On a lovely fall day,  Rotarians came together for fellowship and service. President Mike gaveled the meeting to order and thanked those who contributed.  There was a momentary lapse because the American Flag had been removed due to remodeling.  Showing initiative, Mike Weaver searched for and found the flag in the storage room, and proceedings could get underway.  Greg Webster did the flag salute and Dr. Watson did the invocation.  We had no visiting Rotarians, but we did have guests:  Kathleen Schafer(our speaker), Kendra Yoes, Joe DeVito, Yolanda Flores, Sharif Sacr.  Fred Fauvre received an especially warm reception after his unfortunate bicycle accident.  Fred showed true grit in attending today’s meeting while recovering from what appears to be a painful injury.

 

1.      Marty Babayco gave an inspired and inspiring talk on the occasion of Nic Frank’s receiving the “Service Above Self” Rotarian Emeritus Membership.  Marty listed many of Nic’s accomplishments in his Navy career and in his service as a Rotarian.  Nic received a well deserved standing ovation upon accepting his award.  There was, however, one moment of levity:  Marty made reference to the “conning tower” of Nic’s destroyer;  Nic forcefully corrected Marty that only submarines have conning towers, not destroyers.  Fortunately for Marty, such errors do not warrant the cat of nine tails.

2.     Al West gave a short history of the Paul Harris award before bestowing a bejeweled award to Haadi Lashkari.

3.     Jack Jacobs gave his heartfelt thanks to all those who reached out to console him and his family on the loss of his beloved brother Alan.  A celebration of Alan’s life will be held at Soule park on October 28 at 11am.

4.     Bob Davis and Terry Beckett reminded Rotarians that Oct. 24 is International Polio Day.

 

Marty Babayco also served as the fine master today.  Marty’s approach to revenue generation was ingenious:  he would ask his victims what country they would most like to visit, and they invite the victim to guess how many people in the room had visited that Country.  In a short period of time, Marty extracted a fair amount of cash.

 

Mike Weaver introduced today’s speaker:  Ms. Kathleen Schafer of Live Leadership.  Kathleen is a leadership guide, educator and author.  Kathleen started her talk by asking an intriguing question:  “What can Ojai learn from Egypt”?  It turns out that the answer is quite a lot.

 

Kathleen was a close observer of some of the most historic chapters of the Egyptian version of the Arab spring:  the revolution in Tahrir square, the overthrow of Mubarak, the election of Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, the military coup that installed Sisi, the election of Sisi, etc.  Kathleen was advising governmental and civil groups on how to make progress during a tumultuous period.  Based on her observations, she distilled some lessons:

 

·        Ignore unrest at your peril

·        Having “winners” and “losers” leads to a disaster

·        When democracy fails, authoritarianism prevails

 

She then pivoted to Ojai and said that these same lessons can be applied locally and suggests that Ojai residents focus on the following questions:

 

·        Who are we?

·        How do we create a sense of community?

·        How do we create a shared vision?

·        Who are the community wide leaders?

·        What are real world solutions

 

President Mike ended the meeting by reminding everybody to attend the “Taste of Ojai” on Sunday.