President Dan Rodriguez stuck the bell at the top of the7 o’clock hour, and started our meeting with an invocation inspired by the late Martin Luther King Jr.. We should honor his work and remember his dream, while striving to make that dream a reality for all.
Board Meeting
Last night there was a board meeting, and
Phil Perington shared that the board approved $500 to go to the essay contest, which will be used to award the first, second and third place winners. Also at the board meeting, Bob Avery reports that the
board agreed to name the top Eagle Scout project award after Donlie Smith, which is an appropriate honor given Donlie’s years of tireless work with Scouting. Bob said the process of gathering project submissions and dividing them by district continues and judging will begin soon.
President Dan said that more information will be coming soon regarding a raffle/fundraiser to take place in February. This should be a chance for the club to
make up for a bit lower revenue than usual from the Christmas tree lot. Phil Perington will be the raffle manager for our club, so stay tuned
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Brain Bowl -Karl Geil
The Brain Bowl is coming! January 30th, or
one week from tomorrow. The competition rooms have been assigned to the readers, so those of your who will be reading need to respond to the invite from Google Meet (if you haven’t already). Emails have been sent to all readers from Gunar Neumann with a summary of all rules and a recap of the training sessions as well.
Tree Lot Final Report
Tom Kramis expressed he thanks to Harry Fegley for a very generous donation toward the tree lot. Also, Tom sent a check to the Tamarac club for their contributions to
getting the tree lot up and going. Tom also wanted to express thanks for the hard work done by the tree lot day managers:
Frank Middleton, Phil Perington, Joe Marci, Russ Paul, Larry Pulaski, Tom Glazier, George Buzick and the late Gary Miller.
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Greg Young let us know that donations to the club in Gary Miller’s memory are still coming in. If you would like to make a donation also, please let Greg know soon. Multiple members expressed their thanks to Mark Metevia. Mark spoke at Gary’s service last week and did an excellent job. A link to a video of the full service, including Mark’s words and a slide show of photos of Gary and his family, was in last week’s issue of GUMS.
Joe Marci announced that he will be stepping in for Gary as the school representative for the Super Citizens program at Most Precious Blood going forward. He and Greg Young will be presenting at MBP on January 26th.
National History Day in Colorado is a social studies and literacy program that equips students in elementary, middle, and high school with the skills necessary to succeed in college and the real
world. Students participate in a project-based learning curriculum that emphasizes critical reading and thinking, research, analysis,
and the drawing of meaningful conclusions. Students can complete these projects in groups or as individuals in one of five categories: documentary, paper, exhibit, performance, or website. In 2021, they then compete in one of the thirteen regions across the state in either the junior (middle school) or senior (high school) division, or in the elementary poster contest (4th and 5thgraders). Regional winners compete at the State Contests in May on the University of Colorado Denver campus. First and second place state winners compete in Nationals at the University of Maryland, College Park in June. A document listing the 13 regional events (9 of which will be virtual this year) is attached to GUMS.
Last year a set of triplets competed in Colorado and went on to become champions on the national level. Kayla shared a video of their presentation, which was on the development of Lincoln Highway. One of the benefits of judging the competition is that you might learn something! The students were very impressive, and many club members learned a great deal - if you are interested in learning more on their topic, check out:
.After judges have been assigned a category in which they will be judging, online History Day judge training can be found athttp://https://nhdcjudges.weebly.com/
Kayla said that the salaries for the History Day staff are
paid by CU Denver. But all operating funds come from
fundraising, including recent support from the Daniels
Kayla also shared an exciting announcement: National
History Day in Colorado has named the Optimist Club of
Monaco South (that’s us) as their Volunteer of the Year!
She showed us an impressive glass sculpture award that she will get to us when she can. She also expressed her thanks for the many years of support our club has given the program. Good news!
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Covid related Stuff
Tom Mauro said that if you are looking to get your vaccine shot,http://sclhealth.org has openings over the next couple of days. Go to the site, set up an account and then schedule an appointment from the top drop down menu. The vaccinations are taking place at the Adams County Government building off of I76.
From the office of the Governor: Colorado is one of the leading states in the entire country in successfully getting the vaccine used, and currently just over six percent of our population has received at least the first dose. Here are a few important updates and resources:
Colorado is currently vaccinating Phase 1A and the first half of Phase 1B. This includes the highest-risk health care workers and long-term care facility staff and all Coloradans ages 70+. In the coming weeks we will be announcing how that eligibility can expand as we get more vaccines.
Our focus in distributing the vaccine has been to save the most lives and end the public health crisis as soon as possible. To that end, we have set the goal of vaccinating 70% of Coloradans 70 and older by February 28. Coloradans 70 and up account for over three quarters of COVID deaths in our state, and we must act with urgency to save lives.
At this point, the 2021 OPTIMIST will still be held at Doral Resort Miami. OI is downplaying the Trump name but is unwilling to lose the $ 500,000 - $ 1,000,000 it would cost to break the contract. We’re not like NYC or the PGA Tour that can afford to break contracts with the Trump Organization.
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Also, I just received word from OI that the CO-WY District will receive 70 slots for the 2021 OPTIMIST. That’s the same number of slots that we would have had for the 2020 OPTIMIST and is in addition to the 23 and 23 slots, respectively, we were given for the Optimist Junior Tour events held at Green Valley Ranch in October 2019 and October 2020
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From Steve Kady
A Little Levity from Mark Metavia
IN CASE YOU DIDN'T ALREADY KNOW THIS LITTLE TIDBIT OF WONDERFUL
TRIVIA...
ON JULY 20, 1969, AS COMMANDER OF THE APOLLO 11 LUNAR MODULE, NEIL ARMSTRONG WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO SET FOOT ON THE MOON.HIS FIRST WORDS AFTER STEPPING ON THE MOON,
"THAT'S ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN, ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND," WERE TELEVISED TO EARTH AND HEARD BY MILLIONS. BUT, JUST BEFORE HE RE-ENTERED THE LANDER, HE MADE THE ENIGMATIC REMARK "GOOD LUCK, MR. GORSKY." MANY PEOPLE AT NASA THOUGHT IT WAS A CASUAL REMARK CONCERNING SOME RIVAL SOVIET COSMONAUT. HOWEVER, UPON CHECKING, THERE WAS NO GORSKY IN EITHER THE RUSSIAN OR AMERICAN SPACE PROGRAMS. OVER THE YEARS, MANY PEOPLE QUESTIONED ARMSTRONG AS TO WHAT THE GOOD LUCK, MR. GORSKY' STATEMENT MEANT, BUT ARMSTRONG ALWAYS JUST SMILED.ON JULY 5, 1995, IN TAMPA BAY, FLORIDA, WHILE ANSWERING QUESTIONS FOLLOWING A SPEECH, A REPORTER BROUGHT UP THE 26-YEAR-OLD QUESTION ABOUT MR.GORSKY AND THIS TIME HE FINALLY RESPONDED BECAUSE HIS MR. GORSKY HAD JUST DIED, SO NEIL ARMSTRONG FELT HE COULD NOW ANSWER THE QUESTION. HERE IS THE ANSWER TO "WHO WAS MR. GORSKY?": IN 1938, WHEN HE WAS A KID IN A SMALL MID-WESTERN TOWN, HE WAS PLAYING BASEBALL WITH A FRIEND IN THE BACKYARD. HIS FRIEND HIT THE BALL, WHICH LANDED IN HIS NEIGHBOR'S YARD BY THEIRBEDROOM WINDOW. HIS NEIGHBORS WERE MR. AND MRS. GORSKY. AS HE LEANED DOWN TO PICK UP THE BALL, YOUNG ARMSTRONG HEARD MRS. GORSKY SHOUTING AT MR. GORSKY,"SEX! YOU WANT SEX?! YOU'LL GET SEX WHEN THE KID NEXT DOOR WALKS ON THE MOON!" It broke the place up. NEIL ARMSTRONG'S FAMILY CONFIRMED THAT THIS IS A TRUE STORY.
Closing
President Dan asked Vice President, Tree Lot Guru,
and all-around good guy Tom Kramis to led us it reciting
the Optimist Creed, which he did in a loud and proud
Paul Stratton-Editor
From Steve Kady