The First of Several Parts...

 

Oh yeah, we had a meeting today.  It was a more-or-less normal meeting with not many things going right, but the food was good and the speaker was very interesting.  There being no visible greeter at the door, we all thanked our lucky stars that we didn't have any guests other than our guest speaker and her boss.  When it was time for the Pledge, Conrade Mayer stepped in for the absent Steve Forseth and got us going.  Just as it was time for God Bless America, the songleader, Tom Redmon, appeared at the door and charged right into an almost tolerable version.

 

 

 

 

Lunch today was some tasty DIY sandwiches, brought to us by the fabulous Jan.  Conversation started and, of course, was totally disrupted when the Prez went after some of his favorite announcements.  One timely one: Kinney H.S. Graduation Night is tomorrow (May 24) at Mitchell Middle School and as many of you as possible are encouraged to attend.  Ross Johnson mentioned that on Memorial Day next Monday, there will be a Veterans' ceremony at Mather at 10:00 A.M.  Go if you can.  We're dark next week, due to Veterans' Day.  Finally, we have scheduled our fall (sort of) Texas Hold 'Em poker tournament for August 26 in City Hall and we're partnering with some other organizations, so be sure to get out there and sell tickets ($50 ea) to all the poker players you know.  The theme is Cards for a Cause.

 

Your reporter got tired at this point and quit listening, so the next thing he recalls is that there was the weekly Ray Wyatt Charitable White Golf Ball Drawing and this week it fell to your erstwhile reporter to bump up the pot for Ray who stated that it's not worth his while to take the money until it's well up in the 3 figures.

 

With that, it was the time for final appearance of Sergeant Chapman for the year and so the big guy walked up to the front of the room and made everyone nervous.  No pin or badge infractions and things were looking bleak in Mudville.  Could the mighty Casey strike out?  Luckily, Tom Redmon and Ray Wyatt (two lawyers... go figure...) were late to the meeting and so started the avalanche of money into the pot.  Ross Johnson had borrowed a Jackson from one of his foursome at the Cordova Golf Tournament a few weeks before and had conveniently forgotten about it; the bad news was that he had borrowed it from the Sarge...  The Prez was called on the carpet for starting the meeting late and for covering up the Rotary wheel on his meeting slides.  Shame, shame... when are we gonna get rid of the guy? (Yes, June 24... see above)  Tom Redmon apparently threw in more moolah for a friend of his winning the hole-in-one Mercedes at a charity golf tournament recently (I've never known anyone win on one of those deals...)    Neil paid for granddaughter Amber and her baseball team going to the NCAA final tournament,and then Ray paid for being proud of Brud for giving up sugar, which Brud apparently donates to the Twilla children.  Tom also noted that his 2 year old granddaughter is about to no longer be the youngest in the family.  Congrats, Tom.  Ross Johnson, not to be outdone, leaped to his feet and forked over even more lucre in honor of his grandson being a first-rate lacrosse player.  (Is lacrosse that sport where you have to chug a beer before advancing to the next base?)  Finally, Conrade raided his wallet remarking something about Mike Passof, which went unheard by your reporter.  That was it: game over.

 

 

At that moment, the Prez regained the rostrum and introduced our guest speaker, Wendy Kadon, from Sierra Donor Services.  Wendy was accompanied by her boss, Chris Donhost, who spoke at our Club the previous week on the Sacramento Valley Live Steamers.  Today, Wendy's topic was organ and tissue donation and how it is handled.  She cited some amazing statistics: there are about 120,000 people in the U.S. on a waiting list for organs to be donated; over 20,000 are in California.

 

 

 She delved into the process that donor services follows, noting that if you have the red dot on your driver's license, that is a binding legal document and even if your heirs object, donor services will many times take badly needed organs and/or tissues.  She talked about the requirement that a donor be brain dead before a donation can even be considered, which means about 80% of our membership is safe for the moment.  Very interesting talk.  At the end, the Prez sold her a book and warned everyone to clear out before something very bad happened...  Good meeting.