Buy a ticket to India, get a no-strings free stay

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Marker shows location of Chennai on India’s southeast coast.

To the Southern Rensselaer County Rotary Club:

Greetings from the Rotary Club of Madras South in Chennai, India.

We were chartered in 1960 [like the SRC] and we are celebrating our diamond jubilee in 2019-20. To share our joy on this great occasion, we are organizing a four-day fun and fellowship event in Chennai from December 18-22. We are inviting all clubs across the world who were chartered in 1960 like ours to share this special bonding.

Screen Shot 2019-05-01 at 2.40.45 PMWe are hosting this event at NO COST for the participants, except travel. We will take care of accommodation, food, transport, sight-seeing and fellowship during your stay at Chennai. And, we are working out post-tour options for whoever is interested, on a paid basis.

We organized a similar international fellowship event in in January 2000. Twenty-one  Rotarians and Anns from seven countries — Argentina, Australia, France, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and Malaysia — joined us. It was four days of great fun, fellowship, and bonding for lifelong friendships with visiting tourist and cultural attractions, service projects, and shopping expeditions.

Some feedback from Rotarians who came in 2000:

• Hans Setz from Switzerland said,  “It wasn’t a travel agent waiting for us at the airport, but an ex-Rotary Governor and his wife.” Hans returned three years later to attend the wedding of a daughter of another Rotarian.

• Liz and Olof  Madebrink of Sweden said, “Our trip was like a dream from start to finish. We had a wonderful host couple who did everything for us.”

We invite you and your members to join us in December 2019. Due to logistics and other constraints we will be hosting maximum of 30 members on a first-come, first-served basis.

We will send you more details soon, meanwhile communicate this to your members and let us know who are all interested to join us. Looking forward for your reply and see you all soon in Chennai to experience “Incredible India” and our hospitality.

Warm regards,

Rotarian K. Saravanan    
President, Rotary Club of Madras South

Here’s your updated calendar for May

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What’s coming up in May? Here’s the latest calendar update. If you want to get details of any events, simply click on the colored links.

MAY

02 — Dinner meeting, 6:15 p.m., Quigley’s, East Greenbush (Topic: “Exploring Yoga,” with Becky Raymond) Note: Dinner after the presentation.
03-05 — Conference of Clubs, The Essex Culinary Resort and Spa, 70 Essex Way, Essex Junction, VT.
05 — Work day for Regional Foodbank, Patroon Land Farm, 132 Ketcham Road, Voorheesville
06 — Ramadan begins
09 — Dinner meeting, Quigley’s, East Greenbush (Topic: “An Hour of Live Music,” Phil Kellerman & Friends) Note: Pizza-and-wings member dinner from 5:45 to 6:15 p.m., concert at 6:30.
11 — 2nd annual District Peace Summit for Youth, Schenectady (details here)
12 — Mothers Day
16 — Dinner meeting, 6:15 p.m., Quigley’s, East Greenbush (Topic: “The RYLA Experience,” with several student participants)
18 —Recycling & Shredding Day, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Wainschaf Warehouse, Rensselaer (details here)
18 — Annual District Day of Service, three locations
18 — Armed Forces Day
23 — Dinner meeting, 6:15 p.m., Quigley’s, East Greenbush (Topic: Peter Berry, SRC’s newest member)
27 — Memorial Day
30 — Dinner meeting, 6:15 p.m., Quigley’s, East Greenbush (Topic TBD)

 

Rotaract looking for help down on the farm

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Screen Shot 2019-04-29 at 1.56.13 PMThe Danes Rotaract club is inviting SRC Rotarians to join them when they lend a hand at the Regional Foodbank’s farm from 10 a.m. to noon on Sunday, May 5.

Produce from the farm, officially known as the Patroon Land Farm, goes to more than 1,000 agencies in 23 counties throughout New York State. The farm is located at 132 Ketcham Road, Voorheesville. Click here for directions.

If you’re interested in investing an hour or two, or have questions about the project, please email Lindsey Riback of the Danes Rotaract as soon as possible.

 

Pre-dinner ‘chair yoga’ on Thursday’s menu

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Screen Shot 2019-04-29 at 10.38.25 AMFeeling a little stressed? Come to this Thursday’s meeting at Quigley’s and let fellow SRC member Becky Raymond, who is a yoga instructor, lead you in a brief “chair yoga” exercise before dinner. Guaranteed to make you feel a lot better.

This particular form of yoga, while less physically strenuous than what we might think of  as “traditional” yoga, is no less relaxing and can be as beneficial.

Following the session, we’ll enjoy  a hearty dinner featuring eggplant Parmesan, antipasto salad, chef’s choice of side dishes, bread, dessert, and beverages.

If your name is not on the following list and you plan to join us — non-members are, as always welcome — please be sure to email dinner coordinator Debbie Brown at mdbrown@nycap.rr.com no later than Tuesday evening so we have sufficient food and seating for all who wish to attend.

Bailey, Pat
Brown, Debbie
Brown, Peter
Dowd, Bill
Drumm, Dick
Foote, Charlie
Forth, Murray
Hannan, Ray
Kellerman, Phil
Leyhane, Jim
Martinez, Roberto
Raymond, Becky
Rodriguiz, Debbie

Annual ‘Day of Service’ offers 3 choices this year

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This year’s District 7190 “Day of Service” will offer Rotarians the opportunity to choose from among three different projects on Saturday, May 18.

• In Glenville, at the Animal Protective Foundation break room, we can paint and install new kitchen cabinets. The room is small, so we only need about three volunteers on this project.

• In Scotia, the Route 50 railroad bridge needs painting or applying graffiti-proof decals, depending on progress of the project. Volunteers will be working on a 15-foot-high platform lift, so be ready for that. We need about six to eight volunteers.

• In Saratoga Springs, the facilities that support the Back Stretch Community need our service. They provide housing for and support to Saratoga Race Course workers and their families during the racing season. We will provide a yard cleanup requiring 30 or more volunteers, plus painting projects on various buildings inside and outside for five to volunteers. There also is chainsaw work if you have your own chainsaw, plus demo work and wall re-construction for about six to 10 volunteers.

As always, you can come when you can and leave when you must, but the work programs start at 9 a.m. and end at 4 p.m. A simple lunch will be served at all locations.

Click here to respond to event chair Bruce McConnelee and let him know which project you’d like to aid.

 

SRC website adds another name to visitors list

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The official WordPress.com indicator of an international visitor to our website.

Over the past few years, the SRC website has received plenty of  non-member visitors.

In addition to those from  throughout the U.S., we have had visitors from such far-flung spots as Canada, Mexico, England, Scotland, Ireland, Israel, France, Costa Rica, Brazil, Colombia, Morocco, Ghana, the Netherlands, Hungary, Japan, the Philippines, and maybe a few others I’ve forgotten along the way.

Today, we can add another Middle Eastern visitor — two, actually — now that we’ve been visited by a pair of people from Jordan. To them we say, “HELLO, JORDAN!” and thanks for looking us up.

FYI, the first Rotary club in Jordan was created in the capital city of Amman, chartered with 25 members on April 13, 1956.

— Bill Dowd, webmaster

 

Today is the 65th anniversary of polio vaccine trials

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One of the 1954 polio vaccine clinics in New York.

• From The History Channel

On this day in 1954, the Salk polio vaccine field trials, involving 1.8 million children, begin at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, VA.

Children in the United States, Canada and Finland participated in the trials, which used for the first time the now-standard double-blind method, whereby neither the patient nor attending doctor knew if the inoculation was the vaccine or a placebo.

On April 12, 1955, researchers announced the vaccine was safe and effective and it quickly became a standard part of childhood immunizations in America. In the ensuing decades, polio vaccines would all but wipe out the highly contagious disease in the Western Hemisphere.

Polio, known officially as poliomyelitis, is an infectious disease that has existed since ancient times and is caused by a virus. It occurs most commonly in children and can result in paralysis. The disease reached epidemic proportions throughout the first half of the 20th Century. During the 1940s and 1950s, polio was associated with the iron lung, a large metal tank designed to help polio victims suffering from respiratory paralysis breathe.

President Franklin Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio in 1921 at the age of 39 and was left paralyzed from the waist down and forced to use leg braces and a wheelchair for the

Rotary has been working to eradicate polio for more than 30 years. Since 1979, we have vaccinated more than 2.5 billion children, and the dread disease has been virtually eliminated everywhere on Earth except for Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. But we haven’t done it alone. Click here to see a timeline for our partnerships.

rest of his life. In 1938, Roosevelt helped found the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, later renamed the March of Dimes. The organization was responsible for funding much of the research concerning the disease, including the Salk vaccine trials.

The man behind the original vaccine was New York-born physician and epidemiologist Jonas Salk (1914-95). Salk’s work on an anti-influenza vaccine in the 1940s, while at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, led him, in 1952 at the University of Pittsburgh, to develop the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), based on a killed-virus strain of the disease. The 1954 field trials that followed, the largest in U.S. history at the time, were led by Salk’s former University of Michigan colleague Dr. Thomas Francis Jr.

In the late 1950s, Polish-born physician and virologist Albert Sabin (1906-1993) tested an oral polio vaccine (OPV) he had created from a weakened live virus. The vaccine, easier to administer and cheaper to produce than Salk’s, became available for use in America in the early 1960s and eventually replaced Salk’s as the vaccine of choice in most countries.

Today, polio has been eliminated throughout much of the world due to the vaccine; however, there still is no cure for the disease and it persists in a small number of countries in Africa and Asia.

 

Meeting Clipboard: 4/25/19

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SRC ClipboardHeld at Quigley’s Restaurant
573 Columbia Turnpike
East Greenbush, NY 12061

Members Attending (12): Andy Leyhane, Murray Forth, Jim Leyhane, Phil Kellerman, Bill Dowd, Debbie Brown, Peter Brown, Debbie Rodriguez, Peter Berry, Dick Drumm, Roberto Martinez, Maggie Forth.

Guests (1): Jeremy Forth.

Screen Shot 2019-03-28 at 10.32.11 PMMEETING NOTES: President Andy greeted members and guest Jeremy Forth. … The main order of business was presented, at Andy’s request, by Bill Dowd: Nomination of a slate of officers for the 2019-20 Rotary Year. Although special, personalized invitations had been sent to all members to participate — especially those members who rarely participate in club activities, we barely put together a quorum. As Bill explained, all SRC members had been forwarded a list of candidates to be voted on at this meeting to accomplish two things: (1.) to put a Board in place in time for our application for a District Grant by the June 1 deadline, and (2.) to put a presidential succession plan in place before the end of the current fiscal year as required by our Bylaws. Bill also noted that nominating Dick Drumm as President-elect would put him in line to be club president during our 60th anniversary year — an unusual combination of a charter member serving as president for a 60th anniversary, certainly a first. The slate of candidates for 2019-20, approved without dissent by those in attendance and giving us the maximum allowable of 11 members:

President: Phil Kellerman
President-elect: Dick Drumm
Vice President: Terry Brewer
Immediate Past President: Andy Leyhane
Secretary: Pat Bailey
Treasurer: Murray Forth
At-Large Members: Bill Dowd, Jim Leyhane, Roberto Martinez, Debbie Rodriguez, Dean Calamaras

Recycling Icon… Murray Forth said he will circulate next week a volunteer signup sheet to work the Saturday, May 18, “Recycling & Shredding Day,” a major fundraiser for scholarships and youth programs. … … Bill also reported that he and Terry Brewer, the District 7190 membership chair, would be attending an organizational meeting on Monday as part of an effort to revive a Troy club to succeed the one that went out of existence several years ago. If it comes to fruition, SRC will be the sponsoring club. All discussions so far have been via electronic means; this will be the first in-person session. …

Screen Shot 2019-04-05 at 1.02.22 PMIt was reported that Ray Hannan successfully underwent a medical procedure this week, and hopes to resume Rotary activities next week. … The Advertiser published our full news release on our Oley Foundation fundraiser, “An Hour of Live Music with Phil Kellerman & Friends,” scheduled for Thursday, May 9. We will have a members-only pizza-and-wings dinner from 5:45 to 6:15 p.m., concert at 6:30. … Next Thursday’s dinner meeting will begin with Becky Raymond’s brief  “Introduction to Yoga” session, THEN dinner. Please be sure to RSVP when dinner coordinator Debbie Brown sends out her weekly request for invitations.

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PROGRAM: Bill Dowd presented his 5th annual Great North American Whizbang Trivia Test, a friendly competition won by a different person each year. That held true again, with the team of Maggie and Jeremy Forth edging out Debbie Rodriguez in a tiebreaker session.

The winners received a pristine copy of “Ken Jennings’s Trivia Almanac,” written by the all-time winningest contestant on TV’s long-running “Jeopardy” game show series.

 

Thursday Special: Voting and Competing

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The top prize for Thursday’s trivia test.

We’ll be doing double duty at Thursday’s dinner meeting — voting for a slate of nominees for the 2019-20 SRC Board of Directors, and competing in a friendly battle during the “5th annual Great North American Whizbang Trivia Test.”

To accomplish the former, we need a quorum of at least 12 SRC members to be present. To accomplish the latter, the more Rotarians and friends and family the merrier to take a crack at winning the title and a special prize.

So, as always, we need an advance headcount to be sure we have enough food on the buffet and seats around the tables. Please be sure dinner coordinator Debbie Brown (email: mdbrown@nycap.rr.com) has your RSVP no later than Tuesday evening.

Meanwhile, here is the slate of nominees for 2019-20, with the possibility one more At-Large nomination will be made at Thursday’s meeting as permitted by our Bylaws:

Screen Shot 2019-03-28 at 10.32.11 PMSRC BOARD OF DIRECTORS NOMINEES

President: Phil Kellerman

President-elect: Dick Drumm

Vice President: Terry Brewer

Immediate Past President: Andy Leyhane

Secretary: Pat Bailey

Treasurer: Murray Forth

At-Large Members: Bill Dowd, Jim Leyhane, Roberto Martinez, Dean Calamaras