Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, August 20, 2024
Doug Brent began the meeting at 12:30
Pledge: Ron Cassel
Meeting hygiene:
Silence your cell phones, keep texting and messaging to a minimum, minimize side conversations, and minimize acronyms, especially Rotary acronyms.
Inspiration: Doug Brent talked about how the 4 way test is so important in our every day lives and how Paul Johnson used it to solve an issue within the school district! The 4-way test is a way of living not just for use in our Rotary Club.
Guests: Goutam Mehta, Santosh Mehta, and Riddhi Mehta who were all visitors from a Rotary Club in India. Georgia, Olive, Grant and Jack Howard who are the family of Andrew Howard. Barbara Rogan, guest of Paul Johnson. Allen Krever, husband of Bobbi Bornstein. Denny Mayer, father of Adam Mayer, Cary Wilson, guest of Nicholas Welzenbach.
St. Luke’s eggs were Olympic themed with the medal counts of each country represented on the eggs. Well done Kathie and Randy.
Birthdays this Month: John Walker, Donna Brewster, Paul Brennan, Barry Cheskin, Sandy Bocks, Doug Carlen, Tom Dodge, Kirsten Bridges, Ramon Ware, Diane Eriksson, Cindy Gentile, and Beth Smith.
Rotary Anniversaries: Todd Taylor: 18 years, Rachelle Lopp: 5 years, Nancy Consentino: 3 years, Ramon Ware: 3 years, Matthew Hudes: 2 years, and
Adam Mayer: 2 years.
August Happy Hour: Thank you to Riley and Felicia Barr for hosting. It was a big success.
Pacific Clinics: Monday, August 5, several Rotarians gathered in the morning and afternoon, to pack backpacks full of school supplies for students in need.
Grant recipients: CCOF Foundation and College of Adaptive Arts wrote thank you letters to our Club for the donations to their organizations.
Project Amigo 2024: Andrew, Georgia, Olive, Grant and Jack Howard talked about their trip to Mexico with the Rotary sponsored Project Amigos. They arrived in Guadalajara and transferred to Cofradia de Suchitlan to begin their service week of construction and cooking. They also visited a school for migrant workers to distribute clothing, and provided dental hygiene at a local neighborhood school. The week culminated with a beach day for 150 kids and the pizza was the big hit of the day. Their trip ended with a beautiful home made cake for Olive’s birthday and horse back riding.
Announcements:
Club BBQ is Tuesday, August 27 at 5:00pm at Oak Meadow Park. There will be no regular meeting that day, please sign up online or with Tina Orsi-Hartigan at the next Tuesday meeting. They need a set up and clean up crew that day, and refrigerators to help store the food for the BBQ. If you are able to contribute to any of the above requests, please email Tina.
There is a new community service form for members to fill out if they have suggestions of projects for the club to participate in. Doug will send out the link to the form in his letter this week.
There is a district climate action group, if you are interested in participating, please contact Doug.
Our Rotary Family Pictures: Nicholas Welzenbach had two pictures: the first with his whole extended family on their family farm in Missouri and the second was their annual airstream camping trip to Goleta with his wife, Kendall and their two children.
30 for 30:
Marie Rector donated $30 for the Scholarship fund in gratitude that her daughter’s family is moving to San Francisco from Arizona because her son in law got a job with CBS.
Nicholas Welzenbach donated $30 for his camping trip.
Judy Rodrigues donated in honor of the Howard family working with Project Amigos this summer. She and Julian championed Project Amigo when it was first started.
Guest Speaker:
Seth Shostak is a senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View. SETI stands for “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” SETI is a non-profit research organization whose mission is to lead humanity’s quest to understand the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe and share that knowledge with the world.Seth developed an interest in extraterrestrial life at the age of ten, when he first picked up a book about the Solar System. This beginning led to a degree in radio astronomy, and now, as a Senior Astronomer, Seth is an enthusiastic participant in the Institutes observing programs.
In addition, Seth also has a passion for outreach activities: interesting the public and especially young people, in science in general and astrobiology in particular. He has co-authored a college textbook on astrobiology, and has written three trade books on SETI. He has published more than 400 articles on science and is the host of the SETI Institutes’ weekly science show, “Big Picture Science.”
Seth discussed the idea that there are other life forms in the universe. By the 20th Century the theory was that there was life on Mars because of the polar ice caps, but there is no obvious life on Mars, except bacterial life, but this opened the door for the capability of life on other planets and other solar systems.
Four billion years ago, life got started on Earth and the universe is vast and there are many possibilities of habitats elsewhere that can support life forms.
We are the first generation to find life forms elsewhere on places with liquid water.
Seth participated in a project, still ongoing, which began in 1960 with a new 140-foot telescope that eavesdropped on transmissions from other planets, stars, etc. There are a cluster of antenna’s located in Hat Creek, CA that look for and recover transmissions and signals from other stars and planets.
Seth believes we will find alien life forms before 2035, because the technology keeps getting better and more sophisticated. He thinks Extraterrestrial life forms will be machine-like, just as the AI machines that we are building here on Earth will be creative, intelligent and inventive in 10-20 years.
Meeting was adjourned at 1:30pm.