by Tom Port
 
Ring of the Bell: John Millich, the “Copy Cat”, welcomed all with the familiar “Barry
    Rassin is R. I. President and his motto is: ‘Be the Inspiration’”.
Greeter: Glen Weber filled in for Norbert Walz. Glen’s Thought for the Day was, paraphrasing, “Your mind is a garden and your thoughts are the seeds. Good thoughts bring flowers and bad thoughts bring weeds”.
The Patriotic Song, “American the Beautiful” was led by Gary Sloan.
 
Visitor: Cherisse Rios was introduced as one interested in Rotary.
A Sad Note: The daughter of Rachel Hurd, President of the Dougherty Valley Club, was recently killed in an automobile accident.  A card was passed around for signing.
 
New Member Induction: Dennis Harvey, assisted by Glen Weber, inducted Melanie Emig of the Crow Canyon Country Club as a new member. Melanie was born and grew up in this area. She has been married 12 years and has a 4 year old daughter, Emily. As is our custom, everyone rose to shake her hand. Welcome Melanie.
 
Interact: Aakash Bhegade of Interact was introduced by Gary Sloan. He spoke of two “stay-overs”, one at US Berkeley and one at UC Davis in which the group worked on leadership building. The Recent District Conference was a great success and well attended. Their “Rise Against Hunger” project received a great response. There was also a C.E.R.T.(Community Emergency Response Team) training drill. “On Fire Pizza” is supporting and Interact a fund raiser so buy your pizza there and the club will receive some financial contributions.
 
Six-Club Dinner: The Six-club dinner is April 17 at Round Hill CC. Betty Yee, State Controller, will be the speaker. The cost is $39.00 per person.
 
District Assembly is May 17-19 at the Peppermill in Reno, Nevada. Four Districts will join together for the Assembly
 
Club Pictures are Needed. Chris Gayler is asking for pictures of club activities other than the tree lot or Carbo-Load. For example, the Art and Wind Festival, The Dictionary project, the golf tournament, etc. The point is to have pictures to show prospective members examples of the kinds of activities the club is engaged in.
 
Main Event: John Millich introduced his basketball friend, Paul Douglas, PDLefty44, who is a volunteer coach at Monte Vista High School. Paul Douglas has devoted his life to basketball. He has been an NBA scout and a coach at Oregon State.  He always loved baseball, but growing up in Western Oregon he found it rains too much so he went inside for basketball.
Paul is very supportive of high school athletics as the athletes learn to get along, leadership, and to accept constructive criticism. He believes high school athletes should participate in all sports rather than specialize in a single sport. The “one and done” attitude is a mistake as so many great athletes fail to make the pros and end up with nothing to fall back on.
 
Paul says Seth curry is the best shooter he has ever seen; he shoots on the way up. He was glad to see the MBA took away hand checking which caused scores to increase, but acknowledges the game is still extremely physical.

 
Raffle: Jeff Disch won the Greeter Gift and John Tillich won a chance at the Progressive. He drew only a blue ball though, so he went home with a mere $10.