Vol. 66 No. 5 Notes from the Podium

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President's Time

President Debbie passed the mike to AG Joe Stephen who spoke about Rotary membership. Joe urged everyone to get involved and engage young professionals to become Rotarians. If you have a good idea on how to do that, contact Joe.

Outbound student to Brazil (sponsored by the Rotary Club of Key West) managed to get all his travel items stolen while ready to depart and he needs help. We passed the hat and raised $165 to help him out. Thanks to all of you who opened your hearts and wallets.

Remember DUES ARE NOW PAST DUE. Did you remember to pay? Be sure to stop by Registration on your way out and pay NOW if you have forgotten the last time you were at the meeting!

President Debbie's 1st 5th Friday took place, yup, last Friday - Scroll down to read about it just below this blog!

ROTARY SOCIAL EVENTS: PR, Marketing and Membership social event promoted by our District. Go to the District database (DaCdb) to look up time and location. The date is August 27.

COMMUNITY SERVICE UPDATE: Intl' committee meeting is next Tuesday, ask Bill Quesenberry about time and location if you want to attend. Our club Foundation board will meet on Aug 15; VA bingo is Aug 20. We need more volunteers to help. Please sign up at the next meeting.

Birthday and Membership Anniversary: Andrea is one year older on Aug 1st and Andrew (Dixon) celebrates his BD on Aug 6. Happy BD to both. Donald Trombly has been Rotarian of our club for 7 years, and Lan Nghiem-Phu, 15. Happy anniversary!

Introducing Our Visitors and Guests

Jerry Santeiro

Visiting Rotarians today included J. W. Arnold from the Ft. Lauderdale Club, Joe Stephen from Miami Dadeland Pinecrest, Roger Langer from Miami Downtown, Jo Witz from the Miami Club and Telin Fernandez from Santurce club. Guests today included Lorraine Sheldon brought by Deena Bell. Richard DeWitt brought his son Rick DeWitt, Andrea Fusero introduced us to Joe Gulino and Greg Martini brought his guest Kathy Vlahovic.

We like having all these visitors - Come back again soon.

Happy $$$

Dr. Randy, again does what he does best today: Groh scholarships. Deena Bell was happy that her 1st community service meeting at her house turned into a social event. That will happen again once monthly. JB Spence is real happy that he received his social security check this month. Someone remarked that he needs to make sure that the check doesn't bounce before declaring his happiness. Bill Quesenberry was really happy that he was able to drop Woody who suffer a paralyzing injury from playing rugby to his rehabilitative session at 27th Ave. and US-1. He urged us to help if we can. Woody, despite his serious injury, remains very optimistic. Walter Alvarez was happy of his involvement with the Dade Heritage Trust of Dade County, and that it gets strong endorsement from our club's speaker of today. Jay Guarch gave us more good news about his daughter. She's now moved into a wheelchair and has seen some movement in her left foot. She allowed the driver of the vehicle that seriously injured her, an 85 year old pediatrician, to visit with her for a few minutes. Jay thought that was very Rotarian like and happy about it. Hadley Williams was happy he ran into none other than our own Groh at the airport in Massachusetts. Tom Dixon was happy that he got a referral resulting from a presentation he made last week. Our Prez Debbie was very happy for the cats she (along with Deena Bell) gave temporary shelter in her garage to escape being spayed by some "cat spayer maniac" lurking in her neighborhood. Dr. Randy gave his $5 to invite any interested people on his photo safari October 29 thru November 12 in Zambia. Call him if you want more information! And remember, keep on smiling because happiness pays!

Working Rotarians - August 4t h, 2011

Greeter - Steven Spann

Registration - Aaron Glasser

Collections - Jorge Teruel & John Porro

Head Table - Rodney Langer

Special Needs - Frank Sexton

Open the Meeting - Jack Witty

Invocation - Steve Magen heimer

Pledge - Gene Witherspoon

DeWitt Law Silver Dollars - Carol Alexander

Given To - Terry Long & Margarita Tonkinson

Pin Drawing Gift - Margarita Tonkinson

Pin Drawing Winner - Jack Witty

50/50 Raffle - Gloria Burns & THE Donald Trombly

50/50 Winner - Rolf Frankfurter (donated back to scholarship)

4-Way Test - Abe Horowitz

Today's Program

Katy Sorenson

"The Good Government Initiative"

Katy Sorenson is President and CEO of the Good Governement Initiative program at the University of Miami. She spent 16 years as a County Commissioner at Miami Dade county where she did some good work, but she did not have the "fire in the belly" to serve another term. Her passion for public service influenced her to begin an educational program for elected officials. She developed this idea from attending a conference at Harvard where she got the initial inspiration. During this conference, she recounted that she met a rare dual appearance of the two well known "Jesses:" Jesse Ventura and Jesse Jackson. What a combination was what she remembered.Katy wanted to meet head on with the problem of correction in city government, but she wanted to have an affiliation with the University of Miami. Motivated, she began a fundraising effort for her project. Once reliably ensured of success in her new endeavor, she announced her withdrawal from running for re-election.

With advice from former professors at Harvard and other regional officials, Katy moved forward with her regional effort to conduct interviews with elected officials. Her program began with a class having 19 attendees covering the subjects of ethics, budget, finance, history, cultural, economic development and ownership. One of her goals is to form venues to exchange ideas. Due to the spirit of Florida's sunshine law, her class does not permit individuals originating from the same government body. Essentially, this is a diverse regional effort with participants from Palm Beach, Broward, Dade and Monroe counties, including two state representatives.The ultimate goal of her program is to encourage beneficial relationships among all elected officials. A first retreat weekend is planned at the end of August after which class will progress to September and beyond.

Katy calls this course "The Grand Experiment." There are many components to this program and she hopes it will ultimately "sow the seed" for positive community development and bring the entrepreneurship back to the government. Katy is excited to embark on this new trail in our community that she hopes it will have a lasting effect on our local government to result in improvements in how it operates.

NEXT WEEK'S PROGRAM: "The Smile Trek: a 5,000-mile walk through SE Asia in an effort to raise funds for facial reconstructive surgeries in the developing world"
Speaker: Winston Fiore, Sgt/USMC

Thought of the Week

by Abraham Horowitz

"The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy and the time of optimism is the best time to sell"

Sir John Templeton

Scene Scenes

See you next week,

same time, same place,
same great bunch of Rotarians!