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 Dear Rotarians of E-Club of Houston and Guests,
As I write this message for the month of June, I find myself happy and a little bit sad. I’m happy because during the year as President of this Club, I have been privileged to see how much good Rotarians of our club have done in this world. I’ve been able to witness the smiling faces of people we have helped and which lives we have touched. I truly believe we have the best club in the world. During my encounters with the members of our club, I experience them as friendly and genuinely caring about each other. We together are making a difference in our communities and in the world.
In the incoming days, I will update our club goals for the year in Rotary Club Central as well as the document about the club’s humanitarian footprint.
Our incoming Rotary International President’s theme is ”Be a Gift to the World.” Using their talents, expertise, and leadership, Rotary members worldwide are asked to be gifts to the world this upcoming 2015-16 Rotary year.
Our next major fundraiser named “Our Gift to Nepal” is planned to be held on July 16th, 2015. Please check the information on our Website and on our Facebook about this fundraiser. We need 100% member participation in some fashion to make this event a success.
On June 20th, it will be my pleasant duty to pass on the baton of leadership of this great club to our incoming President Michael Mebes. I hope to see many of you on the installation Ceremony of the Club Officers.
To prospective and interested people reading this message please know that we welcome new members. Contact us and join us.
Yours in Rotary Service,
Dr. Sofka Werkmeister
President 2014-15
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Rotary e-Club of Houston Installation 2015-2016 Officers
Saturday, June 20 at 11:00am in CDT
11407 Hylander, Houston, TX 77070 (home of PDG Ed Charlesworth and Robin Charlesworth)
Our installation of officers will be conducted by AG Wally Kronzer and it will be a joint installation for the Rotary e-Club of Houston and the Rotary Club of Houston NW Sunset. The lunch will be catered by Soto's Cantina, owned by Rtn. Juan Soto in the Houston NW Sunset Club. Rtn. Dree Miller has issued an invitation to club members so please remember to rsvp. Since we have food to be catered we must know how many are attending. Hope to see you this coming Saturday!
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Celebrate the new Rotary Year on June 26 with a wonderful installation gala at Safari Texas Ranch for incoming District Governor Dr. Nick Giannone, First Lady Fabiola Giannone, and your 2015-16 team of District officers! Arrive at 6:30 for fun fellowship at the Reception, which includes a tasty appetizer table and cash bar. 7:00 p.m. begins the delectable seated dinner, featuring Safari Salad, Beef and Chicken Marsala, with potatoes, mixed vegetables, rolls, tea, coffee, and two bottles of wine (1 white/1 red). As you top it all off with Chocolate Decadence Cake, the installation program will begin, which will be followed by dancing from 10:00 p.m. until you’re ready to call it a night. DO REGISTER NOW!
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This week's speaker seems timely with the installation of new Rotary club officers and the new Rotary theme of "Be a gift to the World". The new Rotary year brings new opportunities for serving others in need, developing leadership skills, touching the lives of younger generations, modeling ethics and sharing the Rotary Four-Way-Test, and creating new ideas about sharing Rotary. Incoming officers are ready to assume leadership for their clubs and all members may contribute to the direction the club moves toward growing membership, selecting service projects, and fully participating in club activities. Look at yourself and how you have something worthwhile to share and contribute. After all, that is why you joined Rotary!
Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius. It's a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk. She is the author of 'Eat, Pray, Love,' Elizabeth Gilbert has thought long and hard about some big topics. Her fascinations: genius, creativity and how we get in our own way when it comes to both. This Ted Talk was posted in February, 2009.
Why you should listen
Elizabeth Gilbert faced down a premidlife crisis by doing what we all secretly dream of -- running off for a year. Her travels through Italy, India and Indonesia resulted in the megabestselling and deeply beloved memoir Eat, Pray, Love, about her process of finding herself by leaving home.
She's a longtime magazine writer -- covering music and politics for Spin and GQ -- as well as a novelist and short-story writer. Her books include the story collection Pilgrims, the novel Stern Men (about lobster fishermen in Maine) and a biography of the woodsman Eustace Conway, called The Last American Man. Her work has been the basis for two movies so far (Coyote Ugly, based on her own tale of working at the famously raunchy bar in New York City), and Eat, Pray, Love, with the part of Gilbert played by Julia Roberts. Not bad for a year off.
In 2010, Elizabeth published Committed, a memoir exploring her ambivalent feelings about the institution of marriage. And her 2013 novel, The Signature of All Things, is "a sprawling tale of 19th century botanical exploration."
Gilbert also owns and runs the import shop Two Buttons in Frenchtown, New Jersey.
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Posted by Barry Smith
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This is a wonderful story and it is true. You will be glad that you read it, and I hope you will pass it on.
It happened every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun resembled a giant orange and was starting to dip into the blue ocean. Old Ed came strolling along the beach to his favorite pier. Clutched in his bony hand was a bucket of shrimp. Ed walks out to the end of the pier, where it seems he almost has the world to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now.
Everybody's gone, except for a few joggers on the beach. Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts...and his bucket of shrimp. Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky a thousand white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier.
Before long, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds. As he does, if you listen closely, you can hear him say with a smile, 'Thank you. Thank you.'
In a few short minutes the bucket is empty. But Ed doesn't leave. He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place. When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach, a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the stairs, and then they, too, fly away. And old Ed quietly makes his way down to the end of the beach and on home.
If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like 'a funny old duck,' as my dad used to say. Or, to onlookers, he's just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding the seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.
To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty. They can seem altogether unimportant ....maybe even a lot of nonsense.
Old folks often do strange things, at least in the eyes of Boomers and Busters. Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down there in Florida ... That's too bad. They'd do well to know him better.
His full name: Eddie Rickenbacker. He was a famous hero in World War I, and then he was in WWII. On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his seven-member crew went down. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft.
Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger and thirst. By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food.
No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were or even if they were alive. Every day across America millions wondered and prayed that Eddie Rickenbacker might somehow be found alive.
The men adrift needed a miracle. That afternoon they had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle. They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose. Time dragged on.
All he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft...suddenly Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap. It was a seagull!
Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck. He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal of it - a very slight meal for eight men. Then they used the intestines for bait. With it, they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait....and the cycle continued. With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued after 24 days at sea.
Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first life-saving seagull... And he never stopped saying, 'Thank you.' That's why almost every Friday night he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart full of gratitude.
Reference: (Max Lucado, "In The Eye of the Storm", pp...221, 225-226)
PS: Eddie Rickenbacker was the founder of Eastern Airlines. Before WWI he was race car driver. In WWI he was a pilot and became America's first ace.
In WWII he was an instructor and military adviser, and he flew missions with the combat pilots. Eddie Rickenbacker is a true American hero. And now you know another story about the trials and sacrifices that brave men have endured for your freedom.
As you can see, I chose to pass it on. It is a great story that many don't know...You've got to be careful with old guys; you just never know what they have done during their lifetime.
Shared by J. Barry Smith (spouse of our e-club member Vivan Smith)
Governor District 6900 in 1995-96 www.district6900.org
Member: Sandy Springs Rotary Club President: 1985-1986 & 2012-2013: www.sandyspringsrotary.org
International Service Chair 2014-15.
Honorary Member: Emory-Druid Hills Rotary Club
D6900 Future Planning Committee
Treasurer: Rotarian Action Group for Literacy. www.litrag.org
Executive Comm, POR Chair 2015 - Past Officers Reunion. www.rotaryreunion.org
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Dear Rotary friends ... For those who wish to volunteer with clean up in Wimberley & the Hays County area, please go to the Official Volunteer Resource Center at the Cypress Creek Church, 211 Stillwater, Wimberley, TX (located in central Hays County in the heart of the Texas Hill Country between Austin & San Antonio, only 16 miles from San Marcos): www.CityOfWimberley.com Please sign in & track your hours as a volunteer. There is limited access to the area on the roads. Please go in groups, so that there are fewer cars. Wear proper clothing (Rotary shirts & hats), take bug repellent & sunscreen. Your best way is to go to Kyle, TX & then go through Kyle to Wimberley: www.gosur.com/map/ It takes longer, but roads are in good condition. Local Rotarian contact: Assistant District 5840 Governor Jeremiah Pizana: 512-787-7159.
DONATION$: A collaborative team of D5840, D5870 & D5890 is establishing a Special Fund to receive donations. The Special Fund will support long-term Community needs. Clubs may help by fundraising in their geographical areas & in their other areas of influence … & sending donations &/or directing donors to the Special Fund (as soon as the specifics are announced at www.Rotary5840.org).
Yours in Rotary Service- Janet Livingston District Governor, 2014-2015 D5840
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On July 19, 1910, the governor of the U.S. state of Washington proclaimed the nation’s first “Father’s Day.” However, it was not until 1972, 58 years after President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day official, that the day became a nationwide holiday in the United States. On July 5, 1908, a West Virginia church sponsored the nation’s first event explicitly in honor of fathers, a Sunday sermon in memory of the 362 men who had died in the previous December’s explosions at the Fairmont Coal Company mines in Monongah, but it was a one-time commemoration and not an annual holiday. The next year, a Spokane, Washington woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to establish an official equivalent to Mother’s Day for male parents. She went to local churches, the YMCA, shopkeepers and government officials to drum up support for her idea, and she was successful: Washington State celebrated the nation’s first statewide Father’s Day on July 19, 1910. Slowly, the holiday spread. In 1916, President Wilson honored the day by using telegraph signals to unfurl a flag in Spokane when he pressed a button in Washington, D.C. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge urged state governments to observe Father’s Day. However, many men continued to disdain the day. As one historian writes, they “scoffed at the holiday’s sentimental attempts to domesticate manliness with flowers and gift-giving, or they derided the proliferation of such holidays as a commercial gimmick to sell more products–often paid for by the father himself.”
Around the world, people celebrate Fathers Day to honor dads and to express their love and affection for them. It may be noted that the date of Father's Day festival in not fixed and different countries around the world celebrate Father Day on different times of the year. As a Father's Day tradition, people in US and Canada, along with their Dads, pay tribute to grandfather, stepfather, foster father, uncle or men who plays the Father figure role in their lives. The tradition of celebrating Fathers Day in Canada has been influenced from US. People in Canada too wear roses to express gratitude and love for their father as their US counterparts. The event is popularly observed as a time for family reunion as well, with children staying away from families coming together to celebrate the day with their fathers and other loved ones; Paying tribute by giving out donations in the name of their fathers or by performing acts of service; Dining out. Business in restaurants and eating joints witness a huge rush on the occasion.
Sometimes, even the manner of Father's Day celebration differ, what is common everywhere though is the spirit of the festival. In countries across the globe people take opportunity of Father's Day to honor their dad with cards, chocolates, flowers and other gift of love. Spending time with dad and indulging in fun-filled activities is another common feature of Father's Day celebration around the world.
Several clubs, schools and cultural societies in United Kingdom and Ireland, Australia, South Africa organize Fathers Day parties and get-togethers and provide people an opportunity to celebrate the day in a wide scale to stress the importance of Father's role in the development of the family and the society as a whole. The effort to spread a sense of responsibility and devotion to fathers are also made besides, children who in turn are encouraged to pay full attention and respect to their father.
The occasion in Australia is celebrated privately in households. Breakfast meeting for families is also a common affair of Father Day celebrations in Australia.
Many in South Africa go out for picnic, fishing or just for a meal in restaurant.
Celebrating Father's Day is a new concept in India and highly influenced by the U.S. celebrations. It is perhaps not even a decade old. The idea of honoring fathers has been appreciated by Indians as well to a large extent like all other countries. The event is marked by expressing gratitude for fathers. Father's Day celebration in India takes place in the same way as in UK or US though in a limited way. Awareness about Fathers Day festival is much greater in metropolitan cities and bigger towns due to the greater exposure of people to the western cultures and is fast catching up with people in smaller towns and cities of India as well. The idea is to instill noble values and principles in children to pay due respect to the elders especially dads and understand the importance of a family.
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Mark Little ( Rotary Club of Norwich St Edmund, England ) shares this story after visiting the Bakhita House - a trafficking shelter in London. There is a Rotary Action Group called "Rotarians against Child Slavery" and many Rotarians have taken an active interest in protecting children from abuse and slavery. In District 5890 Rtn. Irene Hickey is investigating what we can do in the Houston area to assist victims of sex trafficking.
Written by Mark Little for the RAGCS newsletter:
I hadn’t heard of Bakhita House, until I attended the Santa Marta Conference on Human Trafficking in London last December. I learnt that Bakhita House is a Shelter in London which will soon be providing accommodation, care and rehabilitation for up to 12 female survivors of human trafficking and slavery. Now a Trafficking Shelter is quite a unique feature in the UK, so I promised myself that I would check the place out.
On 28th May three RACSRAG members accompanied me to Bakhita House where we were given a tour of the House and its facilities by Project Manager, Karen Anstiss. The House, which takes its name from St Josephine Bakhita, a former Sudanese slave, is owned by the Archdiocese of Westminster and managed by Caritas Westminster. It will provide assistance to the most vulnerable and traumatised individuals who have experienced human trafficking, especially those who fall outside the existing structures of support.
Karen Anstiss provides a powerful and wonderful insight into the work of Bakhita House.
Now to hear from the Project Manager of the Bakhita House, Karen Anstiss:
Welcome to Bakhita House. We hope this will be a home for many over the coming years, a place to rest and be respected. A community atmosphere which encourages restoration.
Why is Bakhita House necessary? Well let me take an example of my everyday life which I can easily take for granted but let’s compare it to Kasia’s, a trafficked victim.
My Journey to work.
When I wake up, I have normally had eight hours sleep, I am in a safe warm cosy place. I walk to the bathroom and as I do I look down, I am reminded that this seasons colour is orange by the paint on my nails!
Kasia is woken up by Sebastian her trafficker. She is in a room with three other women and two beds, no heating. She has had three hours sleep having worked the previous day from 10am until 10pm in a brothel and then on the streets from 11pm until 3am. Kasia looks down as she walks to the bathroom and sees fresh bruises barely covering old bruises from clients the day before. The bruises remind her that Sebastian owns her but if a client pays for her services for a short time he owns her, she has no rights to say no to anything and the bruises are proof of this.
After a hot shower I choose something to wear for the day, it will be the colour for the season clean and appropriate for the weather conditions. On the way to the bus stop my head is full, hoping I get a seat and then when I change to the tube upping my hopes to a seat and a free newspaper.
Kasia has had a cold shower and is putting on clothes chosen by Sebastian. She would never have picked such clothes and they were not even warm enough for this country. Although
skimpy they did hide much of her bruising, so at least she would not put off the clients. She struggles to dress as the last client of the night punched her in the ribs when she indicated to him he should use a condom. She would never dare ask to go to a doctor even though each day a bit more of her body hurt inside and out.
I am on the tube, it’s a good day, a seat a free paper and relative peace whilst I travel to work. Now my thoughts are of what I will eat for breakfast and if AJ and Anna will want to pop out for lunch, my thoughts revolve happily around food, my dreams today easily achievable.
Kasia is squeezed into the back of a car with three other women, no one talks, no one wants to upset Sebastian or his girlfriend, both being more than capable of dealing out instant punishment as already proved on several occasions. Kasia’s thoughts today are, can she make enough money so Sebastian is not angry and won’t therefore send someone to punish her family in her own country. Her family did not deserve to be hurt because she did not work hard enough. Her thoughts are if enough clients buy me my family stay safe, her own safety never enters her mind.
I arrive at Bakhita House, the calm peaceful atmosphere envelopes me as I walk through the door, kick off my shoes and put my slippers on. Smell of fresh flowers and of breakfast cooking make me smile. Women’s chatter drifting through the house makes me think about family and friends I feel like I am home, it’s safe and filled with people who care about each other.
Kasia enters the brothel, the smell of last night’s activities and very cheap perfume fills the air, stale cigarette smoke hangs in the air. In the room which is hers for the next twelve hours the bin overflows with used condoms, a relief that at least some men are using them. The woman in charge is barking orders to Kasia and the others about cleaning duties. All the women have the same haunted look, Kasia’s thoughts are ,only nineteen working hours ahead and may be today a small gap for resting.
So for many years Kasias story has been a reality in this country and many others. Whilst a Police officer I often worked alongside people from the church, whilst working together we came to realise that a Bakhita House was very much needed.
A place to be safe, where the church and the Police can work together over a period of time to enable those like Kasia to move on, to restore themselves and so have a future.
To try and combat the crime by taking Kasia’s story and finding all the Sebastian’s that need to be dealt with.
To have the calm caring nature of the sisters to restore faith to the Kasia’s so they can move on independently.
The best thing in life is actually life. So Bakhita House wants Kasia’s daily journey to be like that of mine, a journey worth living for all the right reasons.
So when you go away today try to not take anything for granted in your own lives, and spare a thought for how you can help the Kasias that are still out there.
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The Four-Way Test is a nonpartisan and nonsectarian ethical guide for Rotarians to use for their personal and professional relationships. The test has been translated into more than 100 languages, and Rotarians recite it at club meetings:
Of the things we think, say or do
First, Is it the TRUTH?
Second, Is it FAIR to all concerned?
Third, Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
and Fourth, Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
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