The Rote – August 1, 2019
The Miami Yacht Club
President Norby Rudel called the meeting to order and gave the invocation. John Carroll led us in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Guests and Visitors were introduced by Rick Miller:
- Jocelyne Belizaire, a visiting Rotarian and diplomat from the Rotary Club of Petion, Haiti.
Announcements:
- President Norby encouraged ticket sales for the 50-50.
- Rotary University is August 24th and will deal with public relations, social media, membership, and The Rotary Foundation. He encouraged people to sign up with Diane Landsberg and to carpool.
- Rotary Leadership Institute is Sept. 21st. The fee will be paid by the club. Please contact Diane Landsberg if you will be attending and she will register you.
- We have a beach cleanup scheduled for Sept. 21st as well, so if you are not attending RLI, you have another opportunity to be of service, with the focus on ameliorating the environment for marine and seashore life.
- The board approved hiring of a social media company headed by Jessica Almeida and encouraged everyone with content to add to the social media world to contact her. Jessica is now overseeing all the content as editor, curator and publisher of the Club’s social media content. Everyone is urged to view The Rotary Club of Miami Facebook page, to “Like” it and “Share” it with your contacts on Facebook.
- Norby thanked Robert Bull for all of his community service committee’s service.
Happy $$$$$$$$$$$$$ were collected by Arlene Terrinoni:
- Marcia Brod is still happy to be retired (and why not?) and recounted going to a Marlins game in which the long ride home with a combo of public transportation and car took 90 minutes.
- Phil Seipp, on behalf of our club, attended the white coat ceremony at FIU for new medical students at the Wertheim School of Medicine, and announced that the medical school dean will be present at our August 22, 2019 meeting.
- Norby Rudel was happy to have finished another home improvement.
- Noreen Timoney was glad for the presence of today’s speaker, Peggy Sapp, and that she had updated the Rotary speakers’ calendar.
- Renel Noel was grateful for all his friends from Rotary who helped last weekend with packing backpacks to be sent to Haiti for the school backpack project.
- Robin Shelley was also happy to have Peggy Sapp be our speaker today. The Shelleys’ grandson is in Poland for a world sailboat racing championship and was in third place, with time still remaining to move up in the standings.
- Jay Almeida praised Randy Lichtman for doing a good job and was glad that his wife, Mara, came home at 4:00 a.m. (Unstated was whether this was her return from a trip!)
OUR SPEAKER: Peggy Sapp, was introduced by Robin Shelley.
Peggy is president and CEO of Informed Families, whose mission is to help children grow up safe, happy and drug-free. The non-profit organization has received numerous recognition awards from every level of government. Her topic today was addiction, which she says is a brain disease accompanied by an obsessive-compulsive need to use a substance that harms the individual. She traced the rise of addiction from the time that it became legal in the US for pharmaceutical companies to advertise their medicines on TV in 1994, followed by the Chronic Pain Society in 1998 deciding that opioids could treat chronic pain. That was followed with more pharmaceutical advertising. Currently, Informed Families is providing loaner Kindle Fires to students from at-risk homes. If the students pass certain criteria, she hopes to raise $13,000 to give them the Kindle Fires.
50/50
Noel Renel sold the 50/50 tickets with a total of $1,796 in the pot. Cathy Cahill’s ticket was drawn first, but she did not pick the ace of spades, thus narrowing the odds for us all at the next 50/50 drawing to one out of 13. We’re glad that you had the chance to win, Cathy.
4-WAY TEST
Cathy Cahill led us in the 4-Way Test of the Things We Think, Say or Do.
Scribe: Linda Singer
