Although we had snow covered ground this morning in Bolton where I live, our meeting venue had only cloud cover this afternoon with temperature in the low forties. PP President Bill Saunders, once again filling in for our recovering President Dave Amberg, rang the bell to get us going. As usual the Rotary Song and the Pledge-of-Allegiance had a pleasant ring. Dan Russell delivered a short but thoughtful invocation about making the world a better place.
Thirty-one Rotarians started the casual conversational slow walk in a single file to the buffet table hoping for the best. The tray of lasagna was followed by sliced chicken in barbecue sauce, or was it pork (?) as observed by Dan Larson, on to string beans followed by dinner rolls and salad. Dessert consisted of two different kinds of pies. As usual, our fellow Rotarians were very gracious about lunch, although a few made some humorous remarks about the mini size pie wedges.
Steve Jacoby introduced Emily Chapple, who is a loan officer, and Dan Firestone introduced our guest speaker Victor Stern. Our two best voices, Art Bradbury and George Schoen, warmed our hearts with the Welcome Song.
PP Bill reported that President Dave is going through therapy at home and is doing as best as can be expected. Dan Larson wanted to know if there will be any adjustments to President Dave’s pay for missing his duties as President. Our laughter and similar simultaneous comments from others captured the essence and spirit of the moment.
Happy Jack Martin, our custodian of Happy Dollars for this month, started by saying that based on his lengthy report last week, he has been advised to be speedy. So for the sake of moving this along, I am going to try a new format.
Happy Dollars for Sports: Bob Wood, Kevin Kickery, Art Bradbury, Dan Larson, George Schoen, Marc Glass, Neal Cunningham, Steve Jacoby and Ned Lynch. I am sure you can figure out who they were rooting for.
Birthday Dollars: Jim Fallon who requested a moment of silence in lieu of the song.
Miscellaneous Dollars: Bill Saunders loves being Acting President; Bob Buettner for Happy Jack and for leaving early; George Agnelli for being late; Jim Watts thinks Marc Glass is a pain in the…..; Sue and Peter Klock are flying to Paris to see their grandkids; Guy Labella and Alex Wisz just because Happy Jack asked.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
1. PP Bill would like all Rotarians to make a note that starting May 9, 2018, every second and fourth Wednesday of the month our meeting will take place at the River Room of the Goodwin College at 6:00 PM. Food will be catered by Congress Street Rotisserie. He would also like us to spread the word among other Rotarians who have not been able to attend lunch meetings for various reasons. Starting with May 2, 2018 we will meet at the Ridge for lunch every first and third (some months fifth) Wednesdays of the month. Unless things change in the future, lunches will be provided by our current caterer.
2. Sue Klock was happy to announce that their team was able to get a commitment of $836,000, which is a record for the District.
3. Alex Wisz reminded us about Job Shadow next Wednesday. He will soon get a list with names of students. These students will join us for Lunch.
4. Board Meeting will be held at 5:30 PM on 4/23/2018.
Since out last week’s Raffle winner was not present, Marc Glass had our Guest Speaker pull the winning number 675. I did not see anyone raising their hand, except I saw Marc reaching into his pocket, pull out a ticket, and guess what?
Early leavers left soon after.
Dan Firestone introduced our guest speaker, Victor Stern, who was a former employee at Sikorsky Aircraft and a volunteer at AARP. His topic was Fraud & Scams. AARP is actively involved in protecting consumers from fraud by providing valuable information on their website www.aarp.org/fraud or by 24/7 phone 877-908-3360.
He went into great details about the various types of scams such as over the phone, online, letter or in person. These scammers are professionals, know how to engage you, and how to get you into an emotional state to extract valuable information. The examples he cited sounded very familiar because we have all been exposed to these at one time or another. He gave us a few suggestions about protecting us from these frauds/scams such as not answering calls that we do not recognize, not opening emails that might look authentic but are scams, not carrying SS/Medicare cards in our wallets, learning to say no to strong arm sellers, checking our credit report periodically, do financial dealing with only the people you know. He also left some very informative pamphlets.
Until next week, your Scribe Anwar Hossain