Rotattler for the Meeting of June 13, 2019 and Beyond
Reminders included:
1) Remember to sign up for Strawberry Festival duties related to our lobster rolls sales that Saturday, June 29th. We need people for the Friday evening beforehand through the clean-up time that Saturday. This is a scholarships fundraiser.
2) Don't forget to come and enjoy the family-friendly district conference in Portland on Saturday, June 22nd. President Richard will be there. See him if you'd like more details.
3) The changeover social is on Sunday, June 23rd at the home of Tom and Cheryl Harmon starting at 5 p.m. This is always a nice time for members and their significant others. There is a sign-up sheet going around to ensure we have enough appetizers, sides and desserts coming from membership. Food on the grill will be provided by the Harmons and we are individually responsible for our beverages.
Program
We thank Derek Ahl for bringing us the speaker of the day, Linda Riddell from Health Economy, LLC and her assistant Joy who was there to take photos. Linda's career began as an epidemiologist with a specialty in poverty, and this topic has interested her since graduate school. She came to understand that one's socio-economic status was related to being healthy. Research and observations reveal that the better one's socio-economic status, the healthier a person is. Studies performed by the British in the 1960's of British civil servants revealed that even when people practice the same unhealthy behaviors, those who were poorer were more unhealthy than those with a higher income level, and the wealthier lived longer. Autonomy makes a big difference in being healthy and what it all seems to boil down to is stress. Those with lower incomes are more health hazardous and die younger. Financial stress affects how the brain works and impairs judgment and executive functions and even IQ. This even trickles down to one's children. Linda quoted the adage, "If you are not a fish, how can you know if fish are happy?" So, to help people better understand the struggles of those who are poor, she invented a game, which we played for a short while, that gives true life situations faced by people and allows the player to see how that impacts an individual's family, finances, spirit, stress, etc. By playing the game we raised our awareness and empathy for those with such struggles. Through this exercise with groups that deal with the public, such as teachers, police departments and other public servants, she hopes to achieve better behaviors towards the impoverished, through deeper understanding of what they are dealing with on a daily basis. For more information, see http://www.healtheconomy.net/AboutUs.htm.
Board Meeting
The Board met on Monday and discussed the activities we will be undertaking in June. They also touched on the year-end membership statistics that need to be transmitted to the district to calculate the club's next billing. We are charged for every member we report, but there are members we haven't seen for quite some time. We will try to reach out to them to encourage them to return or, if unable or unwilling, particularly institutional members, to suggest a replacement who would enjoy what our Rotary club does for the community and globally.