In a testament to the clear and beautiful morning skies, the Rotary Chorus very ably sang a rendition of “Blue Skies”. . and what an incredibly gorgeous summer it has been.   Our guest, Margie Coy has been proposed for membership and joined us again today as did Dave Holmes from the Northshore Rotary Club.

 

Our guest speaker, Carlos Aragon, a fourth generation Rotarian and currently District 5030 Membership Representative and President Elect of the Duvall Club, gave us an overview of the membership challenges that currently face Rotary clubs in the United States.  He indicated that “we” (Rotary clubs) suffer from a public perception problem of being a group of stagnate, white, middle age rich men.  His advice is for each club to build a strong “brand” and then tell people about it.  Further advice is to make sure we are “member focused” and to “take care of our own”.  He reminded us that we are all on the Public Relations committee. He encouraged each Rotarian to work toward attracting younger members to our clubs.

 

 When asking the audience the question as to why someone would join the Woodinville Rotary Club, Erv DeSmet offered that we are, as a group, “alive, alert, involved and a powerful foundation. We do a lot of good”.  Vicki Puckett offered that we have made it very apparent to the greater community that we are very involved as is evidenced by the Rotary Skateboard Park, the pavilion at Wilmot Gateway Park and the various ways in which we give back to the workplace or to the community.

 

Through Carlos’s presentation, we were able to discover that, in fact, Eric Greenwood is actually a Generation Y member.  And here, all this time, we thought he was a Baby Boomer!

 

After our guest speaker finished his presentation, Andrea Preiswerk, our charming exchange student from Switzerland, summed up her weekend of great weather and great northwest activities.  She was treated to a tailgate at the Husky Game, a trip to Pike Place Market, boating and tubing on Lake Washington and a car show at Carillon Point.  Jorge did manage to point out that the first Mercedes that was present at the car show was actually a “clunker” and a “lemon”. 

     

In addition to Andrea being presented a Blue Badge, Todd Banks was also divested of his Red Badge of Courage and was issued a Blue Badge of Membership.  Welcome to “the Club”, Todd and Andrea!

 

Our Prez, Al Marsh, reminded us of the Board meeting at Banner Bank at 5:30 p.m. on 9/15/09 and mentioned that there will not be a 5^th Tuesday social this month.  The math became too complicated as to whether or not there actually is 5^th Tuesday this month, but suffice it to say that there is no social.

 

Joe Truglio pointed out that there are extra invitations (4 pieces for each invite) for Rotarians to use to invite friends, associates and family members to the upcoming Puttin’ on the Ritz dinner show and auction.  Congratulations and appreciation to Linda Hendrickson for her efforts to obtain advertising in the auction catalog for Overlake Hospital and a reminder that this Friday (9/18) is the deadline for purchasing an ad in the catalog.  We have raised about $6,000 in catalog advertising sales so far.

 

He also stated that we need to put together a work party to take care of the Rotarian Block Grace Town Vineyard in front of Molbak’s plant farm greenhouses on the Woodinville-Redmond Road south of town.  We need weed whackers and six or seven individuals to operate them as weeds do not take care of themselves.

 

The Sergeant at Harms collected a substantial amount of money in fines and happy dollars from John Ive, Roger Stark, Gary Whitsell, Todd Banks, Jon Bylin and Wayne Parris.

 

Jay Fiske closed the meeting by remarking that President Al is “no Henny Youngman”.

 Meeting adjourned

            Respectfully submitted,

 Rebecca J. Clark

 

 

Whatever it's profitable color, this marble was not it, John Ive discovered.