By: Gary Sloan

 

On a bright beautiful summer day, our African Queen and President, Kathy Gailey called the meeting to order at 12:15 p.m.  Our own senior member of Rotary was the greeter who led us in the flag salute and shared the thought for the day:  “You can’t make someone else’s choices.   You shouldn’t let someone else make yours.”  Pat introduced a past San Ramon Rotarian and current San Ramon City Mayor, Bill Clarkson who is now the President of the Dougherty/San Ramon Rotary Club.  He announced that in the last Crows Call an excellent “by the numbers” bio accurately reflects his 81 years, living in 7 states, having visited 47 states, served 3 years in the Air Force, worked at 8 JC Penney Stores, counseled for 22 years, belonged to 5 Rotary clubs with 36 years of perfect attendance when he was not visiting his 6 grandchildren, 4 children while being married to “Lady” Ann for 60 years.

 

Following a rousing patriotic song led by Don (Pavarotti) Jones, Kathy shared a “Rotary Moment” by giving all Rotarians present a decal which reads “Proud Rotarian”. Terry Kohne introduced his guest, Liz Graswich, who filled his shoes at the City.  Kathy shared a letter of appreciation from the District Governor’s wife thanking the club for our hospitality last week when we hosted both she and her husband.

 

Upcoming events were announced, not the least of which was Kathy’s Inauguration Party this Saturday at the Sloan residence where food, song, fellowship and our President’s baptism are on tap for the day.  The party begins at 5:30p.  (bring a bottle of wine).  Kathy also shared that the HopFest will be held on September 17 where 20 breweries and restaurants will be among the vendors for beer and food lovers. 

Jerry Marrs, the auction guru, introduced Ollie Danby with Pixel West Media who donated two days of his valuable time to produce a video promoting our auction.  Jerry thanked Rotarians who participated in the filming.  He reminded all Rotarians on the importance of collecting auction items which must be completed by Sept 25^th.

 

Prior to club member recognitions, Kathy passed out Foundation pins to Rotarians who have committed to donating to Rotary International Foundation but missed last week’s recognition.

 

Ray Giles celebrated his anniversary sharing that dinner, dancing, roses and wine were involved.  After spending big in the name of love, Kathy recognized Ray for $40.   Dr. Bill’s birthday is coming up on September 1^st.   Bill took the opportunity to share that he had returned from Ashland, Oregon to see Hamlet providing a spoiler alert that the protagonist still dies in the end.  Bill also shared that Will Harland spent time in Nome, Alaska seeking out illegal construction activity.  But the big news was that Bill was introduced to his Great Granddaughter, Emerston, whose nickname is Waldo. J

 

Lucky shared that he had addressed the incoming class at Hass School of Management where the daughter of Mo, our amazing server, was among the students in attendance.  Terry Koehne announced that he dropped his son off for college in Omaha, Nebraska and after a tearful goodbye saw his son on snap chat doing the limbo in his dorm room seemingly no regret or emotional damage of his recent separation from his devastated parent.

 

“Gregory”, a visiting Math teacher, shared his thoughts that we had a bright future based on the recent U.S.A. victories at the Olympics.  No mention was made of the Ryan Lochte spectacle in Brazil. 

 

Mark shared how his daughter received a $5500 grant from the U of  Texas in Austin making her eligible for in-state tuition saving Mark $15,000!   Mark’s daughter is in civil engineer for water resource management.

 

Kathy announced that she got a new part-time job with the Wheelchair school program.  In addition to teaching our community about disabilities in other countries, Kathy will be fund raising and teaching about the challenge of all people with disabilities.  CONGRATS Kathy!

 

Bill Brodie reminded members that Day at the Races will be on November 19^th.  He had 12 tickets but Gary Sloan reserved two tickets on the spot as he sought to fill his gambling compulsion.

 

Marv introduced our speaker Camille Bibeau, Phd, a member of the senior scientific staff at Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) with over 30 years of service to research, project management, economic development and educational outreach.  Dr. Bibeau demonstrated that she was more intelligent than the combined room of Rotarians with multiple degrees, specializing in solid-state laser technology for fusion energy applications.  In addition to promoting joint economic initiatives she currently leads the lab’s effort in a joint initiative with Sandia National Laboratories to develop a 110 acre campus to advance partnerships with industry and academia to strengthen economic and national security.  LLNL has the largest lasers in the world.  To demonstrate the concept of her work, the doctor presented a short video of the sun with incredible images.

 

Dr. Bibeau explained that there are 17 national labs in the U.S. with five residing in California.  The goal of the lab is to “make the nation safer”.  Spending $1.56 billion, LLNL has 5900 employees (one of the smaller labs) with large amount of funding coming from national defense budget.    These labs seek to diminish the likelihood of war, terrorism, natural and human disasters through innovative science and technology.  The lab focuses on weapons, photon science, global security, nuclear security, environmental safety forensic science, fusion, mass spectrometry, lasers, high explosives and computing. 

 

She shared that the Lab is overseen by a consortium of private/public entities including U.C., Bechtel, AECOM and others.

 

When asked whether fission or fusion would be the answer to our energy problems, Dr. Bibeau explained the difference between the two and suggested that we are a long way from finding a fusion solution but that fission may be a more likely avenue.  The next big advancement in science is combining computing with big data and medicine opined Dr. Bibeau.

 

It was really an amazing talk! Oh, and did I share that Dr. Bibeau has dark ops security clearance and personally worked on nuclear and natural disasters as well as having worked on some of the most pressing terrorist issues of the day.

 

Marv should be congratulated for finding such a great speaker who was interesting and engaging.

 

On to more mundane things, we conducted our raffle when Stacey Litteral won a bottle of wine and Don Jones got $10 having been unable to roll snake eyes (1 and 1) or box cars (6 and 6) on the dice in three tries.

 

The meeting was adjourned.  Next week’s program is on the U.S. Constitution.