November 16, 2007

It was a voluable day at the Scribe Table; everyone seemed to have stories to share. From Phil Shore and Alan Pugh, a lengthy and eruidite discussion of 5/9 time, occasioned by Joy’s rendition of Dave Brubek on the piano. From Jamie Stitt, insight about the SAT and international students at HPU. From Lee Malpass and Your Scribe, back-and-forth on the GAL program, foster parenting, DSS and legal representation in juvenile court. Given all that, Rob Reese tried to add class to the table by seating his guest Shawn Mabe  (a veteran banker now the new city banking manager at RBC Centura) among us, but President HR interrupted that by calling Rob to the head table, and Shawn was entrusted to a less dangerous seat.

From their seats on high, Phil Koonce was called to lead the Four Way Test, and Rob spoke to God and the assembled masses from the Book of Common Prayer. Mini Singh introduced our guests: Shawn, of course; Christie Smith  (a software consultant), with Carol Matney; and Tom Barton and Ralph Hardison of the Randolph Club. Rodney Mason introduced our Asheboro High student guests Veronica Cordera, a member of the student council and junior ROTC, who hopes to major in architecture at NCSU or UNCC; and Katherine Williams,  daughter of Ann and David, a Yearbook editor, a photographer and member of the varsity soccer team, who intends to study marketing at Clemson.

There is NO ROTARY THIS FRIDAY, which is why your scribe is working on this before leaving for Thanksgiving at his sister’s at Morehead City.

President HR opened up an old can of worms (or more appropriately, beans) when he warned the club about the dangers of deep frying a turkey. Past-President Prithi then stood to warn the club about the dangers of turkey. Touche. HR went on to congratulate Leo Derrick on his 80th birthday, to little avail, since Leo is celebrating the same on a cruise.

HR read us part of the Tar Wheel from March 1, 1944, when Sunset Theatre manager J. Francis White had his bluff called on Sunday School by his son Alex. (“See there, it won’t do me any good either!” was the punch line.)

Our program was presented by the Rotary Foundation Committee, and Rob Reese began by extolling the multitudinous good works funded by the Foundation in our names. Last year Asheboro Rotary gave $21,994 to the Foundation, together with $7,000 restricted to Polio Plus, for a total contribution of $28,994. That was more than twice our goal, but even at that, only 65% of us (63 of 115 members) contributed.

The majority of the program was presented by our four past Group Study Exchange team leaders, Lib Cox (team leader to Chile), Jaci Betts (team leader to Brazil), Jim Culberson (team leader to Portugal), and Owen George (team leader to Taiwan). Just having those four seated together at the front table is a powerful demonstration of our club’s commitment to the GSE program: out of the 50 clubs in District 7690, Asheboro Rotary has provided the Team Leader for 4 of the last 12 trips.

Jim Culberson started off by reminiscing about his 1994 exchange with northern Portugal. I should say “our” exchange, for Your Scribe was a member of Jim’s team long before I took over Tom O’Briant’s seat at the Rotary table. Jim’s commitment to GSE began as early as 1979, when he hosted a member of the team from Austria; Jim maintained the connection and visited him and his family in Linz in 2003. For those of you new to the club, the trip to Portugal occured the year of District Governor Wilbert Hancock, and the exchange was powerfully successful on both sides of the Atlantic. Even though Portugal, where palm trees grow and it’s normally sunny and warm in May, was amazingly cold and rainy almost the entire month. But several varieties of wine and beer helped us acclimate, as well as amazement when we found that beer could be purchased from the same street vending machines Coke and Fanta came out of. We were treated like visiting heads of state, from visits with Olympic marathon runners to national tourism officials and the Mayors of just about every cuidad in Portugal, not to mention a tour of the deep bowels of a brand-new hydroelectric station that looked like the set for a James Bond movie. And after Your Scribe complained, they finally began slowing the car down long enough for me to snap a picture of the odd Roman ruin or Gothic cathedral or Napoleonic battlefield while we careened toward the next textile mill or brass foundry tour. Yes, that trip gave new meaning to the phrase, “We’ll sleep when we’re dead,” but it was an amazing and unforgettable 6 weeks.

Jaci’s trip to Brazil started out, in her grandmother’s words, “As hot as 3 kinds of Hell.” Asheboro’s Assistant Fire Chief Mike Jones was one of Jaci’s companions, and was received with acclaim, as both Brazilians and Portuguese love their “bombieros” (firemen). Jaci was a natural choice for leading the team to Brazil, as her parents were missionaries to Mozambique, a Portuguese colony in African, where she grew up.  Jaci shared some of her emotional memories of the trip, especially of Adrienne in Sete Lagoas, a single mother who gave Jaci the key to her house, saying “meinha casa es sua casa,” my house is your house.”

Owen George reminded us of his recent trip to Taiwan, and then shared his even more recent trip back there with the District’s “Fellowship Exchange.”  One big result of Owen’s trip is that businessman John Woo of Taiwan funded an Ambassadorial Scholarship between our districts, and North Carolina has a scholar in Taiwan even now.  In April another team from District 7690 will visit another part of Taiwan, further cementing the ties between our two countries.  And next year, under District Governor Charles Allen, we’ll be exchanging teams with India.

Owen reminded us that GSE “is the jewel in the crown of the Rotary Foundation.”  And Jaci put it all in context by saying that GSE fulfills the objects of Rotary by (1) giving the team the opportunity for service; (2) establishing and maintaining high ethical standards; (3)  Applying the service in a meaningful way; and (4) promoting the advancement of understanding, good will, and peace throughout the world.

When the next exchange comes our way next April, host a team member and share your America with them.  Neither of you will be the same again.

Happy Thanksgiving!

November 9, 2007

If you weren’t there (and if you weren’t, only Neal and Rebecca would know), you missed quite an amazing show last Friday. A normal Friday Asheboro Rotary meeting was scheduled, but a blockbuster community event broke out. Thanks to a harmonic convergence of great topic, dynamite speakers and lack of available space, the Asheboro-Randolph Chamber of Commerce provided us with one of our most impressive programs ever. “The Impact of Mental Health Reform in North Carolina” was the topic at what was the big finale of the Chamber’s “Lunch and Learn” series, and we were lucky to get both the program and more than a hundred extra guests at lunch. Your scribe has been around since 1994, and has only seen that number of people present at a Rotary meeting at a District Conference. In order to accomodate the overflow crowd, lunch started at 11:30, and the actual program began just after noon and went until 1:15. Amazingly, very few people left before the end, a tribute to the quality of the program. But, I get ahead of events.

We tried to bring a semblance of normalcy to a atypical meeting. Joy provided our usual piano accompaniment. Jaci Betts provided world-class table arrangements in honor of the Rotary Foundation, whose scheduled program this originally was. President HR began with a rueful acknowledgment that the club and the chamber were juggling a lot of things to weld the meetings together, and warned us that it could be either ‘lunch and learn’ or ‘crash and burn.’ Luckily it was the former. Past President Ed Clayton taught the crowd the Four Way Test, and led a Prayer. Rebecca Redding recognized a few special guests (not counting the hundred or more Chamber attendees): Debbie Cole, guest of Jerry Hill; Rob Wilkins and wife Cindy, with Elizabeth Mitchell; Matt Culberson, with dad Jim; Joyia Clayton, with husband Ed; Dr. Charles Betts, with wife Jaci; Christie Smith with Carole Matney; Sean Carter with Lynn Dodge; and from the Randolph Club, Sheriff Maynard Reid and Helen Keyes. Student Guests from AHS were Steven Buhrman, son of Bill and Karen Buhrman, an active young man who rock climbs, plays rugby and is a member of the Downtown Fencing Club in Greensboro. He plays to major somewhere in engineering, with an interest in nanotechnology. Clay Long is even bigger and more active as #74 on the AHS football team, and is the son of Chief Superior Court Judge Brad Long, and Reena Strickland. Clay is 17 years old and about 6′4″, it appears, though Your Scribe remembers clearly when he was born and was little enough to carry in the one-armed football clutch. Clay has 3 sisters (one of whom is just about a year old) and hopes to attend NCSU to major in mechanical engineering where he can pursue an interest in biodiesel production.

Past President and current Assistant District Governor Mary Joan Pugh stood to start the program. She recognized Bill Batten, our Foundation Chair, who had been recognized the night before as a Major Donor at the District Foundation Banquet. Then she went through a quick recounting of Rotary’s commitment to international peace and development, for the benefit of our visitors. She then introduced local banker Tina Crutchfield, head of the Chamber Lunch and Learn program, sponsored by Chandler Concrete and RBC Centura. She introduced the Master (mistress?) of Ceremonies Ann Shaw, our late lamented Randolph County Register of Deeds. In her very active retirement, Ann now serves as the President of the Board of Directors of the Randolph County Mental Health Association, a private advocacy agency funded in part by the United Way. [Chris Corsbie is the Executive Director of the Association; you could spot him pacing around the hall wearing a worried expectant father look.] Ann went down the dias to bring up the three speakers: Chris Fitzsimons, Executive Director of NC Policy Watch; Michael Watson, CEO of Sandhill Center for Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services; and Anthony Pugh, a Board member of the local MHA and a mental health services client.

Well, Your Scribe took 18 little note cards full of notes, but frankly I can’t do justice to the excellence of the program in the time I have available to write this newsletter. Here’s the link to the Courier-Tribune article about the meeting; you can read that. Let me just say, however, that Chris Fitzsimons did a masterful, rapid-fire history of our disastrous attempts since 2001 to “reform” mental health care in North Carolina. All agreed that we’re in worse shape now than we were then, and privatizing what amounts to a vital service has just resulted in the clients who have the ability to pay being skimmed off the top of the heap, and the rest are left to struggle for the minimal level of public services that have managed to survive. Sadly, the hospitals, jails, prisons and homeless shelters have been having to deal with the rest. I’d love to do justice to Chris’s talk, but here’s just one paraphrased quote: the bureaucrats in Raleigh who are supposed to be responsible for mental health care are playing a ’shell game of blame’ trying to shift responsibility away from themselves while the system is in a state of collapse and public hospitals are a mess. ‘What happens after hospital discharge is not our fault,’ says Michael Moseley, director of state Mental Health services. ‘It’s due to the lack of services on the local level.’ [Which the state used to support and basically starved to death. It's the old cry of the guy who killed his parents: don't blame me, I'm an orphan!] Chris said the2001 reform was”basically well-intentioned” but the rank-and-file mental health professionals aren’t so sure, and the public has gradually lost all faith in a system in crisis. The biggest problem he sees is the lack of outrage from politicians (this he directed toward Rep. Pat Hurley and Rep. Laura Wiley of High Point, both of whom were present). A study commission recommended that $100 million would be necessary to fix the system, and the most recent legislature appropriated just $3 million over the last budget. There is a complete lack of leadership from the people whose job it is to make sure people are served, and a growing feeling that politicians at the highest levels of government just don’t care. Micheal Watson had equally blunt comments about his organizations forced privatization, and the upheavals local mental health professionals have endured through 3 separate “catastrophic reorganizations.” And Anthony Pugh provided a fascinating first-hand account of a mental health service “consumer.”

So, punches really weren’t pulled. It was disturbing, but a great program. If you weren’t there, you missed a really great event!

I’ll upload more photos later…

Special Instructions for Our Next Meeting

Come Early!

That’s the word from President H.R.

Come eat before noon, because at noon our program will be the Chamber of Commerce’s “Lunch and Learn” mini-seminar on “The Impact of Mental Health Reform in North Carolina.”  [Your Scribe's opinion:  "reform" has been an unmitigated disaster. Just sayin'.] 

There are three speakers, one of whom is Chris Fitzsimons of N.C. Policy Watch.  I’ve heard Chris several times, and he is worth all the trouble.  Here’s their general website:  http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/ .  It’s a “progressive” political organization funded by Jim Goodman of the A.J. Fletcher Foundation, a life-long Republican.  [Only in North Carolina!]

Lunch will start at 11:3o and the three speakers will begin speaking at noon, so PLAN TO COME EARLY!

 

 

November 2, 2007

“Club Assembly” was the theme for today, meaning that our tub was standing on its own bottom without being propped up by a speaker. President HR said that meant it was time for us to “have some fun.” The Scribe Table really didn’t even need that encouragement. Phil Shore, listening to Joy play “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” offered that it might just be Fats Waller Day. Whether it was the usual fault of Elizabeth Mitchell, Phil Shore and Richard Garkalns I Can’t Say (some ascribed the extra dose of salts to Allen Holt, a visitor from more rarefied tables), but the Scribe Table did get rather rowdy before Joy and Eric Satie and “Trois Gymnopedies” quieted things down again.

Eventually we had the usual Greeting, Test, Pledge and Prayer; then Mini Singh welcomed guests Rachel Hayes, with Elizabeth Cox; Sarah McNulty, with Mac Whatley; and from the Randolph Club, Jim Campbell, Ed Bunch and Harry Lane.

Michael Smith introduced AHS student guests Megan Darden, son of Danny Darden, who is vice president of the senior class. She loves travelling to foreign countries and speaking Spanish, and she intends to major in that at UNC-CH. Mitchell Lancaster is the son of Lynn and Tracy Lancaster and attends the Zoo School (where he has something called “Zero Period,” in which he studies AP Chemistry online at 7:30 AM) . He runs track and cross country and just became an Eagle Scout. He intends to study Chemical Engineering at college.

HR asked Your Scribe to introduce Sarah McNulty, who I actually introduced in these pages a couple of weeks ago. She’s a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill whose family now lives in Greensboro, but whose grandparents founded and ran Hop’s Restaurant at the corner of Sunset and Church streets. For her senior project at Chapel Hill she’s researching the story of that restaurant and its impact on the community, particularly during the early 60s when it was the last hold-out against integration. She came today to meet people who may have known her grandparents and who are willing to share stories about them and their restaurant and Asheboro in the Sixties. (It’s a fascinating project, and let me share that after the meeting, we had a fantastic visit with Miz Vastine Franks, now 82 years old and working daily at Asheboro Daycare, but back then a beautician and one of the organizers of the sit-ins. More on that some day…)

President HR congratulated Leo Derrick on his birthday, but all Leo would admit to was that he intended to celebrate “the Fortieth Anniversary of his 39th Birthday.” In accord with the municipal elections next week, HR shared a note from a Tar Wheel of May 1941, where Red congratulated Ollie Presnell, “another Rotary Mayor.” Mayor Presnell campaigned “Ground Hog Style,” that is, Underground, where he couldn’t be found to make any promises good or bad. (Today we’d call that a “Stealth Campaign.”)

HR introduced our own Patrick O’Hara to start off a round-Robin discussion of Dictionary Day, which came off with few hitches a week and a half ago. The Asheboro, Randolph, Archdale and Liberty clubs joined to distribute 700 dictionaries to all the third graders in all the county’s elementary schools that Wednesday. Though Patrick was the Foreman of our part of that rodeo, the idea came via Assistant District Governor MaryJoan Pugh, who got it from a member of the Liberty Club (and Allen Holt and I both think that the Club or some other clubs in the District did something like it many years ago, but we’ll have to do some research and get back to you on that). But whoever thought it up, the feedback from teachers, parents and students was that it was a great idea, greatly appreciated and well executed, and needs to become a regular Rotary activity.

Patrick thanked “The Dirty Dozen,” 12 Asheboro Rotarians who met at the YMCA that Wednesday morning and disbursed in groups to give away books. They are: Patrick himself, Rebecca Redding, Rob Reese, Phil Koonce, HR Gallimore, Mary Joan Pugh, Elizabeth Mitchell, Everett Thomas, Linda Cranford, Mini Singh, George Bain, and Cathy Clark. A number of them shared their experience. Phil Koonce said that it was so special because the kids were so responsive, that there was a huge positive reaction to being given a book of their very own to keep. Elizabeth said one little child said, “You mean we don’t have to give this back?” and she said no, write your name in it and take it home! Everett Thomas noted that a teacher told him, crying, that it would be the only dictionary in the homes of most of the children. Linda Cranford said that at Lindley Park they talked to the kids about book care (don’t bend it so hard it breaks the back; keep it away from the dog) and that they became fascinated looking up the facts and dates in the back of the book.

Patrick said that a teacher at Tabernacle told him that since that day, one child of a single parent home has brought her a new word every day, and is starting to participate in school in a renewed way. Children, Patrick reminded us, are 50% of our population and 100% of our future. He volunteered to head up the program again next year, and the general consensus of the club is that this is definitely something to keep up with.

October 26, 2007

Asheboro Rotary Goes on a Field Trip!

This was a special day for Asheboro Rotary- for only the second or third time Your Scribe can remember, we all went on a Field Trip. A Grown-Up Field Trip, for sure: No buses, no permission slips from home, and the cook-out van from ever-faithful AVS followed us for comfort’s sake.

Dale Lambert and Randolph Electric Membership Corporation were our off-site hosts for the day, and they even made the rainy weather interesting. It was hard to complain, what with the third day of rain in the current drought being our first real rain in about four months. But REMC put on a show that made the rain look like it was part of the demonstration.

We started out inside, in the company break room, or cafeteria , where hot dogs and hamburgers cooked outside on the AVS grill were the order of the day . Long-time REMC employees like Dave Rowe and Fred Smith guided us to our seats. Helpful party favors were at each place : an REMC rain guage, a necessity for this day, but a practical joke gift in prior weeks.

Allen Holt, retired CEO of REMC (if you don’t like acronyms, go away today) led us in the Four Way Test (though Alan Pugh was ready, willing and able). The Democrat Allen, however, held the floor and reminded us that the 4WT was written in 1932 and adopted by RI in 1943. He also led us in the Pledge of Allegiance, and reminded us that it was “to the REPUBLIC for which it stands,” not “to the RepubliCANS.”

One Guest: Chris Yow, Randolph Club and Asheboro City School board member, here for an obvious reason to follow. Student guests from AHS: Rebecca Yow, daughter of Chris andJennifer Newton Yow, who is involved in a lot of stuff and intends to go to college and major in Physical Therapy (Your Scribe didn’t get the info sheets, so my notes didn’t catch all their good works). On the distaff side was Drew Brisley, son of Klaussner’s Peter Brisley, who’s into tennis and snowboarding and plans to attend NCSU to study industrial design.

Phil Shore rose to remind us of the current local theater production, “Mornings At Seven,” which begins this weekend at the Sunset Theater and stars Himself with our own Jerry Hill, and has Elizabeth Mitchell working offstage. It’s at 7:30 Friday and Saturday, with a 2:30 matinee on Sunday. Phil asserted that the 1939 play is a “gentle comedy… continuously amusing but you don’t know why.” Sounds like our brand of humor.

Phil also claimed that he was missing the batteries for his free rain guage, but the inscrutible yet continuously amusing Allen Holt saved the day by reminding us that REMC rain guages are all “solar powered.”

President HR read a joke from the Tar Wheel of December 16, 1954, where a teacher demanded that her kindergarten class “hold up two fingers if you need to go to the rest room” and one of her future Rotary members asked “how does that help?”

Then Dale Lambert officially welcomed us to REMC, gave away some buckets of door prizes such as mums, pens, flashlights, and tee shirts (one of which is modeled in the official photo by Jaci Betts). Dale thanked some of his 145 employees such as Revonda Hayes and Fred Cole for their help in putting the lunch together, and showed a short video about the arcing that happens when a substation switch opens improperly… or, “How NOT to Do It.” REMC was founded in 1938 (not far from its 60th anniversary), and is a utility owned by its 31,534 members in five counties (Randolph, Moore, Montgomery, Chatham and Davidson). Dale then adjourned us all to the rear loading dock of the REMC building, entered through their impressive warehouse , for a special demonstration.

We collected under the dock shelter and looked out at their storage yard, where Dale announced that some of their service men were going to exhibit a Pole Rescue, which they practice regularly even in the rain. (He noted that, for obvious reasons like power outages usually being caused by bad weather, service guys operate in the rain or snow more often than not.) The guys had erected a pole in the storage yard, to demonstrate what happens if a lineman gets into trouble, is knocked unconscious at the top of a pole, and needs to be rescued. Rodney Haithcock, Steve and Ed set up in trucks around the pole, and Danny Lee (a strapping young man with biceps that hint that he has seen the inside of a gym) was the pole climber whose task was to rescue “Mr. Cool,” a dummy in trouble up in the air. Dale said if anyone is in trouble their goal is to get him to the ground and have him receiving first aid within 5 minutes of the event.

When trouble happens, the first step is that the guys on the ground make a 911 call, and get their climbing gear out of the truck. Then they must put on their climbing spikes, get their lines hooked up, put on their (THICK!) rubber gloves, and climb the pole to the unconscious man. Then they hammer a big screwdriver into the pole and hook their belaying line around it for fall prevention. Then they hook to the victim and drop him quickly but safely to the ground. Then they climb down, take off their gear, check vital signs, and begin CPR.

Linemen have competitions to do all this, and their best time in competition is 2 minutes, 20 seconds. Today, given the rain and the fact that they actually wanted us to see what they were doing, Danny did it in a comparatively leisurely 3 minutes.

Dale called our attention to the other side of the yard where REMC emergency equipment was parked like their big mobile substation (it cost $900,000, and is the largest of two), and a new tank-tracked vehicle used to service off-road poles. Dale also showed a collection of items which they had found over the years which had been the cause (or the sobering melted result) of power outages. This led to a discussion of what squirrels do to transformers (they unintentionally bridge the spark gap and arrestor, which fries the squirrel and causes the fuses to blow). “Squirrels are a major problem for us,” said Dale.

(If that’s their worst problem, then I think the demonstration showed that they’ve got us very well covered!)