It was quite the recruiting session before the meeting officially began this week. Tom Reynolds joined us as a guest of Laura Floyd, and once he expressed admiration of Rotary, someone asked him why he had never become a member. His answer was he had never been invited. Well, the invitations came fast and furious, so maybe we will grow the club a bit this year.
President Sue rang the bell and began the meeting by telling people that we should all mute ourselves and only have one person recite the Pledge. Your scribe happened to suggest that approach last week, but it came back to bite him when he was asked to recite the 4 Way Test and was unprepared. :-( Marc Glass did the honors with the pledge, and Ruth Sheehan gave a great invocation, themed around making the world a better place through Rotary activities, and President Sue recited the 4 Way Test.
Anwar Hossain introduced the week's speaker, our very own Peter Klock. Peter and Sue recently returned from an Antarctic Cruise, and he shared some of his experiences there. Primarily Peter shared his recording of a presentation that astronaut Susan Kilrain gave on the cruise. Susan was the first female astronaut to pilot the space shuttle. Her first flight had to be recalled due to a systems failure, but the second try saw her spend 16 days in space along with a crew of scientists performing experiments. She talked about the exercise requirements needed to keep the heart strong. It weakens quickly in the absence of gravity. Susan biked around the world in 1.5 hours, as that is how long it takes the shuttle to orbit the Earth. When their time in space was up, and the crew returned to Earth, the re-acclimation took a few days. They were not allowed to drive for several days as they would not have been able to pass a sobriety test. Nice side effect of space travel I suppose.
There being no caring moments, or announcements, we adjourned after the presentation.
Until next week,
Wes