Happy Tuesday, Rotarians.

Need to Know:

1. Stella Harrison, who has visited our club several times, has filled out an application for membership. Stella works for Legal Shield and recently moved to Marshfield from Oregon. There is one week left in the two-week comment period. Anyone with comments, reservations or questions about Stella’s suitability for membership should contact Scott Jones within the next week.
2. Our next board meeting will be at noon on Wednesday, August 19^th (tomorrow) at DD Hamilton.
3. Upcoming speakers: on August 25th, new Marshfield Schools Assistant Superintendent David Steward will be speaking. Our club assembly will be on September 1^st. Our speaker on September 8^th will be Steve Dulle, our Rotary District Governor.
4. The next Rotary Park workday will be Saturday, September 12^th. More details to follow.
5. News on our Don’t Meth with Us Project: Speaker David Parnell will be in the area on the week of September 14^th. Our club is sponsoring him at a presentation at Strafford Schools. Per Amy Wilkerson, the club will also sponsor him for a community event on Wednesday, September 16^th in Marshfield.
6. Go ahead and put this on your calendar now: our 3^rd Annual Romance Raffle will be held on Saturday, February 13, 2016.
7. Go ahead and put this on your calendar now: the Marshfield Easter Egg Hunt will be held on Saturday, March 12, 2016, with a rain date of March 19^th.

Meeting Recap

Our fearless leader was absent today, so Amy Wilkerson was in charge.

We had several visitors. In addition to our speaker, new member applicant Stella Harrison was present. Tonya Sloan, who owns her own identity theft prevention business, visited our club today. She found us through the club website.

Danny O’Neal’s wife, Diane, was “Driving Mr. Danny” today (hat-tip to Leslie Thomas for the joke). Danny recently had neck surgery. Despite the neck brace, Danny made it to our meeting. Get well soon.

Our speaker today was William Cologna. William is the current president of the Sunrise Rotary Club in Springfield. His club sent him to the Rotary International Conference in São Paulo, Brazil. Approximately 15,000 Rotarians from around the world attended the conference. There was a House of Friendship featuring food and entertainment from various cultures. There was a parade of flags featuring a flag from every country with a Rotary club. There were numerous speakers. William was particularly impressed with a couple of 10 year-old speakers; one spoke about “How old do you have to be to make a difference?” The other speaker was a girl from London, who after the death of her sister was able to raise $125,000 for the hospice who cared for her sister. William was also impressed with Oscar Arias, former president of Costa Rica. In 1948, Costa Rica voted to disband its military and allocate the entire defense budget to education. As a result, Costa Rica has one of the most balanced economies and educated population in Central America. Mr. Arias is a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his efforts to end war by education and raising people up.

The RI Conference will be held in Atlanta in 2017.

Final Thoughts

“Good wishes alone will not ensure peace.”

Alfred Nobel (1833-1896)

If you don’t know much about Alfred Nobel, I encourage you to find out more about him. At lot of people don’t know that the man responsible for creating the most famous award for efforts in the promotion of peace, made his fortune as the inventor of dynamite. Nobel set aside the bulk of his estate to create 5 Nobel Prizes (a 6^th for economics would be added much later), one of which was the Nobel Peace Prize. He did not explain his reasoning for creating the Peace Prize but historians speculate that it was both because of his friendship with famed pacifist Bertha von Suttner and fears of how he would be remembered. When his brother died, a French newspaper mistakenly published an obituary for Alfred Nobel with the headline “The merchant of death is dead”. Alfred Nobel apparently read this and was disappointed that this would be his lasting legacy. There are lots of sources for info, here is one: www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Bernhard-Nobel
Yours in Rotary Service,

Kristin Grace Krebs