President Marsh called the meeting to order at 7:30am to an overflow crowd of Rotarians and visiting friends. The flag salute was lead by Art Haines, the prayer by Susan Webster and the sing-a-long by Chris Boland, who for the first time got the group completely through a song -- “The Ring of Fire, Johnny Cash”.

 

     To accommodate the morning’s speaker, club business was addressed first:

 Joe Truglio’s Club Service group will meet at Tully’s to organize service projects for the year.  Joe needs a captain//leader for the Dictionaries for 3^rd Graders and 6-8 helpers, who should be available during the day for dictionary distributions; if interested e-mail or phone Joe.  Operation Warm Coat also could use volunteers.

Bill Schink summarized the status on the procurement of auction items.

·             * Reached $80,000 toward our goal of $150,000 or about 53%.

·             *  The auction is getting closer and need to accelerate our efforts,

·              * 25% of Rotarians have not submitted a procurement item – hopefully they have work-in-progress.

·              *  If having difficulty procuring items, see the Procurement team.  An acceptable alternative is a cash contribution that would allow the Auction Committee to underwrite acquisition of needs, eg., purchase of airline tickets to pair with a travel/lodging item.

·             *  Need items for the silent auction in the $75 to $400 range.

·             *  Fred Kempe and Cherry Tinker will be contacting Rotarians to get pictures and promotional materials.

 

Ken Kirkpatrick celebrated his 64^th and had a great year in spite of the tough banking business climate, has good health and a new knee that is recovering nicely. Norm Noble celebrating 75 years enjoys his time in Arizona and Washington and was especially happy to miss our winter this year, 2 grand kids graduated from high school, 1 child married and confirmed that the Woodinville Rotary is a great club—thank you.  A rousing happy birthday was sung.

 

Sergeant of Arms Chris Boland congratulated Bob Rosso on Sports Illustrated ranking of the Oregon football team #11 and gave him a fine waiver.  Crimson noted his Cougs were picked #10 (in the Pac-10, that is). The team of Johnstone, Dolan, Baumler, Webster, Schink and helpers DeSmet, Haines, Banks, Whitsell and Hopkins were congratulated on the great picnic at 21 Acres Saturday.  The food which featured fresh King salmon flown in from Alaska by Susan for this event was outstanding, tours of the 21 Acres grounds interesting and educational and the fellowship made for a special event.

 

The raffle’s first ticket drawn was held by Corinne Fiske, a first for her and took the bottle of wine, Larry Duffield the chocolate and Joe Truglio did not to draw the white marble.

        

The morning speaker was Dorothy Drummond and the subject of her talk was “Holy Land, Whose Land –Modern Dilemma Ancient Roots.  She provided a perspective on the conflict between Palestine – Israel, focusing on 4 main characters (Arafat, Abbas, Sharon and Sheik Ahmed Yassin) that played major roles in the conflict, the reasons for the hundreds of years of hate and the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Queda.

    Speaker Dorothy Drummond

President Marsh closed the meeting almost on time at 8:33am.

 

Maltby Bill, humble correspondent