Rotary Club of New Canaan oct 9th

Rotary Club of New Canaan  

October 9, 2008

 

 

The beautiful autumn weather continues and the delicious repast at Roger Sherman continues to impress the brethren and sistern??

We all welcomed but were slightly confused by the presence of Dr. Sovich leading some members to believe that it was Christmas already or there was about to be an auction.

UPDATE ON BOARD MEETING: It is to be held Wednesday, October 22^nd at 4:00 at the Rucci Burnham office. No food or libations will be served, but anyone interested in assisting with the 50^th anniversary celebration of our Club is invited to attend.

Gently used shoes are being sought and we will be working with the SLOBS to send them on to Iraq in place of stuffed animals.

President David reported that a preliminary assessment of the Lobsterfest indicated that we have done slightly better than last year. Alleluia.

It continued to be a day of surprises with Scott dazzling us with a clean joke about divorce.  Yet another surprise was the belated installation of Ted Bonner who has been hanging around forever without anything official being done to welcome him. The added bonus for all of us was the presence during the installation of District Governor Rick Benson and the always cheerful Assistant Governor Phoebe Leask.

We welcomed Rick Benson with our usual display of good manners. Rick urged us all to check Lizzie Dahill’s blog to keep in touch with our very own Ambassador Scholar.

Many of us were shocked to learn that 20% of the world’s population does not have access to clean water. Even more alarming was the chilling fact that 26,000 children under the age of five die every day from preventable illnesses.

Rotary’s goal of eradicating polio by 2005 was set back 10-15 years as a result of the nefarious activity of the Nigerian warlords. Pockets of polio still continue in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

It was not hard to encourage us to become more actively involved reminding us all that “being a Rotarian is not a spectator sport”. Knowing all that our Foundation and individual clubs accomplish Rick said that our goals for the following year should to increase our membership and to raise our participation rate of donations to the Foundation.

 

S. Hussein Palin