In the beginning...
President Watson, warmly welcomed her favorite Rotary Club and thanked everyone for covering their faces, distancing, and replacing their mask when done eating.
Bill Weirick led us in the flag salute and Larry Beckett gave us in a meaningful invocation.
President Watson thanked the following Rotarians for: Room Set-up Bill Prather and Fred Coleman, Desk Duty -Deirdre, Greeter -Jack Jacobs, Pledge -Bill Weirick, Invocation - Larry Beckett, Fining -Bob Davis, Reminder Editor - Suzanne Scar, Carl Gross for being our photographer and Jayne for serving our delicious meal.
Guests
Guests introduced were: Deirdre introduced Chris Taylor from School on Wheels, Ren introduced Laura Rearwin Ward, Catherine introduced Rebecca Ryiz, Kay and Marty introduced Sandy White, Therese introduced Annamiek Schilder, Tara introduced Matt Hendrickson, Fred introduced his daughter Renee Halbrook and Kathy introduced Fern Barishman.
Announcements:
President Watson announced that on this day in 1965, the Rolling Stones released their single "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (their 1st #1 US hit) in the UK,
Ventura County Rotary magazines are available on the registration table,
Deirdre announced that the finance oversight committee is inviting anyone interested to join them at the next meeting.
Tara Saylor announced and introduced last year’s recipient of the Fred Clapp Ethics Award to Matt Hendrickson, Owner of Bart’s Books. The Fred Clapp Award is to honor a non-Rotarian local business owner who exemplifies the goals of Rotary. We congratulated Matt with a standing ovation.
Cheree introduced Chris Taylor, a retired teacher and mother of four grown children who began volunteering as a School on Wheels tutor and was so inspired that she became the Regional Coordinator for Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties. She introduced herself and the Backpack program.
New member induction
Fern Barishman sponsored by Kathy Yee, mentored by Marty Babayco.
Fern Barishman arrived in California in 1971 after escaping from her native Brooklyn, New York. She told her parents she’d see them in September after a three thousand mile cross country trip with a friend in her 1969 VW Bug. She never went back.
As a young student she was an alternate for admission to the prestigious Bronx High School of Science. She won a scholarship sponsored by NASA that allowed her to attend college level classes at Pratt Institute. There, she studied astronomy and physics, and made her own reflector telescope by hand. In addition, she was the recipient of a scholarship sponsored by the 92nd Street YMHA for an eight-week
Junior Peace Corps Project to Israel.
After settling in the San Fernando Valley, Fern began working in a bead factory where she put rectangular labels on round beads. Before she actually lost her mind, she auditioned to be a contestant on Name That Tune and was, in fact, the highest scoring contestant ever - at the time - on the entrance exam. As she had aced the test, they offered her a position as the Assistant Musicologist and thus started her career in TV production.
She worked on The Midnight Special, The Tony Orlando & Dawn Show, The Glen Campbell Hour and The New Soupy Sales Show and many others. She ended her TV career with the NBC-TV Emmy award winning Hot Hero Sandwich on NBC in 1982.
She then entered the world of music publishing and worked as an Executive Assistant to Roger Gordon at Chappell Music.
Discovering music publishing was crazier than TV production, she left the industry and worked on the liquidation of the country’s largest bank failure (at that time) of Lincoln Savings and Loan via The Palmieri Company as Receiver for FSLIC.
Later, she took a position with Jewish Family Services as Program Director of The Alcohol and Drug Awareness Program (ADAP) where she counseled families and their addicts/alcoholics with interventions, as well as provided information and support to the larger Jewish population of Los Angeles. And then, the Rodney King riots happened.
August 1, 1992 Fern packed up her bags, placed her belongings in storage and arrived in Ojai where she has lived ever since. She originally came up to run the Ojai Manor Hotel for four months while the owner went to Montana to herd cows. Her real passion was playing piano in piano bars and teaching piano.
When she left New York in 1971, she put all her music behind her only to resurrect a career in music, dormant for over 20 years. Fern loves Ojai and is grateful for “the little town that could,” and how it has nurtured her talents and allowed her to flourish.
Rotary Humour
Program -Andy introduced Tom Krause
Krause is a thought leader on organizational leadership and culture, employee behavior, safety, man-made disasters, and catastrophic incidents, in a wide society of workplace, health care and environmental settings. Over the last 25 years, Tom has been an entrepreneur, consultant and frequent author and speaker on topics such as culture change, cognitive bias, leadership development, executive decision-making, behavioral safety and patient safety.
Tom founded BST (Behavioral Science Technology, Inc.) in 1979 and was its Chairman until selling the company to DEKRA in 2012. Under Tom’s leadership, BST conducted over 2,300 consulting projects in 60 countries.
In 2004, following the Columbia space shuttle tragedy, BST was selected to design a safety culture change initiative for NASA. Tom let the BST team and personally coached NASA’s top leaders.
Tom has authored five books on safety performance improvement, culture change and leadership. Tom serves as Chairman of the Board of Geo-Links and on the Boards of The Ojai Chautauqua, the Agora Foundation, St. John’s College, Thomas Aquinas College Foundation, California State University at Channel Islands and the Nomad Foundation.
Final Thoughts...
President Watson’s quote of the week:
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman
Remember we’re dark next week, because we’re having a party at the beach! See you back here on September 3.
