flywheel text

Program for Friday November 22, 2002

Yossi Amrani
Consul General of Israel for the Pacific Northwest Region

Yossi Amrani is the Consul General of Israel for the Pacific Northwest Region.

Consul General Amrani, who began his tour of duty at the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco in August 2000, joined the Israeli Foreign Ministry in 1983. Prior to his appointment as Consul General, Yossi Amrani served as Minister of Political Affairs at the Israeli Embassy in Washington from 1998 to 2000. From 1996 to 1998, he held the position of Director of Coordination, and worked as speech writer for the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Yossi Amrani was a member of the Israeli negotiation team for the Interim Agreement with the Palestinian Authority in 1995. Prior to that, he was a Foreign Policy Advisor to the President of Israel in 1994 and worked as Bureau Chief of the Ambassador's Office at the Israeli Washington Embassy from 1988 to 1993.

He holds a B.A in General and Jewish History from Haifa University and a M.A in General History and American Jewish History from the Hebrew University.

Door Duty: Jim Cannon and Josh Genser

* * * * * * * * *

Program for Friday November 29, 2002

After Turkey Recovery Day
No Meeting!

Door Duty: Mark Howe and Tom Schneider get a bye

* * * * * * * * *

Program of November 15, 2002

Genevieve Graves

"To the Queen"

is the toast that presented at the end of Rotary meetings in the United Kingdom, while in America we sing the national anthem at the beginning of our meetings - according to our local expert on Rotarian affairs in the UK, none other than our speaker today , Genevieve Graves a Rotary ambassadorial scholar, who has just spent the past school year at Cambridge University in the UK.

Genevieve Graves grew up Albany and attended elementary, middle, and high school there before going off the Harvard to major in Astronomy and Physics.
It is obvious why Rotary selected her for the scholarship. She is very mature, interesting and interested young adult. She is articulate, enthusiastic, friendly, and presents herself with an inspiring air of confidence that usually only comes with age. And to top it off she is athletic and attractive.

She was hosted by the Leechworth Garden Rotary club during her stay in Cambridge. The club was one hour from Cambridge which was good because she got to see the countryside on her journeys there and bad because she didn't get to see her host club as often as she would like to have. Leechworth Garden is one of the very first master planned communities - long before the idea was supposedly invented in Calif. The town has long greenbelts and all the details you expect from a master planned community. Rotary meetings there are structured there much like they are structured here except for the toast at the end of course.

Cambridge is made up of 30 colleges. A college is like a community where you live and eat. The college she attended was called St. John's College. 50% percent of the students are from England and the remaining students come from Europe, Commonwealth Countries and America. Interest in sports was common among the students. They were avid fans of cricket and soccer AKA football. Although she played soccer in high school she found that the sport in the UK was not played much by women in the UK so she opted for orienteering, which she participated in every Sunday.

She signed up to study astronomy and physics at Cambridge but became overwhelmed with the amount of study it required and instead wanted to spend her time with the people of England not its old books. So she switched decided to study linguistics an old interest of hers and Rotary agreed to the switch.

Linguistics is a polyglot of studies she says: It involves: the historical development of languages, how children learn languages so quickly, how the brain and what parts of the brain process language, and the neurobiology language.

The area she liked though is Socio Linguistics. This area of linguistics involves the social implication of language and specifically the study of pragmatics, which studies the implied meaning of language as well as the literal meaning of language. For example politeness theory: You can speak with a passive tone that does not impose your will on another. Some people call this a lack authoritarian tone. Or you can speak actively where you impose your will and try to control the other persons thoughts with language tone. They call this negative and positive language. Sounds a bit bewildering to me.

After her arrival back home, this young adult who has played and enjoyed music all her life has taken a position at the Albany middle school teaching choir. She is also planning to take the GRE and get a PHD in astronomy.

Thank you for the entertaining discussion.

`

Last Meeting:
The pledge was recited and President Dave gave the thought for the day

Visiting Rotarians:

Sunshine Report:
Quote last issue "HANS SHAPER a very senior member of the club, who regularly attends, was here today and submitted $10 happy dollars for just being here and promised to contribute another $10 when he can walk again." I saw Hans Shaper at the club today without a cane and I saw him yesterday at the Pt. Richmond Post Office also without a cane - busted -- Hans you owe $10 to the club.

Guests:
Mark Howe brought Greg Cantrel from the Regional Training Institute.Charlie Fender brouhgt his favorite wife Clavel and
Charlie Wong introduced John Wilson.

Announcements
Bill Frank is putting together an insert for the West County Times that explains what Rotary does for the community. We need to sell three ads in the insert. The ads are $250 each. All you business owners ask yourself if you need the exposure and if you do contact president Dave or Bill Frank.
The coming Wednesday 11/20/02 is the Peres School Bedtime Story Reading Hour. Please show up at 5:00 to 6:30 if you are interested.
The full electronic version of the Flywheel will start December 1st. This means that, only the two of you stuck in the Stone Age will still receive the paper version. Russ Schultz is one of the dinosaurs --sorry Russ I couldn't resist.

If you plan to bring a guest to next weeks meeting, please email President Dave and let him know the number of guests.We expect this meeting to heavily attended.

The District Governors invite you to attend:
The Rotary International Presidential Dinner
Jan 3,2003 in Monterrey, Ca

Coming Speakers
11/29/02 No Meeting
12/06/02 Sebastian Ilzig, Rotary Youth Exchange Student
12/13/02 Holiday Auction - Bring Lots of Money
12/20/02 Ghana Experience, Ted Abreu and Judy Kafka
12/27/02 Round Table
01/03/02 Michael Hingson, Guide Dogs for the Blind.

Recognitions
Ren Partridge is having his 23rd anniversary this coming week and will not be here next week because he will be celebrating the occasion.

Happy/Sad $$
Ted A. is happy to be back from Ghana. He donates a happy $10.
Joann's mother in law passed on and she donate a sad $5.
Doc Dan is happy to be back after back missing several meetings but is sad that he had to fracture his foot to do so.
President Dave had some happy dollars to celebrate the enthusiasm he found at Richmond High School this week as he performed his duties as mock trial judge.
Judy K. had happy dollars because -- after being berated by her perfectionist husband for allegedly causing an error that triggered a $4,000 bill from the friendly IRS, it turned out that it was actually her husband and the accountant that caused the error.
Jon Lawlis is happy to be going on a Disney cruise and to Disney World with his family.

Dates to Remember
12/13/02 Christmas Party Joe Greens house, Community Center at Brickyard Cove @5:30PM till we are thrown out by the management or Joe.
12/13/02 Elections of officers, look in your E- Mail for nominees.

.
Raffle:
Stoney won the raffle but did not pick the yellow ball. He did however tell a very funny story about a tank commander, who never learned to read a map and therefore missed an ambush from German soldiers who had intercepted secret map intelligence.

Hasta Luego Viernes

Mark R. Howe