Marana Rotary Club Meeting Nov 3, 2015

A spectacular fall morning in Marana greeted the hardy souls who met, as is their custom, at Nana’s Kitchen for our weekly meeting. We had an 80% attendance today. After President Mary Straus opened the meeting, and the pledge and invocation were given, a song followed. Singing is a long, long tradition in Rotary, but nothing in the Bylaws says that the chosen song-of-the-day has to be sung, um, well. As for today, Maeve Johnson suggested Row Row Row Your Boat sung as a round, with women first and men coming in second. As we began our attempt at this fairly sophisticated arrangement, Dan Contorno became concerned that the gender-based partitioning of the round was, in fact, sexist. So he insisted on singing with the women. Nothing in the Bylaws about that either.

 

Harold Burtzloff reminded us that now is the time to donate to Boxing for Troops. You can donate online from the home page of our website, or by check. Assembly of boxes will be early in December.

 

And it was wonderful to honor another MCAT Student of the Month, Elizabeth Rodriguez Cuenca, who was introduced by MCAT Principal and Rotarian Denise Coronado. Elizabeth’s Mom, Sandy Rodriguez, was present as well. Elizabeth has fought some serious medical issues with, as Principal Coronado put it, “resilience and a deep depth of character.” Academic Coach Sandy Howard described Elizabeth as an “absolutely amazing young lady. On the days that are really, really hard we see the girl that never gives up.” Elizabeth told us that, upon graduation from high school in either March or May 2016, she plans to attend Pima Community College for two years, then study Pharmacy at the UofA. Our congratulations to Elizabeth! Thank you for sharing your inspiring story with us.

 

 

Rotary Foundation Day includes a seminar at PCC from 9am to 3pm, and dinner at the Omni, reception at 6pm, dinner at 7.

 

Also 11/7 marks the end of the Edward Jones Bag-a-Thon food collection drive (Oct 1 – Nov 7) with Maeve Johnson’s annual Pancake Breakfast from 8 – 10:30am. You can help support the Marana Community Food Bank by dropping off food at the Edward Jones office at 3005 W Ina Road, Suite 101.

 

AND the Tucson Walk to End Alzheimer’s begins at the UofA at 9:15am. You can join the team “Burning Daylight” organized by former President of Marana Rotary, Kim Holaway, and her husband Dave, who is currently fighting this disease. Register or donate at www.tucsonalzheimerswalk.org.

 

Board meetings for our Club and our Club’s Foundation, 6:30pm at Maeve’s Edward Jones office on Ina Road.

 

Club Assembly meeting during our regular meeting time, in which we review our activities and assess how people are feeling about the Club.

 

El Tour de Tucson day! Club members, along with Teacher of the Year Kathleen Neighbors’ Interact students from Tortolita Middle School, will be aiding riders at Tangerine Rd and I-10. Contact Tony Hunter to volunteer.

 

Welcome to Party Central! There will be two Christmas/Holiday parties this year, because one just isn’t enough. New this year is a joint party with Dove Mountain Rotary at the Gadsden Train Museum on Saturday Dec 5 from 9 to 11am. This sounds like it will be a lot of fun! http://www.gpdtoytrainmuseum.com/

 

And our second Holiday Party will be held at John Zwick’s beautiful Earth Energy’s Hearth & Home store, along with our annual meeting and elections of officers. Donations to More Than a Bed, the foster-care organization, will be collected. Monetary donations are greatly appreciated, as are donations of diapers and new toys.

 

Jo Holt was very surprised and honored to receive her first Paul Harris award and pin today. Mary Straus had kept this information to herself, clearly an act of premeditated misbehavior.

Not to be outdone, John Dooling was awarded his seventh Paul Harris award, whose pin contains a ruby. We are all very proud of John, his dedication to Rotary, and the work he has done through our Club.

 

Our guest speaker Jim Nook commented on Harold’s November Club Bulletin, emailed out yesterday, and the inclusion of Mole Day. Jim has always celebrated Pi Day (who doesn’t?), but was unaware of Mole Day until now. And Denise Coronado shared that she attempted to explain the concept of a mole to a student, but that the student argued with her, and the numerals “10” and “23” became very confused and somewhat controversial. She concluded that she will never again attempt that explanation. REALLY? To be continued….

 

 

Our guest speaker today, former AG Jim Nook, hails from Dove Mountain Rotary, but has been a frequent guest at our meetings as well. What we didn’t know about Jim would fill a book! Or a very unusual aluminum suitcase…

Jim studied metallurgy at Iowa State and the Univ. of TN. He worked at the U.S. Department of Energy’s research facility in Oakridge, TN, for over 30 years. This included a close association with the Apollo Project Group, who fabricated unique hardware items designed to travel to the moon and back.

In the course of the “race to space” in the 1960’s, an interest in conducting some scientific projects developed. It was known that the composition of the moon was similar to that of the earth, but the moon had been a relatively quiet place for eons, while the earth was subject to the violence of volcanoes, earthquakes, and storms. What could moon rocks tell us? In order to get samples of moon minerals back to earth in pristine condition, a container was needed. And thus we had the development of the “Apollo Lunas Sample Return Container,” otherwise known as the Rock Box. The Box (which looked like carry-on luggage) was made from a single block of extruded aluminum, with an iridium rim that formed a metal-to-metal seal when fully seated. Wow! The inside was cushioned with a stainless steel mesh, and Jim told the story about one of the engineers’ Mom (yes, they do have Mothers) had knitted, at his request, a small square of stainless steel thread as a prototype. She was paid $5.50 for her efforts.

Ingenuity and skilled production were trademarks of the Apollo program, and Jim brought that to life for us. Thank you Jim, and feel free to visit us any time!