitting right there.

 

 

  Secretary Sharon was invited to chip in some of her winnings to the Club and a C-note to the Rotary Foundation, a fine which she obviously paid under duress.  Your poor reporter got hammered for the dismal record of his hometown Chicago Bears as well as his alma mater, the University of Illinois.  Suddenly, surprise of surprises, the Sarge ponied up some cash for his vaunted Herd from Marshall Middle School who lost a game the previous weekend (probably not enough pocket money to bail out their key players...) (Heard the joke about the 'Herd"?... they like playing on natural turf so that their cheerleaders have a place to graze...)

 

 

Tracy, looking tres chic, paid for her holiday attire and finally the Sarge backed into the 'Happy Dollars' part of the session, a concept as foreign to him as paying his taxes.  Marvelene chipped in on the two year anniversary of her pancreatic cancer surgery and got a big round of applause.  Way to go, Marvelene.  Ray actually threw in for failing to win the weekly drawing for the first time in recorded memory.  Bagman Ross Johnson contributed for being proud of the recent Explorers event he took part in, and then Gary Spainhower mentioned that he was going to Palm Beach next week and paid in advance!  Penultimately Paul Schubert paid after reflecting on his 49ers spotless record this year and the whole shebang wrapped up when PP Sean added $100 bill to go to the Foundation (the Rotary one, not the Club one...) and that was that...  

 

This is the part where things took a turn, so to speak... In the apparent absence of a real guest speaker, the Prez introduced the Club to a game of "News Conference' or something like that.  At the President Brett's request, Ross MacCarty was asked to leave the room while the members decided on a recent news story that we could imagine Ross being involved in.  That story turned out to be the one where the two lady sailors got stranded in mid-Pacific and weren't rescued for several months: we imagined that Ross was on the boat with them.  When he was brought back into the room, Ross was asked a bunch of questions by the audience about his non-existent experience and he had to figure out what the news event was.  At long last, he sorted it out.  Fun game.

 

 

Last on the day's' agenda, Ross Johnson got up and talked about some recent and upcoming events and invited us all to get involved.  As head of the Rotary Community Corps effort , he talked about the recent Explorers event last Thursday at Walnutwood School and then moved on to this Thursday's State of the City presentation at City Hall where a surprise announcement will be made.  Stay tuned.  November 4 will see a veterans' event at the VA facility at Mather and we're encouraged to go, by way of thanking our veterans for risking so much for us.  See the flyer below.  There's something going on at Village Green Park on November 26, but I didn't catch all of it, but I think it involves the Ross Johnson Jazz Band, so you should go.

 

That was almost it until PPPPPPPPPPPPP Brud stood up and gave us an update on both the B Street Theater project as well as the Dictionary project.  And that was it, and the room cleared as if the IRS had just shown up.