It was another busy week for the Bethlehem Rotarians! 

 

At our meeting this week we had a visitor from the Rotary Club of Cochin, India!  Raveendra (Ravi) Krishnan was in town visiting his son and joined us for lunch on Wednesday.  In addition to exchanging flags, Ravi shared with us some details about his club.  It was interesting to note the similarities…their club, located in southern India, is well established like ours with more than 100 members and founded in 1936!  They too, are very involved in providing service to their local community!

 

 

Lisa Jordan shared with us another project that was a small financial investment for our club, but one with a big return.  You might recall that last year RI President Ian Risely had an initiative to plant a tree for every Rotarian, adding more than 1.2 million trees worldwide!  His hope was that this initiative would sustain itself beyond his tenure as president.  Lisa worked with Deb Geiger, Cindy Glick and Diane Donaher to submit a proposal for modest funding to support this initiative.  One Tree Planted is an organization that will plant tree saplings around the world, in a location of your choosing (we chose California as a result of the recent wildfires), at a cost of $1 per sapling.  So for $110, our club purchased 110 trees (one for each member of our club (rounded up slightly)) that will be planted and nurtured by this organization.  Thank you to all who made this happen… and let’s make it happen again next year!

 

 

Our speaker for the week was Toni Fernandez who works for the U.S. Census Bureau.  Toni helped us understand not only the benefits of the census and how this information is used, but she explained the daunting task of hiring census workers in every region to complete this somewhat overwhelming assignment!  It was important to know that since government funding is directly related to the data collected as a result of the census survey, it is extremely important to participate.

 

Toni Fernandez who spoke to us about the 2020 Census  

 

I mentioned at our meeting, that each week I would be including a “Did You Know?” slide in my Powerpoint presentation at the meeting.  My first Did You Know will actually be the source of information for the rest of my Did You Knows!!  So…… Did you know that Roger Whiteley authored a paper that documented the first 100 years of our club?  As part of our 100 year anniversary in 2016, Roger rummaged through the historical files and created a wonderful memorialization of our club from its founding in 1916 to the current year (at the time) 2016.  It is broken into 4 “chunks” of 25 years, and it is a fascinating read!  It reminds you of what was going on in our society as a whole, and what our club was doing.  The link to Roger’s work is on the main page of our website.   Here is the link to check it out!  Centennial History of our Club

 

This past week was difficult for our club, as we lost our friend Don Hunter.  Don faithfully served our club for nearly twelve years, and as I said in my e-mail message and comments at our meeting, Don was a true giver and just a good man.  One attribute of our club is that, although our membership is more than 100 strong, we have such strong connections with one another.  While that is a strength for which we should be proud, it does make moments like this more difficult.  Don, we will miss you dearly….

 

Be sure to attend our meeting this Wednesday, and learn more about Integrative Health from Megan Long, a Physical Therapist from the Restoration Space!  Also, come help to celebrate and honor the 7 (so far!) Paul Harris Fellow Award recipients for 2018/19.  Come help to thank your fellow Rotarians Chad Paul, Hank Barnette, Bob Schenkel, Roger Whiteley, Brennan Pursell, Jeff Parks and Chris Nelson for their contributions to the RI Annual Fund.

 

Some reminders: