SEPTEMBER 19, 2022, MEETING in-person and on Zoom with Past-President Wendy Wiegand presiding. JR Phillips led the pledge, Linda Wolf offered Words, and Zoomers and guests were introduced.
FOUR-WAY TEST / ROTARY MOMENT
Bob Kreisberg talked about playing sax in a jazz band with another sax player who is not really that good but who insists on playing solos. Kreisberg considered suggesting the other player not do those, but when he applied the Four-Way Test to his idea, he decided it would be far better if he instead tried to help the other musician improve.
Bob Kreisberg
ANNOUNCEMENTS
• Member Updates: Wendy Wiegand reported that Mark Packard has taken a leave of absence because his wife is not well. Bruce Stewart, who did NOT have a heart attack while on a European cruise but instead suffered a Covid-related illness, is now at home and feeling fine. However, his wife is now recuperating from Covid.
OKTOBERFEST: PLEASE HELP!
Our Carlsbad Rotary Clubs’ 40th Oktoberfest is less than two weeks away (Saturday, October 1, at the Carlsbad Strawberry Fields). This is our premiere fundraising event, but volunteer sponsorships are down and so are volunteer signups—for our food booth in particular. If we can’t get enough volunteers, options are to hire workers and/or reduce our food offerings. Hiring workers will reduce our Oktoberfest proceeds which are used for scholarships and support to 501(c)3 groups in our area. Please go to Signup Genius to volunteer: family members and friends 18 and up are welcome to help! https://www.signupgenius.com/tabs/6327FDD00A6CDEAC42-oktoberfest1
• Sponsorships: Rachel Ivanovich said sponsorships to date have resulted in $25,000 versus $40,000 last year. She’s taking suggestions for businesses to contact and inviting Rotarians, with or without businesses, to consider being a sponsor or make a donation—at any level.
• German meal tickets were handed out to members at the meeting. Each member has paid for six meal tickets as part of our dues. You can either give away your tickets or sell them and recoup some of the $15-per meal ticket cost. Additional tickets are available online and will be sold at the event. Oktoberfest posters also were handed out.
• Oktoberfest website: RotaryOktoberfest.org
Club members in Oktoberfest attire at Monday’s
meeting included, from left: Helen Wells, Ed Rouquette,
Maureen Simons, Linda Wolf, Rocco Ciesco, Rachel
Ivanovich and Maureen Taylor
Maureen Taylor and Vince Ponce
with an Oktoberfest poster
CLUB SOCIAL EVENTS
• Best Pizza Challenge: The first opportunity to taste and vote on the best pizza in Carlsbad will be at 5:30pm Wednesday, September 21 at That Pizza Place. RSVP to Rocco Ciesco so he can let the restaurant know how many people to expect. Taste-testing will begin at 5:30pm at a different family-owned pizza spot in Carlsbad on the third Wednesday of each month for another five months. No chain restaurants to be included.
• Dine-Arounds Update: September’s final set of Dine-Arounds will be September 24, hosted by Yvonne Finocchiaro and Viveka Kjellgren. There may still be an open spot. Contact Rick Huenefeld: rick.huenefeld@gmail.com. The next Dine-Arounds will be in November, with two to three more hosts needed.
YOUTH SERVICES
• Lead Leadership Conference for 8th graders: Our club is sponsoring four students for this event that will be Sat evening and during the day Sunday, October 15-16 Anyone interested in being a volunteer leader should contact Bob Kreisberg. Leaders will ride to and from the event with the students, in a bus.
• Jefferson Elementary School Book Fair: Our club provides new age-related books for the fair, and we set up for that on Tuesday afternoon, November 1. The fair will Wednesday morning, November 2, with each student able to pick out a book to keep, for 25 cents, although no student goes away empty-handed. Rotary volunteers will organize the books Tuesday afternoon and serve as guides and cashiers during the book fair.
ROTO-ROOTER-Beth Garrow
Garrow asked Maureen Simons and Rick Huenefeld about their “small world moment.” Simons said that while she and the Huenefelds were participating in one of our Dine-Arounds, it was discovered that Huenefeld’s wife, Judy, used to work and mentor with Simon’s mother many years ago. Terry Green wasn’t at the meeting but Garrow said she understood he recently had retired. Tom Applegate was revealed as an expert in cornhole, discovered when club volunteers were taking a break from packing food boxes at the North County Food Bank.
Garrow asked what well-known show first appeared on TV 50 years ago yesterday (September 18): No one got the answer: M*A*S*H. She then asked about other iconic shows that first aired in 1972. Lots of guesses, only one correct: The Bob Newhart Show. In the interest of time, she listed the rest of them: The Waltons, Emergency, Sanford & Son, The Streets of San Francisco, Kung Fu and Maude.
PROGRAM
Salva Dut
Water in South Sudan
Salva Dut and Lynn Malody
of Water for South Sudan
Bob Kreisberg introduced Dut, who is one of the two persons featured in the book, “The Long Walk to Water,” a story of perseverance and hope—the miraculous story of two Sudanese children who overcame mortal dangers to improve their lives and the lives of others: Dut and another child, a girl.
Dut, at age 11, was one of the “lost boys” of Sudan, young refugees who covered the African continent on foot in 1985, for two months, as they searched for a safe place to stay. Dut’s uncle did not survive the trek, but from him Dut said he learned how to persevere, how to be helpful and how not to give up. Dut ultimately ended up in a refugee camp, and 10 years later, he was able to get to the US. “I came to the US with nothing, but this country has given me so much, made me what I am today.” He said a good family guided him, and he was able to go to community college. All the while, he knew nothing of his own family for 19 years. That was when he found out his father was still alive, but very sick from a water-borne illness.
Dut went back to Sudan and found his father, and from that, the idea of Water for South Sudan evolved.
With Dut’s determination and perseverence, he started that organization with the idea of making clean water available to the people of South Sudan, a very poor country. The organization drilled its first well in 2005 now is responsible for some 500 wells serving more than a million people. “When you have a well, things change,” he said. Girls who used to have to walk miles and miles to bring water back to their families now are able to go to school. Schools are being built, and then markets—and people are able to work and get paid with an initial financial start-up donation from the organization.
The Water for South Sudan program includes helping people drill the necessary 300 feet to find water and bring it to the surface and training them how to maintain these wells. Attending the meeting with Dut was Lynn Malody, part of Dut’s organizaton, and Glenn, a Rotarian from Brea, CA, who got inspired by the well-drilling program and has worked with Rotary clubs interested in learning more and becoming sponsors. Also with Dut was Linda Ryan, whose husband, Ken, is a former Hi-Noon Rotarian. She is a sixth-grade teacher who also was inspired by Dut’s organization. Her school, Valley Middle School, helped sponsor a well that went online in 2020.
Carlsbad’s Valley Middle School is recognized for
helping sponsor a well in South Sudan
Service Above Self
Carlsbad, CA 92008
United States of America