First up was the effervescent Jenny Owen who demonstrated the “self-scanner” device, which reads the bar codes she had placed on the back of our badges. 

 

Coming Programs: Patricia said we had former district gov. Wade Nomura on Nov. 4, Alex Ameter, bronze star medal winner on Nov. 11; and John Broesamle on Nov. 18th.

 

 

Mike opened the floor to …

 

 

• Janet Campbell and Mike Malone, co-chairs: Taste of Ojai took place on a superb day the past Sunday. Thanked all the many legions of volunteers. Final tally not yet in, but gross sales of $61,000 will lead to a healthy profit of more than $35,000! No vendor complaints were registered and a good time was had by most. Janet and Mike gave a round of shout-outs to Terry Campbell and Lisa Malone, along with Bill and Mary Hatch, Cindy and Colin Jones, plus plenty of other key volunteers.

 

• Dr. Fred Fauvre informed us that Dr. Skankey had a successful surgery and was headed home that Friday.

 

 

 

• Pradeep Kapadia talked about the District Conference, where he manned a booth. The constant refrain was “how can such a small club make such a big difference in the world?” He had a contest set up to vote on which of two girls would get a scholarship. By the time the conference was over, he had collected enough money to send both.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

•Kay Bliss then ran us through a three-minute video about the Ghana Street Girls project. She talked about the 15-year history with the Street Aid program, and how Mike Weaver had led Skype sessions on small-business practices. Besides the new laundry facilities, the club has helped street girls in Accra with hair-stylists, cooking and catering and seamstresses. Next week, Tibet and Niger projects.

 

• Tony Thacher (during confessions) said the museum was celebrating its 50th anniversary with an event Sunday, 6 to 8 p.m. at the Ojai Vineyard, the old firehouse which was the museum first’s home.

 

• The STEPS conference - the regional poverty conference - will take place Jan. 28, 2017 at Cal Lutheran. Keynote speakers include Opal Singleton on combatting human trafficking, and Dr. M.D Kinoti on poverty, going beyond the statistics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- first, confessions: Dr. Marty Pops collected a few shekels from the penitential following …

- Dave Watson got engaged. What!? No further information? Not who and when and why and how? 

- Cheree Edwards put in a pitch for drivers and docents for the Music Festival’s Nov. 13-15 Holiday Home Look-In. Contact Cheree if you can spare a few hours.

 

Dr. Pops then collected some club funds using Halloween-related questions as a pretext. We learned …

- Jack O’Lanterns first came into being in the 14th century as part of the Celts’ Samhain Festival.

- Marty Babayco came close to guessing that Halloween expenses were about $

- 8.4 billion (but no candy cigar)

- Don Reed was unable to guess the founder of the Count Dracula Society

- Dr. Gross and Allan Jacobs were asked to guess how many trick-or-treaters there were among the Rotary assemblage. 

 

 

Patricia Anderson introduced Deborah Pendrey, the executive director of the OV Green Coalition. Pendrey came to talk about the Dark Skies Initiative, which has been underway since 2008, when Gail Topping came before the Green Coalition, because the night glow around Foothill Road was increasing, obscuring the Milky Way. 

 

Pendrey ran us through an informative powerpoint on the Dark Skies program, which estimated that the 30 percent, or $3.3 billion, of street light use is wasted. Of a typical street light, she demonstrated, 50 percent is wasted, 10 pct is glare, and only 40 percent is actually useful.

 

She also mentioned that we now know that stray light interrupts our sleep and can lead to health conditions like insomnia, diabetes and breast cancer. 

 

The need for dark skies is obvious for telescopes, observatories, and astronomers is obvious. And much of the argument for more street lights comes from the desire for public safety.

 

And as far as public safety, Pendry showed that bad public lighting can make it worse, with people unable to see what’s going on.

 

In 2013, the Ojai City Council voted their support, and in 2014 Ventura County voted to add the dark skies initiative as an agenda item.  Another ally to the cause is Dr. Charles Swift, science teacher at Thacher School, who heads their NASA-funded observatory.  For more information, Pendrey told us to point our browsers to darksky.org or ojaivalleygreencoalition.org.

 

 

Prez Malone quoted the inimitable Vince Lombardi,