President Peter Theisen called the meeting to order at 12:30 PM, our 4710th RCOB meeting and our 67th virtual and 13th in person meeting since the start of the pandemic.
Rick Kaiser provided the music, “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean”. As usual, he provided an interesting commentary about the music and the background of the words. For example, Columbia is the female personification of the Unites States, just as Uncle Sam is the male personification.
President Peter gave the invocation, a reading of an invocation by Joe Coons, hailing our differences and how Rotary can harness those different backgrounds and talents to better our communities.
Larry Halgren was Minister of Fun today. He had an entertaining look at the history of toilet paper.
President Peter also sprung a “pop quiz” on the history of Rotary, asking each table fairly obscure “simple” questions which made for sometimes wild guesses.
Book Review: Andy Day - "The Living" by Anne Dillard
The Living, by Annie Dillard, a fictional account of early white settlement in Whatcom County stands as a must read, along with Brian Griffin’s recent book on JJ Donovan, for those interested in local history.
The story picks up in the Fall of 1855 in the settlement of Whatcom. From there, the story traces the lives and deaths of pioneer characters and their relationships with the indigenous Lummis and Nooksack people in the four early settlements around the Bay, out to the San Juan Islands, and to the now defunct town of Goshen. Much of the story surrounds the boom and bust nature of the early economy which was often tied to railroad development.
I especially enjoyed the description of the Great Water Fight of 1891, during which local fire companies were staged to stream an arch of water over Railroad Avenue to welcome the first Canadian Pacific train, but, one thing led to another, and soon the streams were directed at the opposing fire companies and, unfortunately, through the train, breaking windows and soaking the visiting dignitaries in the process.
In addition to the interpretation of local history, I love Dillard’s beautiful writing. For instance, listen to her description of the Nooksack river:
“The Nooksack River was born of a drip in a cirque at the tongue of a glacier hung on a western rampart of Mt. Shukson. The drip froze into an icicle, which dropped into a small pool; a tunnel from the pool threaded a high valley out of the cirque and through the mountains, adding seep to melt and swelling so fast that a mile from its source a man needed one-piece rubber waders and a stout stick to cross it. This was the Nooksack River. It ducked into the forest, chuted between foothills, and fell asleep on the Nooksack plain.”
Although titled, The Living, our family lovingly calls the book, The Dead, as the story is filled with images of what are usually untimely deaths due to murder, fire, drowning, poisoning and other various sorts of trauma. Interestingly, the descriptions of death don’t strike me as gruesome, rather the natural consequences of life in a rough and tumble logging and fishing town.
Published in 1992, this was the first work of fiction by Annie Dillard, a Pulitzer prize winning writer who served as a Scholar In-Residence at Western in the mid 1970s.
Club and Committee Announcements
Football Pool
Mike Plenkovich announced the football pool winners of the past week, Nathan Twining, Frank King and Steve Hettick for the 3rd and 4th quarter, and reviewed the details of the RCOB football pool for the benefit of newcomers (and old members who may have forgotten!): Checks will be held by Sandee until you attend a meeting.
There are 100 squares, costing $20 each, for a total income of $2000. All of the squares have now been purchased. $500 is retained by the club and $1500 is distributed to pool winners (those who come closest to predicting the score after each quarter), as follows:
$20/quarter for all college games and regular season NFL games, $30/quarter for NFL playoff games, and $35/quarter for the Super Bowl.
Volunteer Mentorship Opportunity:
This fall Whatcom Community College is launching its first bachelor of applied science (BAS) in business management degree. This degree is specifically geared for the workforce needs of businesses that make up the majority of Whatcom county's employers. Bellingham Bay Rotary is leading a mentorship program with the college and is asking for volunteers. Mentors will work with students in an Organizational Leadership & Teamwork class in winter quarter 2022. The mentorship program will be approximately 8 weeks long, occurring between January-March 2022. Details about the time, days, and topics would be mutually agreed upon between mentor and student.
If you are willing to participate in this short, vocational service mentorship program, please contact Mike Bate (mikebates9@aol.com<mailto:mikebates9@aol.com>), past-president for Bellingham Bay Rotary or Tresha Dutton(tdutton@whatcom.edu<mailto:tdutton@whatcom.edu>), past-president and current faculty at Whatcom Community College, by the end of September, 2021.
Please also contact President Peter or Sandee if you are interested!
You will still receive an email from Sandee each week prior to the Monday 12:30 meeting if you are unable to attend in person (you can start logging in at 12:00 for short socializing) with the link for that privacy protected meeting. If you have not done so, please download the Zoom app on your computer (you need a camera and microphone on it), iPad or phone. There is no cost to you. If you do not have either, you can also call in. On the invitation, there are US phone numbers you can call and enter the meeting ID number also indicated on the invitation. HERE ARE ZOOM INSTRUCTIONS.
Four Points is not requiring a Contract thru 2021 and need only 72 hours to cancel an event. We will continue to evaluate other locations for a permanent location. Lunch will be $22 for a sit down meal. We must notify them by Wednesday at 4:00 pm each week prior to the Monday meeting as to the number of members attending. We are sending out meeting “Invite's” weekly and members are asked to sign-up ASAP. You can also sign-up by going to the event section of our website at bellinghamrotary.org. If you sign up for a meal at the meeting, you will need to pay the $22 even if you don't wind up attending the meeting after numbers are turned in. If you plan to attend but not eat, PLEASE indicate that on your sign-up so we don't overorder meals and still make sure there is enough seating.
Four Points also will not collect the payment weekly, so the Club will collect payments prior to the meeting or at the door.
We urge members of the RCOB has set up a Venmo account for ease in payment of Meeting lunches, Happy Bucks, Minister of Fun, Dues or donations to the club. Our account is @RCOB-Bellingham. If you do not have a Venmo account you can set up an account with your computer then download the app. on your phone (just Google "Venmo" and you will find all the information you need) You then attach it to a debit or credit card (a fee on your end) or attach to your checking account at no cost. Payment will be sent directly to the RCOB checking account. When you use it for the first time it may ask you the last 4 digits of the RCOB phone number which is 0282. Give Sandee a call if you need help. 360-734-5532
Other payment options are to bring a check in the correct amount to the meeting made out to RCOB or cash in the exact amount to speed up the payment process. There is also the PayPal option as usual and we are set to take payments at the meeting. We have a QR Code that you can simply click on to pay thru paypal also.
Website and Phone App instructions:
Here is a tutorial on how to login for the first time. (Click here) In order to login you need to know your user name and password in your Clubrunner account. The user name is Yourfirstname.Lastname.264 unless you have changed it. Example: Sandra.Lindhout.264 The password is initially set by Clubrunner at 264 unless you have changed it. Sandee can see your Username from her computer but not the password. She can also change your password for you from her computer at your request if you run into problems.
Once you have originally created your User Name and Password you can download the ClubRunner Mobile app on your phone:
Please contact Sandee at 360-734-5532 or rcob@comcast.net if you run into any trouble.
Guests:
Dale Rings from Arizona
Other members who were on Zoom: Bob Morse, Robin Halliday, Monty McAllister, Loch Trimingham, Dennis Williams, Tim Farris, Doug Cole, Chuck Snyder, Corey Chaplin, John Moffat, Roland Trenouth, Jennifer Moehl and Dick Tucker
Program:
Doug Cole introduced today’s speaker, Rob Fix, Director of the Port of Bellingham. Rob moved to Bellingham in 1999 after his wife convinced him that Bellingham would be a fun place to live, since they both enjoyed the outdoors. He became Port Director in 2018.
He gave an overview of the complexity of the Port’s operations, dividing those activities into income generating activities, such as marine operations and real estate, which are self-supporting, and waterfront development, which are supported by taxes and grants. He did add that the airport lost $5M in 2020, covered by a grant from the Federal government, and will lose and additional $3M in 2021. He described the Port’s role in facilitating the expansion of American Marine to a non-waterfront site. He noted that there were 6000 employees in the maritime industry in Bellingham.
One issue that has caught the public’s attention is the container ships at anchor in Bellingham Bay. Rob explained that, even with the new cargo crane, our ship dock was far too small and shallow to allow such large ships to offload.
Mr. Fix also described the struggles to redevelop the Georgia-Pacific site along the waterfront. Although the project is moving along, the original contractor has fallen behind schedule and its role in the redevelopment has now been reduced to building three condominium buildings adjacent to the waterway. The Port has put in a pump track for bicycles and is developing a “container complex” to create some commerce in an otherwise vacant site. Kulshan Brewery has an outlet there as well as an ice cream store and food truck.
In response to a concern that there were not enough slips for larger boats at the two Bellingham marinas, he talked about their plans to rebuild the inner harbor for larger boats by adding dry stacking storage for the smaller boats, increasing their capacity to handle more than their current 1600 boats. He was quite proud that they had stepped in after the border closed to provide an emergency passenger ferry connection to Point Roberts. There were many other projects that he talked about in his short time but to mention them all in the Tattler would take far too much space.
