With a mighty flick of the wrist, President Brad Burdick rang the meeting to order. Don “Fingers” Anderson led us off with the national anthem. Today were club elections so there was a bit of commotion. And Jeff Jenkins was not present so we all have no idea who won the football pool. Frank King got the birthday game started and things spiraled out of control from there. Some semblance of order restored and people paid up for their respective birthdays. Jim Vos announced the bell ringing, and said that we have a couple of young people volunteering to ring. They aren’t even club members. That’s pretty dynamite.
Announcements:
Slate of Officers and Directors Elected for 2015-2016
President: Chuck Snyder
President-Elect: Del VandeKerk
Treasurer: John Holzheimer
VP/Program Chair: Teri Treat
The following members were selected for the Board of Directors and their terms will be determined by the Board of Directors. Tom Kenney, current Board of Director has asked to be removed from the Board immediately due to new business commitments.
Scott Hume, Sandy McIntire and Dominique Zervas
Major Project
Please remember your pledge or payment for this years Sun House Major project. We are trying to bring the drive to a close.
Tim Farris brought John Dunne and Pinkey Nelson, WWU Retired
Dan Whittle introduced Jerry Whitten, Boeing - Retired
Robin Halliday brought her husband Dan
Rob Westford introduced his cousin John Niland
Roger Barnhart brought Captain Debra Dempsey
Brian Griffin introduced Patrick Donovan
Presentations:
Rob Westford was awarded his first Paul Harris award. Awarded an award – that’s kind of redundant. Greg Baker gave a slightly more than a promised two minute Rotary Moment. He gave a short talk on the support that Rotary gives to education. And gave an example of how the Bellingham School District is trying to get less privileged children a good start to school with the Promise K program.
Is it just me, or are we becoming morally lax? First there is the football pool and today we were introduced to blackjack at the tables. The ministeress of fun, Cathy Buckley coerced us all into pretending we were at the casino at Monte Carlo. Maybe it’s just me griping about not being able to beat 17.
Program: Living in Outer Space
The program today was Captain Wendy Lawrence talking about “Living and Working in Space.” Lawrence is a retired Navy pilot and astronaut. She has logged more than 50 days in space, so I guess she ought to know what she’s talking about. She gave a brief rundown on the International Space Station (ISS). Lots of things happen differently in a condition of microgravity. Just as a “for instance” a candle flame is more like a uniform blue ball of flame which burns at a lower temperature. And of course, liquid sort of balls up and floats around.
She related that up there the astronauts are actually lab rats. They are on a pretty rigorous training regimen so their bone calcium loss is minimized. A person in space can lose as much calcium in a day as a person with osteoporosis does in a week on earth. See, gravity is actually our friend. Why do we want to irritate gravity by going into outer space?
Lawrence ticked off numerous studies that are on going on the ISS. Among them are studies on the effects of radiation on DNA, the possibility of growing food on board in the vacuum of space, developing robots and developing life support systems that would allow humans to live on other moons or planets.
She did own up to the fact that she does succumb to motion sickness, which lasts a couple of days and then she is fine the rest of the time in the great beyond. It was a good presentation which did not allow for many attempts at humor. This reporter is distinctly sorry for that.
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