This evening meeting at the Holiday Inn was called to order by President John Moffat.
Invocation
Making and building peace was the subject of Paul Grey’s invocation. He mentioned Rotary International's peacebuilding goals, programs, and successes. He also mentioned local efforts through groups like the Whatcom Dispute Resolution Center (WDRC), which offers many programs to build awareness and skills around positive social relations in Whatcom County. Paul encouraged us personally to consider taking some steps to strengthen peace and our communities.
Music
Bob Kuenzel led us in singing a song popular in the sixties by the Beatles: All We Need is Love. He noted how this message keeps resonating, in unlikely places like the Super Bowl halftime show this year.
Happy Bucks
Ours is a happy group as these examples illustrate:
a whole-family trip of a lifetime to the Galápagos, celebrating Steve and Jan’s Ban's 50th anniversary in August.
the rich family RCOB connections of Aaron, our speaker, and the extended Morse family and many friends
Rick Kaiser's painting the inside of his house (Not for everyone, but Rick, he loves stuff like this),
Nate’s joy and gratitude after attending a RI Training Session to keep him out of trouble when serving as president.
Minister of Fun
After spending almost a month watching the Olympics, we were mostly successful in answering the relevant and interesting questions posed to us by Jim Lemerond.
GUESTS:
George Halsell introduced today’s speaker, Aaron Booker
Spouses and guests attending our evening event: Gail Bove, Lynn Day, Exchange Student, Janka from Hungary, Leslie Farris, Gail Haines, Sandi Halgren, Ann Kaiser, Karen Lerner, Jeanette Morse, Kelli Booker, Bonnie Trenouth, Robin Williams
Club Events and Committee Announcements
Welcome back President John and Karen!
Catherine Riordan in announced the Social Committee is looking for additional members to evaluate and rethink the types of social activities in light of the new meeting formats and club activities. Please contact Catherine, John, or Sandee if you might be interested. Trial memberships are available at no charge.
The District Conference will be held at Harrison Hot Springs May 1-3, 2026. This link will take you to additional information:
Roland Trenouth reminded us of our 2026 meal-packing event, scheduled for March 14, 2026, at Assumption Gym from 8:45-12: Jo 00. Roland requested help with set-up at 7:30.
He announced that the Passport Club will join us for the Meal Packing Event, and contribute $500! Let's be sure to greet them at the event.
The goal is to pack 35,000 meals and raise $12,400 to cover materials costs. This is only possible through the efforts of partners and volunteers like you. The meals packed will be sent to Sierra Leone, providing over 1,000 students with nutritious meals and foundations for their physical and academic health.
We are still short of our fundraising goal for this year's major project, according to Doug Cole. He reminded us of the club's expectation that all members contribute annually to the major project and encouraged those who haven't done so to make their donations as soon as possible.
Project Purpose:
Skookum Kids is seeking $140,000 to assist with the purchase of three slightly used vans. RCOB would contribute approximately $85,000 of this total, with the remainder obtained from designated donors. While currently serving 200+ families each year, acquiring these vehicles will significantly improve Skookum Kids' ability to serve more children and families throughout Whatcom County and Northwest Washington for years to come.
Our donation will enable the organization to replace aging minivans used to transport children to and from appointments, sometimes across the state! Eighty percent of foster children have court-mandated visitations.
Mike Bradburn submitted a letter of resignation due to what he felt was his insufficient level of involvement. His resignation was accepted with regret.
Sue Parsons submitted the 2026-2027 Student Exchange Budget, and it was approved by the Board. It was approved early since student commitment is due now for next year. We will be adding 2 short-term students next year, who will arrive in the summer, and 1 inbound full-year student.
Rotary Record Storage: It has been almost 9 years (hard to believe) since we stored Rotary records at WWU’s Western Libraries Archives & Special Collections. Sandee’s storage at her home is full and requested board approval to transfer documents, (e.g., Board Minutes and Financials accumulated since 2017) to WWU. The Board approved the transfer.
March 9, 2026 Special Meeting – The Special Meeting for Constitution and By-Law changes will start at our regular time of 12:00 noon and will adjourn at 1:15 for a hand vote. George Halsell and Bob Kuenzel will do a brief rundown of changes prior to the vote. The membership was notified 30 days prior to that date and sent the documents.
The Rotaract Club at WWU is requesting funds from each of the Rotary Clubs in Bellingham to take 4–5 of their members to the 2026 District Conference in Harrison Hot Springs, BC, from May 1–3, 2026. The Board felt they should reach out to the other clubs, giving them an opportunity to participate, and that the RCOB would commit to paying costs not covered by the other clubs.
Nathan reported that the Foundation received additional Club Service Grant funds with a $750 donation and $250 approved by RCOBF to make an additional Service Grant available.
2026/2027 Planning - Program Chairman Mark Knittel reports the new Programs Committee will consist of Mark, Aaron Booker, Monty McAllister and Paul Grey
The next Board meeting will be on March 19, 2026, at 4:30pm on Zoom
Demon Copperhead came very highly recommended by Rick Kaiser in his book report. It's the themes of hope and resilience among children in Appalachia that he thinks we can relate to. The book’s tales of horrendous and harmful systems (e.g., Foster and justice systems, abuse, opiod addition) brought Rick to tears. He is not alone in seeing author Barbara Kingsolver, as a spiritual heir to Charles Dickens.
Aaron Booker has been in the organizational/business IT business for over 30 years. He worked for several major corporations as they launched their live-streaming solutions. Today, he has a company, Varvid, which continues in that tradition and serves individuals and organizations seeking to solve problems or just improve their use of technology. He is teaching computer information courses at WWC, and recently, he completed an NSF-funded fellowshop on cybersecurity!
His presentation, Practical advice for protecting money, identity, and peace of mind, gave many useful tips for us as personal computer users.
He generously created a website of tips for us at this address
He would like our feedback on the website's utility for folks like us.
The website tells it all, so we recommend that you visit it and commit to taking at least some of the recommended actions in the next week.
His overall conclusions were (please see his website for more details and action ítems)
1. Urgency is your enemy.
If a caller tells you, “You must act now’ take that as a sign to put the brakes on. Then take the time to check out phone numbers or websites to verify information.
2. Question everything
Is this a bot pretending to be your grandson in an emergency and needing cash right away? Probably.
3. Don’t talk to strangers
Let the phone go to voicemail with potential scammers
With spam, don’t say hello; scammers press a button after you speak. Wait for them to say the first thing.
4, Technology:
Take advantage of security and functionality updates.
5. Use credit cards, not debit cards
Debt cards don’t cap your liability. Credit cards do. Debit cards are good for getting cash from an ATM.
6. Don’t respond to requests for donations in Bitcoin, even if it's the Whatcom County Sheriffs!
Five things Aaron encourages you to do this week
Freeze your credit
See the online resource for ways you can check how many times your report has been accessed
Get a password manager
Apple's Passport manager is excellent
Bit Warden is a good free manager
Long passwords are recommended, including, for example, a long string of characters in a long sentence. Short passwords can be hacked in less than a second.
Turn on two-factor authentication
Turn on Google authentication, as they’ve done all the checking.
Update everything
(see his website that he built for more details)
Back up your data using the 3, 2, 1 principle. See his webpage for the details. ;)
Closing:
After thanking the many contributors, John adjourned the meeting.
RCOB apparel, including polo shirts, dress shirts, vests and hats is now available. These are items that every Club member simply must have in his/her wardrobe! Besides looking great, Club members will be contributing to branding for the RCOB as well as supporting our Club's Foundation, which will receive part of the proceeds.
Click on the button below for the the clothing catalogue, with the Order Form on the last page. Fill out the order form, turn it into Vinson Latimore at a meeting or email a scanned copy to embroidery@choicesscrubs.com.
