Bill opened the meeting with positive comments about the moving and memorable celebration of life tribute on Saturday morning past to our long time friends and mentors, Past Prez/Past District Governor Jim Young and Dottie.

Today’s Flag Salute leader was Past Prez Scott Dowds followed by a thoughtful invocation focusing on unburdening and rejoicing presented by Pastor Greg. Next, Susan Smith led us in an enthusiastic rendition of God Bless America followed by a sometimes fist bumping, sometimes hand shaking, sometimes radius clashing, sometimes hugging version Smile. Don’t know about you – but this 21st century greeting thing confuses me!

Visitors

Prez Bill pre-empted the writer and did the visiting Rotarians-Vistor recognition thing himself. Then he failed to pass on the slips with the names correctly spelled, so with apologies for the phonetic butchering of guest names, here goes: Allen Whitten, Principal at Sunny Hills High School; Jane Matthewson, mate of Dick; Ron Jue, guest of Miko; Andre Bai, new Boy Scout honcho, guest of Will Abbott.

Rotarian of the Month

Judy Atwell was bestowed the title ROTARIAN OF THE MONTH, with all of the questionable rights and privileges, including being recognized by next week’s Finemaster, that accompany the coveted honor.

Announcements

Joe Arnold gave two really good reasons to attend the Collage Concert on Saturday, March 21st at 6 p.m. for chow and 8 p.m. for WOW! His reasons: First, it’s a really gooood show and Second, your paying for it anyway. So get it on your calendar.

The annual speech contest is coming up on February 4th. Cathy Gach is recruiting judges, timers and tally volunteers. Let her know if you will assist.

Theresa Harvey advised that there were some spare programs from the Jim and Dottie Young celebration available for any who would like to have them. The program contains three of Jim’s most moving poetic works.

Past Prez Scott, having fulfilled his flag pledging duties, advised that some really good gourmet food offerings and libations would be featured at F&M’s annual inaugural Chamber of Commerce mixer on Friday, January 14th from 5 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. It so happens that the time conflicts with another Chamber sponsored event, a presentation on Bio Identical Hormone Replacement Therapy - Is It For You? Our own Theresa is expected to report back whether partying at Scott’s bank or fixing low libido was the highest priority to the Chamber membership she so ably serves.

Prez Elect Daybell announced that Ron Stock has agreed to serve as the money collector for the 2015/2016 Rotary year. Dick is also looking for company to attend some of the training sessions he is set to attend, particularly about Foundation grant applications and the like.

What do the ladies of The Rotary Club of Fullerton, a vacation voucher, a George Foreman grill and an arbitrary universal winning number have in common. I would tell you but I couldn’t hear the answer. Clearly the ROTARIAN OF THE MONTH knows!

Lastly, Prez Bill announced a Board approved tax increase of $2.50 per fiscal quarter to fund a 2022 Rotary Club of Fullerton Centennial celebration. The benefit to the many of us that are 75+ is debatable.

Recognitions

FineMaster Howard Minckley, under the impression that the week starts on Sunday, handed out fines to an absent Tom Meyer, and present Joe Lins, Theresa Harvey and Burnie Dunlap. The fines duplicated their prior week’s recognition, which was OK with all of them because the levies were reasonable and go to a good cause. The Cowboy fans (McKinley, Kuntz and Bankhead) were let off the hook, probably because da waz robbed by the zebras already.

Blue Chip Drawn

Larry Bennett + Investment in Opportunity Drawing + Blue Chip = Winner

Program

While serving as Interim Principal last year at Sunny Hills High School, Cathy Gach became aware of a unique collaborative effort drawing upon the creative talents in the school’s Engineering program. Nationally, acronymed EPIC, with the local project being spearheaded by Engineering teacher Doug Havard, it is a focused engineering and system design and construct project aptly named the ALife Project. The goal is to develop a low cost, easily maintainable electric renewable energy back up power generating system to be installed in a hospital in Soroti, Uganda. The system, using both solar and wind generated electricity will, as needed, power up a battery back up pack to kick in when the grossly unreliable Ugandan electrical grid system goes down, which is a daily occurrence. The needs that it is being designed to alleviate are the specific problems of lights unexpectedly going off in the middle of surgical procedures and to prevent spoilage of vaccines and medications that require refrigeration. The students at Sunny Hills High School, who hope to have a prototype operational within the next 18 months, are seeking $61,000 for materials and support of the demonstration project. If the design, which is also receiving technical support from students at Fullerton College and CSUF, is successful, it could serve as a low cost, easily maintainable model modular system for thousands of similar applications in the third world. For more information, visit www.poweralife.org or email your query to dhavard@empoweringalife.org.

4 Way Test

The membership was led in recitation of the 4 Way Test by Randy McFarland.