Attention all SRC members with time on their hands.
A lot of work was done at the “Painting Party” today as part of the renovation project the club is doing in our meeting room at Quigley’s. However, we need a bit more work to wrap it up on Sunday.
If you can help, please let Murray or Roberto know right away. We had about a dozen people show up for today’s session, and we thank them profusely.
(Check back on the website later this evening for photos of today’s work.)
Good morning, but not a good evening.
The weatherbeings who predict such things every four minutes on TV and insist on assigning names to everything from a drizzle to a typhoon say we will be perturbed by Winter Storm Avery later today.
The latest (noontime) forecast says steady snow by 4 o’clock or so, and then through the night, leaving anywhere from 3 to 6 inches of snow in our immediate area, with the usual slippery roads.
Exercising an abundance of caution, we have cancelled tonight’s dinner meeting at Quigley’s.
That means we won’t meet again until Thursday, November 29 (Thanksgiving is next Thursday) when District Governor Tammy Heckenberg pays us an official visit. We’d like a major turnout for that event, so please plan to participate with us.
This is the one week of the month you’ll have your choice of participating in one or two SRC meetings on the same day — Thursday.
• SRC member Ron Annis will offer a presentation on athletic training and his business, Top Form, at the 7-8 a.m. breakfast meeting at the Greenbush YMCA. Please be sure to let Terry Brewer (tlbrewer12piseco@gmail.com) know no later than noon Wednesday if you plan to attend. A continental breakfast will be available.
• At the 6:15 p.m. dinner meeting at Quigley’s, several of your fellow Rotarians will discuss their experiences at the recent Rotary Leadership Institute, where the SRC contingent has enrollees at all four levels of training. The menu will feature ziti and meatballs, antipasto salad, chef’s choice of sides, bread, dessert, and beverages. Please be sure to let Debbie Brown (mdbrown@nycap.rr.com) know no later than this evening (Tuesday) if you plan to participate.
Held at Quigley’s Restaurant
573 Columbia Turnpike
East Greenbush, NY 12061
Members Attending (14, quorum reached): Andy Leyhane, Terry Brewer, Pat Bailey, Murray Forth, Jim Leyhane, Roberto Martinez, Ron Annis, Debbie Brown, Dick Drumm, Charlie Foote, Ray Hannan, Kevin Leyhane, Carol Orvis, Debbie Rodriguez.
Guests: Richard Zazycki.
PROGRAM — Richard Zazycki (above), executive director of Circles of Mercy, provided an updated overview of the 21-year-old family services agency that SRC has been assisting in various initiatives over recent years — such as Easter baskets for kids, Adopt-a-Family at Christmas, Back-to-School Supplies, etc. Richard noted that 87 cents of every dollar donated to Circles goes to program participants, and in the past year 7,900 service transactions involved 1,600 clients. (Click here to access his PowerPoint presentation.)
SRC will adopt two needy families for Christmas as part of Circles’ ongoing efforts to help families in need, and Columbia High School will adopt a third. Bill and April Dowd again will coordinate our club’s effort at supporting that project. We will collect and donate items from a “wish list” created by Circles volunteers after meeting with the families. Richard said the list and names of individuals in the families will be provided before Thanksgiving.
NOTES — Jim Leyhane moved, and Andy Leyhane seconded, a motion to elect Phil Kellerman president for the 2019-20 Rotary Year. Phil had been nominated by the Board of Directors for the vacant office. The motion was passed without dissent. … The final tally for our October ShelterBox fund drive is $6,340. Fourteen SRC members and one former member contributed varying amounts of money, and thanks go to all of them in carrying us beyond our $6,000 goal. The checks will be delivered by club ShelterBox liaison Bill Dowd to District 7190 ShelterBox coordinator Jack Faddegon on Friday. … In addition to the local survey being conducted by Terry Brewer, SRC has been invited to participate in a Rotary International survey addressing individual Rotarians’ volunteer activities. It’s an online survey with a November 20 deadline. Several members already have completed and submitted the form, which was emailed to all SRC members this week. … Our latest semiannual SRC Recycling Day cleared a profit of $970, according to coordinator Murray Forth, for youth scholarships despite truly inclement weather last Saturday that no doubt scared off a lot of potential recyclers compared to prior events. We will hold another such event in the spring of 2019. …
The Blue Star Mothers organization that we have assisted for several years is attempting to collect enough donated items to fill 1,000 “Freedom Boxes” for the Christmas holidays to send to military personnel around the world. SRC members are asked to bring items from a list to be posted on our website to the November 29 and/or December 6 meetings. … Two meetings are scheduled for next week. The monthly breakfast meeting will begin at 7 a.m. at the Greenbush YMCA (RSVP to Terry Brewer by Tuesday evening), and the weekly dinner meeting will begin at 6:15 p.m. at Quigley’s (RSVP to Debbie Brown by Tuesday evening). We’ll hold a discussion of “Impressions of RLI” from various members who attended different levels of this year’s Institute session. Reminders: No meeting on November 22, Thanksgiving Day. We’ll resume meeting on November 29, when District Governor Tammy Heckenberg pays an official visit. Please mark your calendars to be sure to attend that dinner.
The latest fund drive by the Southern Rensselaer County Rotary Club to help the ShelterBox disaster relief agency had a $6,000 goal. Thanks to the generosity of 14 SRC members and one former member, we not only met that goal, we exceeded it.
On Friday evening, Bill Dowd, our club’s ShelterBox liaison, delivered checks totaling $6,340 to Assistant District Governor Jack Faddegon, the ShelterBox coordinator for District 7190.
Since 2010, our club has donated about $23,000 to ShelterBox.
“Your club always warms my heart,” Jack said. “You’ve given so much to ShelterBox over the years, and it certainly is much needed considering all the simultaneous disasters going on everywhere. ShelterBox has 22 fast-response teams around the world, and all of them are deployed right now.”
The club offers its thanks to all who contributed in both large and small amounts. Every dollar goes toward the outfitting of regionally-customized ShelterBoxes to be distributed in regions hit by earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, hurricanes, and other natural disasters as well as widespread needs stemming from terrorism and warfare.
Want to know more about ShelterBox’s humanitarian work? Click here.
As most of our members know, we have been assisting the local chapter of Blue Star Mothers in a variety of ways for the past several years.
The volunteer national organization that addresses the needs of military families is in the midst of its annual drive to create and ship holiday packages called “Freedom Boxes” to active military around the world.
Donna Vickery will pay a visit from the organization at our Thursday, November 29, dinner meeting. At that time, she gladly will accept any donations from the wish list shown below. In addition, Debbie Rodriguez will accept donated items on her behalf the following week, December 6.
Donna notes, “We will be packing boxes starting November 18th , right on through until we have enough donations for 1,000 boxes. We hope to get all the boxes out by December 10 so we can get them there for Christmas. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate it. I am staying awake nights trying to come up with a way to get these soldiers boxes for Christmas.”
Southern Rensselaer County Rotary is among a small number of District 7190 clubs invited by Rotary International to participate in a new online survey.
The project seeks to assess individual Rotarians’ volunteer experiences over the past four weeks. No individual identities will be revealed in the final survey report. Even if you have not been active in a volunteer effort during that period, your survey answers will help RI understand the individual Rotary experience, so we would appreciate everyone’s involvement.
The absolute deadline for responding to the survey is Tuesday, November 20.
To fill out the survey, which should take just a few minutes, simply click here.
Despite wet, blustery conditions — that, of course, gave way to after-event sunshine — our latest “SRC Recycling Day” to support our youth scholarships program was quite successful on Saturday.
A steady stream of people anxious to rid themselves of documents, old TV sets, electronic components, etc., showed up at the Wainschaf Associates facility to keep our volunteers happy.
In fact, one person showed up with 911 pounds of documents to be shredded.
Numerous people expressed their support for this recycling effort, and for Rotary’s commitment to the community at large. A fair number of them also said “Keep the change,” and several others who had no chargeable items to recycle donated money to the effort. We’ll have a complete financial accounting by treasurer Murray Forth at next Thursday’s dinner meeting.
Among the volunteers: Murray Forth, Terry Brewer, Josh Wainman, Pat Bailey, Bill Dowd, Andy Leyhane, Mike Dewey, Ray and Lois Hannan, Debbie Rodriguez, Charlie Foote, Kevin Leyhane, Dick Drumm, Phil Kellerman, Debbie and Peter Brown, and Carol Orvis.
Here are a few other scenes from the day:
Held at Quigley’s Restaurant
573 Columbia Turnpike
East Greenbush, NY 12061
Members Attending (15, quorum reached): Andy Leyhane, Murray Forth, Pat Bailey, Peter Brown, Bill Dowd, Dick Drumm, Ray Hannan, Jim Leyhane, Roberto Martinez, Carol Orvis, Debbie Brown, Phil Kellerman, Terry Brewer, Kevin Leyhane, Charlie Foote.
Guests: None.
President Andy greeted members and led the Pledge of Allegiance. … Bill Dowd reported that our October drive to raise funds for ShelterBox had topped the $5,400 mark and he expected to reach the targeted $6,000 level this week. … Plans are on track for this Saturday’s SRC Recycling Day despite the forecast for rain. Several more volunteers are needed to staff the event, and anyone who is interested but has not yet signed up is asked to check with event coordinator Murray Forth ASAP. … Terry Brewer said he has received responses from about a dozen or so people to the club survey he distributed to members last week. He said he plans to follow up with people who have not responded so we have a better set of comments and suggestions to map out the club’s future. … Next meeting: Richard Zazycki, executive director of Circles of Mercy, our frequent partner in social aid efforts, will update us on the activities of his non-profit organization.
The program for the evening was a social one, with Kevin Leyhane leading an audio competition in which attendees were asked to identify TV show theme songs.
We had three teams competing for top honors. The winning team consisted of Andy, Phil, Terry, and Murray. Thanks to Kevin for coming up with an offbeat social activity.
Held at Quigley’s Restaurant
573 Columbia Turnpike
East Greenbush, NY 12061
Members Attending (13, quorum reached): Andy Leyhane, Murray Forth, Pat Bailey, Peter Brown, Bill Dowd, Dick Drumm, Ray Hannan, John Justino, Jim Leyhane, Roberto Martinez, Carol Orvis, Becky Raymond, Carole Spencer.
Guests (5): Dr, Martha Lepow, David Palmquist, Mr. & Mrs. Bill Nathan, Linda Decelle.
President Andy Leyhane called the meeting to order, and welcomed members and guests. … Bill Dowd reported that donations for our ShelterBox fund drive have topped $5,200 with a week remaining to reach the $6,000 goal. He reiterated that members and friends of Rotary have donated in widely varied amounts, and encouraged everyone else to donate something of any amount to help underwrite the organization’s many ongoing disaster relief efforts around the world. Donors can mail checks, made payable to ShelterBox (and are tax deductible), to Bill at 7 Hyland Circle, Troy, NY 12182, or give them to him at our November 1 meeting which will be the final day to do so. … We had 10 people enrolled in last Saturday’s Rotary Leadership Institute held at the UAlbany School of Public Health, the largest group from anywhere in District 7190. We had four new Rotaractors among our numbers, and Roberto Martinez received his certificate for completing all three levels of the program. (Click here for details of the event.) …
… SRC is working to support the Greenbush YMCA’s Caring Community Basket Brigade effort to collect, assemble, and deliver Thanksgiving baskets to needy families. Shopping lists, dropoff hours, and other items of information are included in the event flyer that has been posted on the website. Click here to see it. … Online registration is available for the annual Foundation Dinner, scheduled for Thursday, November 8, at the Glen Sanders Mansion in Scotia. … Murray Forth, winner of the raffle for a wine-pairing dinner for 12 at Cafe Capriccio in Albany, informed us the event was excellent. President Andy asked if members would like to hold another such raffle, perhaps early in the new year and the consensus was favorable. He also noted that Bell Top Elementary School may do the same thing to raise funds for the therapy dog project we are helping underwrite there. … We still need several more volunteers to staff next Saturday’s (November 3) Recycling Day. Please see Murray if interested. … Next Thursday’s dinner program will be a TV theme song quiz — table vs. table — being put together by Kevin Leyhane.
SRC member John Justino, director of the Center for Global Health at the UAlbany School of Public Health, spoke about the 6th annual World Polio Day, which was marked on Wednesday of this week. John then showed a copy of the livestream video that was created to mark the day.
John introduced Dr. Martha Lepow, a pioneer in polio research in the 1950s and ’60s. Martha, who was featured in the “History of Polio” video SRC made in cooperation with UAlbany, CASDA, and District 7190, continues to keep current about polio research and treatment, and updated attendees on the global situation, noting that endemic polio still is showing up in just three countries — Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria — after being declared eradicated in 122 other nations.
She stressed the need for ongoing vaccine programs because, while polio cannot be cured, it can be prevented. In response to questions from the audience, she explained the various types of paralytic and non-paralytic polio, and said the occasional appearances of what are described as “polio-like symptoms” in the U.S. “are very distant cousins of polio,” not the poliomyelitis strain that once was a global scourge.
Southern Rensselaer County Rotary Club 