It Was Like Deja' Vu All Over Again...

In a strange twist of fate, the Rancho Cordova Rotary found itself living in the past, as Rotarians gathered for the inaugural 2018 meeting at the Spaghetti Factory and found to their astonishment Rotary Hall of Famer PDG Clarence Parkins in charge of the meeting.  It seems, with the departure of Club President Brett Schreiner who is going back to school, the past-Presidents got together and figured that they could run the Club for the remainder of the year in Brett's absence.  More on the details later.  Greeted at the door by none other than ol' man Passof's son, Mike, the meeting got off to its typical roaring start and the members were only temporarily bewildered when Clarence strode onto the stage. 

 

 

His brief explanation of what's going on put everyone at ease and before long we were pledging our allegiance to the flag under the capable tutelage of Bob Adam and then Gary Spainhower swung into his signature piece, God Bless America and everyone settled down to masticate in public.  

 

 

Guests?  We had one - our Assistant governor (AG) Ray Ward from the Fair Oaks Club was in attendance, presumably to satisfy himself that we were in good hands.  Of course it didn't take us long to disabuse him of that notion...  In any event, we all sat down to consume mass quantities and then Ray was invited up front to bring us up to date on what's going on around the District.  Here's a couple to nuggets:

 

1. The International Projects Forum is this Saturday, the 13th, at the Presbyterian church down on Florin Road.  If you are internationally minded, you should go.

 

2. One week later on the 20th, PDG Clarence is leading something somewhere (sorry, Clarence... couldn't make it out...)

 

3. February 9 and 10th is going to see a Rotary Peace Conference on Vancouver Island, if you're in favor of peace

 

4. April 7 is District Leadership Assembly, where incoming  Club officers get to gather with their counterparts from other Clubs and make plans for the upcoming year.  This is actually a pretty interesting day, presented by a number of subject matter experts and you can learn a lot about Rotary by going (yes, I'm encouraging you...)

 

 

With that, it was time for the weekly drawing and AG Ray pulled Pat Orelli's ticket from the shoe and Pat began licking his lips at the prospect of taking home the $193 prize.  Sadly there were too many balls in the can for any expectation of gain and Pat's big chance went a wanting...

 

 

Well, all good things must come to an end and today was no exception when PP Chapman took to the stage and performed Sergeantly duties, aided by bagman, the unlucky Pat Orelli.  Luckily the bloodletting was brief and the patient was dizzy but unbowed at the conclusion.  First on the hit list was  a pin infraction, self-confessed by PPP Paul.  At this juncture Ray Wyatt jumped into the middle of the melee and fessed up to successful cataract surgery (he didn't perform it; he received it...) and your reporter noted that the improvement in his vision probably spells doom for his art career.  The Sarge then noted that dictionary transfer medium for Team Chapman, which has historically been PDG Clarence, was strangely late to the party this morning at Cordova Meadows Elementary and carried nary a book into the school.  Clarence noted that he was busy working on his slide presentation all morning and was understandably late... no! wait!... he had low tire pressure... or was it... and then he forked over some moolah.

 

  Moving on, the Sarge then queried the audience to see who had received Christmas presents over the holidays and almost everyone foolishly raised their hand and the Sarge suddenly struck asking all the raised hands to dip into their wallet and fork over a couple of bucks in honor of the folks who cared enough to actually buy them a present.  Easy money.  The Sarge's final fine was gotten from AG Ray Ward, who, when asked what was the best Rotary Club in the District, answered, "Fair Oaks!"  He was credited with the right spirit, but the wrong answer and paid.  About this time Chase Armer chipped in for becoming the most popular guy at all the raves he goes to, now that folks have found out that he may be the only guy in town who understands the new federal income tax.  Just as everyone was about to relax, Neil Orchard jumped in and presented Clarence with his $100 Sustaining Paul Harris contribution for the year, and as fast as it had started, it was over.  Amen, brother.

 

Well, sir, the program for the day was led by Clarence, assisted by a number of his well-informed lieutenants, and the theme was, "What is our plan for the rest of the year?"  Here's the deal:

 

1. Past Presidents are going to rotate into the presidency one month at a time;

     

          a. January it will Clarence Parkins

          b. February it will be Brud Dufficy

          c. March it will be  Sean Twilla

          d. April it might be John Chapman

          e. May it will be Gary Spainhower

          f. June it will be Conrade Mayer

 

 

2. The teams are somewhat reformed and team captains are named.  Team duties have shrunk; teams are no longer responsible for locating guest speakers, but are still charged with room setup and teardown.  Team Captains:

 

          a. Blue Team - Sean Twilla - February & June

          b. Gold Team - Neil Orchard - March

          c. White Team - John Chapman - January & May

          d. Red Team - Ross Johnson - April

 

This rapid reorganization is the result of a few committed Club members getting together and formulating a plan that will carry the Club through to July, when PPP and PE Paul Schubert takes over and puts his imprint on the 2018 - 19 Club year.  The board asks every one of us members to step up and help out when asked in order to make this somewhat unexpected transition as smooth as possible.

 

 

In the course of the presentation, attendees were handed a calendar of events (that we know of at the moment) and those events are recapitulated at the bottom of the newsletter if you want to see what's coming up.  The more or less final pitch was by Ross Johnson who asked everyone to do their best to support our upcoming Crab Feed on the 17th of February.  This means if you are not going to be able to attend or help out,try asking a business associate if they're willing to be an event sponsor.  He reminded us that everyone is expected to donate a raffle item for the Crab Feed raffle or at least $50 if a raffle item is not forthcoming.  As far as this reporter can tell, that pretty much wrapped up the meeting and Rotarians departed the premises as if the sheriff had just showed up...