Welcome to the Sunrise Spirit –
the Weekly Newsletter of The Rotary Club of Arcata Sunrise
Our Next Meeting
We hope you will join us for Next Friday’s meeting!
RISE Calendar …
“Rotary Involvement Strengthens Everyone“
May 12-14 – The District 5130 Conference at the Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe Resort in Incline Village, Nevada
May 19 – History Day presentations at our Friday Meeting – 7 am at the Plaza View Room in Jacoby’s Storehouse.
May 22-26 – Firesides Week – Please be sure to sign up to attend one of our annual planning sessions to help President-Elect Dustin Littlefield prepare for his Reign of Glory!
June 2 – The Steve Brodhag Golf and Crown Royal Classic at Baywood – a fundraiser for the Rotary Club of Southwest Eureka. Contact Emanuel Rose to participate.
June 10-14 – The Rotary International Convention in Atlanta, Georgia
June 17 – RCAS Food Booth at the Arcata Bay Oyster Festival
August 13-19 – Pedal for Polio bike ride to raise awareness and funds to support Rotary’s fight against polio. Participants will ride from Crescent City to Petaluma (or portions of the route)
Sunrise Moments
The Judy Report: Here is the latest from Rotary Exchange Student Judy, in which she discussed her trip to Washington (including her kayak adventures):
Firesides Week Venues Announced: Our Club will hold its annual Fireside Meetings the week of May 22nd. These meetings will help President-Elect Dustin Littlefield plan for his year as Club President. This year’s hosts will be Barbara Browning, Romi Hitchcock Tinseth, Jessica McKnight, and Rina Brodhag. Remember, the Firesides are our alternate meeting sites for the week – there will be no meeting on May 26th.
Avenues of Service Reports: Rotary divides its “business” into five areas, which it calls the Avenues of Service. Our Club assigns a member of the Board of Directors to each of the Avenues, and we heard from most of them at our meeting.
Club Service: Terri Clark heads up the Avenue that takes on the running of our Club, its meetings, and its public face. The Sergeant at Arms Committee sets up our venues for our meetings and many of our special events. The Membership Committee helps recruit, vet, and prepare potential new members, and it brings them into the Club. It works closely with our Mentorship Committee, which works to ensure that those new members are welcomed and understand the ins and outs of being a Sunriser. The Programs Committee ensures that we have an interesting featured speaker or other presentation at our meetings. Our Fellowship Committee schedules exciting opportunities for our Club members to gather outside of our Friday morning meetings (such as our Charter Night Celebration at Baywood Country Club in February). Finally, the Public Relations Committee ensures that our efforts are recognized in the local press, and it maintains the RCAS website, and the Sunrise Spirit.
Community Service: Our Director for the Community Service Avenue, Carol Vander Meer, was unable to attend the meeting; at a later meeting, she will speak to the work that the Community Service Committee has taken on this year. This Avenue also includes the committees that organized our two fundraisers – A Taste of the Holidays (in November), and March’s Phantom of the Opera Dinner/Auction.
International Service: This Avenue is led by Maggie Kraft, and it includes the World Community Service Committee, which finds and helps fund projects that help people throughout the world. This Committee’s projects are funded by our Club, often with a welcome financial boost from the Rotary Foundation. That is why this Avenue also includes our Foundation Committee, which encourages all Sunrisers to donate to the Rotary Foundation each year. The Committee organizes the Final Friday Foundation Auctions, and it provides incentives for additional donations.
Vocational Service: Ray Noggle is the Director assigned to Vocational Service. Since he couldn’t make the meeting, Former President Jessica McKnight filled in. Jessica said that this Avenue celebrates the varied professions that make Rotary Clubs so interesting and vital. She also told us that the Vocational Service Committee has been doing some outreach, including working with the Humboldt Live! program, which is led by Jim Ritter. We provide speakers for many of their job exploration events, and we help coordinate job shadowing events. These efforts led to a tentative expansion of the outreach program to students at Humboldt State University.
New Generations: Our Club pioneered this newest Avenue of service years ago, when we decided that Youth Service was as important as the other Avenues. This area is helmed by Steve McHaney, who said that “many great things are happening” in our work with young people. The Youth Activities Committee sponsors our annual Kids, Crabs, & Rotary event, as well as the annual RCAS Cross Country Championships. Our Competitions and Scholarships Committee awards several scholarships to seniors who are graduating from Arcata High School and other local schools each spring. Our Club is very involved with the local Interact and Rotaract Clubs – Arcata High has a very active Interact Club, and we sponsor the North Bay Rotaract Club for young adults between 18 and 30 years old. For many years, we have been very involved in Rotary Youth Exchange. We have sponsored inbound and outbound students each year, and many Sunrisers have served / currently serve in this area at the District level.
Live Music at 7:30 … am?
We were treated to live jazz at our meeting, courtesy of the RLa Trio, which features Tim Randles on the piano, Ken Lawrence playing bass guitar, and percussionist Mike LaBolle. This trio performs frequently at local establishments, including Libations, the Mad River Taproom, and Cafe Brio.
For more about (and from) this fine combo, visit their Facebook page. Thanks to Tim, Mike, and Ken for a great show!
