Rotagram for Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Jim Ripley opened the meeting: “Hello everyone. We are having a beautiful day. There are sign-up sheets on the tables for the kittens. We have a full program, so lets get started. We have Rebecka Forrester, who will be give our patriotic moment today.”

Rebecka Forrester: “Hi, everyone. We have a guest from Fullerton High School. Reagan would like to start a club at the Fullerton High. She's extremely enthusiastic about joining and expanding Rotary.

“Several years ago, I moved my whole family all three kids to England. At the time, I didn’t feel very patriotic. I didn't really understand the value that America has to offer. When I moved to England with my three children and husband, I saw the differences between living in a country that is not as free as ours; it was surprising to find how much access to opportunity we have. I did fly back and forth for my real estate clients, but my family stayed there the entire time we were living in England. Once we finally decided it was not the place for us, My children literally kissed the ground upon arriving in LA. America is our home. We are so grateful to be here. We have so much freedom and so much liberty, and it has come at a price that so many of you have paid, and we thank you. That's what we're here for. So please stand with me, and salute: “I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag . . .”

Terri Grassi delivered the prayer:

.Sueling Chen introduced her guests: Elizabeth Oates, who is the president of our library foundation, and David Lee. Our guests today are speakers: Jaime Cotres and Judy Booth. Thank you for being here.

Bill Christianson hosted Rob Tonaneault. Carol Morris hosted Dave Cardenas, a Rotary Past President from Pasadena.

We have Don McFarland, a prospective new member.

Jim Ripley: “You have money burning a hole in your pocket, and you know just the person who's going to take it - Rocco?”

Rocco: “Aloha!! This is your fund-raising segment”. After struggling to locate “recognition candidates”, Rocco proceeded to fine whole tables for relevant questions.

There is a thank you card being passed around for Gerardo. Please sign the card.

Joe Lins: “Okay, I'm Leslie today. Oh, speaking of cats. What did the 200 pound mouse say as she stared at the cat.: ‘Here kitty, kitty’ in a deep voice.

On April 10, is a special Rotary meeting. This meeting date is two weeks from today - April 10. Is the our Rotary recruitment event. Bring your friends Please sign up your guests by April 8. This should be a great event and a great program. Socializing begins at noon; program begins at 12:30.

Cathy Gach: “We now have Uncorked Street signs here. Make sure if you take a sign that you keep track of it, so that you can collect it. Thank you Dan Ouweeleen, for getting these done. We have so many people working behind the scenes on this event, and I want to take an opportunity to thank many of you who are contributing in many different ways. We have lots of people who have stepped up supporting the event by being sponsors or collecting sponsorships from others. We just had a great sponsorship on wine; Judy got several cases of wine for our event. It is good to hit those types of supporters, because every time we save money. We have people in our club who have generously stepped up and given us sponsorship checks. I'd like to thank Rocco, Bob Jahncke, Thad Sanford, Bill Mathy, Dan and Susan Ouweleen, Kevin and Leslie McCarthy, Marty Burbank, Sueling Chang all have donated. We are meeting tomorrow at PacMin.

I had an opportunity to go to an advanced event at the Dallas Arboretum over the weekend. It was an amazing event. Though it was pouring rain, it did not stop the 2000 people from attending and having a wonderful time. I got some ideas there that we can implement. One thing that stood out to me it was the way that scanners are used. It was very quick because as soon as I arrived and saw that line, I thought we can be here for an hour in the line. We were in within five minutes.

Miko Krisvoy: Sunny Hills Top 100 is today. We're doing it at Sunny Hills High School assembly. Next year we are hoping to bring back a traditional sit-down honor dinner. This is where I like to share with students some help and follow up so we can properly honor these students. The high school GPA is skyrocketing. This year a ninth-grade high school student with a GPA of 5.0, is not invited to the honor assembly; because we are restricted to 100 students, and ninth graders are excluded!!! We have been doing this Top 100 for 64 years. Please come and join us. It's the Sunny Hills High School assembly.

Ric Crane: Fellow Rotarians and guests The annual Cal State Fullerton Rotary Night Baseball is on Wednesday April 17. We have our presidents. Jim Ripley, with the president from Sunrise going to throw the first pitch. It's at Cal State Fullerton baseball field on April 17. There are some signup sheets on every table. I want to get a head count. If you have any questions at all reach out to me via email. What we did last year was collect $30 at the game.

Jim Ripley: Before I introduce Judy Booth, I want to talk about duty, y'all know that Judy is the director of our public library. She's also a mother of four children. What impressed me was she's very brave, while raising her four young children, she pursued and completed a master's degree in Library and Information Systems. She is very loyal to our community. She started her career as a children's librarian in our public library. From there, she was promoted to senior librarian in charge of Hunt library, and then director. We're so grateful that Judy stayed with us. With that, please help me to welcome Judy Booth, and Jaime Crates.

Judy Booth: “It's a pleasure to see so many people that I already know. I have to say, though, since I was the president of, Sunrise Rotary, during the pandemic, you do not get to see the pitch, which is a shame. Also at the table that we have an explanation as a perfectionist, and free to go into her library, only to say thank you to all of you who have supported the Foundation through the years because actually it wasn't just Josh Newman; with another year for $2.75 million. It was three quarters million dollars of the foundation funds to support all the matching funds. We had lots of grants, we will be looking forward to the day we're connected. The FCC controls the libraries. Magic happens in the foundation. I'm going to turn this over to Jaime, he's our senior librarian. He's only been with us for a few years. He had a stint at the information and mental health department, LA County doing library work in literacy. He is totally up to the task of becoming a single library librarian.”

Jaime Crates: “I am very happy to be here. One of my juniors and I had to interview for one of the Rotary scholarships. We were selected to go up to the mountains with RYLA. It was absolutely wonderful. It was actually the first time that I remember seeing snow. Thank you guys, for sponsoring this event for our community.

We received grants over $5 million to revamp, refresh and rebuild the library because it was in a bad state of disrepair. Literally a year ago is when the whole library started to be rebuilt from the inside out. We had to take down the ceiling to find the building. If anything was done now, forget it, as we’ll make it a little prettier for everybody. What I have here are some pictures of how it looks when we started, and how it is now. Because of the grants, we were able to also reduce some parts. We're going to redo the parking so that you can actually drive in easily. In order to better accommodate the changing community and requests that we've had, we actually have library space.” Jaime showed us some excellent photos of the work in progress. There's a ladder inside of it, and cabling, and just a bunch of mess inside. So in this nice little space, now they got rid of all that. As you can see, it's a nice clear, open area, that's going to be full of library goodies for library services, such as tours, checkouts, Wi-Fi, and just kind of a little bit of everything. So we got exactly everything that we have with the main branch, but a little bit of what we had for you one of the other nice parts about it, as you can see, we have a little atrium in there as well. So I got to be done as well. We got to be great. The benches on the on the trees also got returned to look nicer. Okay, so as I mentioned, the core guards, they have to read for efficiency and higher, higher metal base, and these are heavy, heavy, like 1960 days. So they actually have to find one guy and say California, they can really redo them. So it was really fun. Okay, so the interior hallway is easy. They're all brand new LED lights. So they're able to provide your lighting at a lower cost increase a more open area, the air conditioning also was redone. So it's a nice easy temperature to actually kind of find control each of the sections in their portfolios. And one of the cool things about it is that it kind of library is production app live on gallery spaces. which is the Museum of museum teaching already, they're going to have an exhibit there. We're in talks with the museum, as well, sector, and as a free press. You guys are the first group to see this. We're going to have the mid-century. So this is a new exhibit that we collaborate with our summers are going to host we're going to be sure a lot of the mid-century furniture from that time period, as well as Brera, who's the designer who's your tech, as well as some of the other players of his time. We're going to have a little documentary. We have our secret guest exhibit; this will be a turning exhibit with a platform with rotating different furniture from that time period. The restrooms, which are really nice because the older ones were for little kids.

“I hope all of you are familiar with the Hope Center, which is just between the YMCA and the St. Jude's. That has really made a huge difference in homelessness, I can actually send a flyer to my contact with your club. So you can call anytime you are concerned about people that need housing. This is a navigation. This is not where people say there's a place for them to find the locations that especially the North Orange County service provision area is having your city really is working on getting people to house. I just wanted to say, growing up with a library of wonderful memories as a child at that location, which is amazing architecture and event space. How many of which are we looking at or building over the entire area. The iPad is actually it's an internet segue. You mentioned programming we are actually going to talk a little bit about mobile. So first he says if you don't know, make sure you put on the calendar, the Saturday routine is the official grand opening for our library. We hope to see you there. We have flyers going up to promote, community to prefer email blast, and we don't suddenly now get in our car now make sure you guys get something good. What we want to do is we want to make sure to have library presence everywhere. I mentioned we're going to do some of our programming that we work, story time on Tuesdays, these timelines are so forgotten the best so that we can run by the most people and what tell we're special in community. We do some Tuesday because of the main branch we do on Wednesdays and Thursdays and if you have stopped by to see a story time, you should be definitely should use June or two storytime deliveries are amazing. Your children or grandchildren or other is a go. It is really talking over for a five year old to play. Kids learn it's actually really fun. And then we're going to have reusable library services. We're going to have classroom visits. So we hope to expand to the also the local community areas, like Montessori schools, they email about the library services about how the half hour naps, about books that are about self finding resources and making tools to be used. And one of the things that we want to strive for a lot is digital literacy. We want to make sure that people know how to safely use new technology as well as the internet, because a lot of things that are out there that try for are trying to harm you. We will be hosting programs for growing families. Once again, one of the main issues is life skills, and how to be better. So we work together to make sure we have attorney checking in. And since we have a really nice big front lawn, we're going to try to do a lot of all the discussions outside see America calm. Yoga, Zomba, running for the loved ones.

“Thank you for what you've told us. And for the progress and updating the property. A big question that I want to get out. is, what is it that adds to it? Other than sacrifice? Another expander. So what if Oh, my God would tell somebody what's happening? What is it.

it's adding another resource for people to go to commute together in a safe way that you can feel that is something that is part of meeting because the library is also part of the historic district that's on the National Register now. So it is a protected area that has deep ties, the whole thing, because it was designed by the architect, it's also a built during sign Emily believe is a traditional fantasy area, so does a place in history. And more importantly than anything is an area that also needed to reach another part of the city that normally wouldn't need to grow. So that way we can reach those folks that normally would not be reached, want to share the camp that we have kind of provides these services no so that they can do they can feel as part of community and feel as if they're we are for them, we are looking out for them, you're looking for ways to be engaged. And that's probably the single most important thing that we as library, especially as a sneak practice every mission has the benefit is you can be reticent so that way we can be able to be there longer so that way the area's able to bring in some privacy. So it's also not reliant on just this thank you that we'll be able to the Parks and Rec like I said I've missed as far as the US like I think we might you know in our search for information or links on they will be better. So that service exclusive library. So that is our goal is to be able to share books. So if you are closer to the home library and the books only available at the main branch then we are trying to bring it up there for you. So we'll be putting it up there and we plan to share a lot of the same titles. So especially in the wintertime, you kind of have to vote every time Oh, that's a good question. I don't know. Well, you may not believe that actually libraries do a statistical analysis. And I think it will help you as one more expensive per book at the checkout. That is, but one of the big things happening in libraries is smaller bands would travel and do out the job. So there are possibilities, probably not the RV size that we've seen in the past. And we were sad to see that when we go.

We thank you very much. But it was totally close, which I thought was good as a as a way of thanking you for your presentation that we are making a donation in your name for Working Dogs for Warriors, which is a rescue program that trains dogs for our veterans.

Jim Ripley: “Like I said in my email, this is a twofer. My “boss” is here to help us; District Governor Roy Jefferson would like to share some things with us.”

Roy Jefferson, DG: Good afternoon. “Great to be back with you guys. You know, the first time I came to visit you was because they made me come. Getting to know you I came in because I wanted to; you guys are great fun. You do so much. You do so much and I appreciate what you do. I wanted to give you guys an update on how the district is building The district is doing fantastic. Last year, Dan did a fantastic job. membership grows within this year plus 41. I know for a fact it is a club as indicated by the 60 members in the past month. So we currently about plus 27. At the district training assembly, I'd signed paperwork for a youth club, with 23 new members, so now we're about plus 50. On April 11, I'll be holding a mixer investments here are the lessons to chamber hope we will be able to get a new club started in lessons as well. So I think we'll finish the year plus 60. We will be one of the few districts that are growing. I think that's because of something that Dan is as adviser really pushed out there, with getting our brand out there being Rotary out into the public eyes. Normally, I would just coasting into home these last three months of the year. But we live in this game called March for Mental Health, on the calendar for April 27. I think it's important. When you're helping others, it also makes you feel good about yourself. So that's the message we want to get out there.

We also have our district conference coming up. passing speakers that are going to be there that weekend including Dr. Sylvia with the first female president of a Rotary club. The conference is going to start with a hospitality night on Friday night at the Renaissance Marriott.”

Jim Ripley: “the lucky raffle winner 399313? Three all the time again 399313 Bob Jahncke is the winner!!”

Next week we have Charlie Wilson, Executive Director and CEO, Southern California Water Coalition, an exciting future of water in Southern California. I look forward to seeing you all here.