El Cerrito Rotary: The Wheel January 8, 2010

Editors:  Gary Buffon & John Ferguson Jr.

Week of January 7, 2010     

(www.rotary5160.org)

www.elcerritorotary.org

President Tracy welcomed everyone to the Friendly El Cerrito Rotary Club.   Karen led the flag salute and Gary B provided the thought for the day.

Secretary John:  Introduced our visiting Rotarian Don Alder of the Berkeley Club.  Paul introduced his guest El Cerrito Police Capt Mike Regen.  Karen introduced her guest a Realtor from the area.  I failed to get the guest’s name.

4-Way Test Presentation:    Larry led us in reciting the 4-Way Test

Announcements:

• Jack asked that board members stay after the meeting to discuss an important matter regarding our lunch cost at the club.
   
•  If you haven’t heard the LN-4 Project be sure you make sure you attend the meeting on Jan 28^th.  Mike Mendonca (a Rotarian) and

Happy dollars:  Don is happy about his family visiting from Australia.  Gary B is happy that the Interact club members spent 177 hours volunteering for the fire fighters toy program.  Paul is $20 happy about his promotion and that his young son did well during the holidays.  Lee had a great holiday because his daughter came back from Holland and they went skiing.  Jack is happy to see everyone and so is Tracy.

Sgt at Arms Nancy:  We had trivia today.  Each table was given a true/false trivia question with a wrong answer requiring a $5 recognition fee.  The only table that was consistent was Jack and Gary B, proving that being consistently wrong is more expensive than being consistently right. 

Gary A finishes the story of his near death experience in Hawaii in 2006.  We heard the heartwarming story of Gary’s trip to Hawaii at Christmas to visit the folks who helped him and his family when he encountered the flesh eating bacteria that nearly killed him.  Gary got to speak to the Honolulu Rotary club where he was given an award for being an inspiration.  After making his presentation Gary participated in the Honolulu Marathon.  He said he felt a lot of pressure because of the amount of PR he received so he ran a pretty good time.  Gary was quick to point out that being a Rotarian and having people like Jack, Tracy and other Rotarians making sure he had the support necessary for his survival played a huge role in his recovery.  Everyone was quite taken by this wonderful story of the way Rotarians help each other and doing so is just the way Rotarian’s behave.
GOOD STUFF!!  Thanks Gary for sharing this story with the club!

Gary telling us the "rest of the story" and being very enthusiastic about the experience.

Today’s Program: 

Don introduced Galen Ages a Rotary Ambassadorial scholar who got a masters degree at a University in Mexico City in 2007-09.  His are of study was labor unions in Mexico.  Galen gave us an overview of the history of Mexico that had a one party political system for seventy one years.  What this led to was an unholy alliance between the government, corporations and employee unions to essentially control the human capital of production.  This resulted in the mid 80’s of a massive reduction of wages as Mexico became an exporting country with a lot of foreign held debt.  One of the main consequences of this is the massive migration of labor to the US (most of which has been done illegally).

Galen Ages with Pres Elect Karen

This was an excellent presentation by a young man who is an excellent representative of Rotary as a scholar and will be going into the working world and be able to put to use what he learned.  This was an outstanding presentation, hope you did not miss it.

Today’s Lottery Winner:   Jack had his ticket drawn and pulled a catseye marble.   Next meeting the pot is $150.

Thought for the Week:

The true grandeur of humanity is in moral elevation, sustained, enlightened and decorated by the intellect of man.

--Charles Sumner