Happy new year, and welcome back to The View!

Next week: Matt O’Halloran will lead a Rotary Park visioning session.  Please come to share all of your great ideas!

President John Cottle opened our meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance at 12:00 noon.

Thought for the Day: Have a happy, healthy and prosperous new year!

Welcome back Pam Hudson! Pam introduced her guest: Meg Wilson from Hudson Real Estate, who will soon be joining our club. Hooray!

Happy Dollars:

  • Pam is happy to be back, and thanks everyone for their support during her absence.
  • John C. is happy that Pam is back, and also is happy about the success of our first (annual) holiday tree. Thanks to Matt and Travis (and others?) for helping to un-decorate and remove it timely.
  • Matt is happy that next week we’ll talk about Rotary Park. It will be an idea-generating session, not a decision-making session.
  • Gary is happy that he had a good Christmas.
  • Tom was happy to see Matt taking decorations off Rotary Park tree, and Travis cutting it down today.
  • Heather is happy to report that the Rotary Park “2014 year in review” mailer is done, and will soon be mailed to all donors!
  • Ray happily reported on his Hawaiian vacation, where they happily saw Rick and LaDonna more than they had anticipated!

Sunshine Report
Donna saw Wilma, who is feeling much better and may be back to join us as early as next week! Way to go, Wilma! Wilma is back on Sunshine Queen duty, and took care of sending a card on our behalf to Joe S. who is still under the weather.  John P. is out this week with an elbow infection. The club sends  healing thoughts to all of you!! We look forward to seeing you all again soon.

Announcements

  • John C. announced that the Casino Night committee will meet after today’s meeting.
  • The next regular club Board meeting will be Monday, 1/12/15, at the Mendocino Hotel at 12:00 noon. Bring $10 to cover the cost of lunch.
  • Mendocino Coast Clinics is holding its annual Crab Wine and Beer Days on Jan 23 & 24.
  • The Mendocino Art Center is hosting a Fundraiser Ball on Saturday, Feb. 7.
  • Jody passed around the program sheet and needs additional dates filled. Charter Night will likely be held on Friday, Feb. 6 — everyone should attend! 6:00 pm will be the start time. Stay tuned for more details!
  • John I. announced that the Knights of Columbus annual Crab Feed is on Jan 23 & 24. Tickets are already gone for Friday night, though some are still available for Saturday night! Buy soon!

Today’s Program
Ray Alarcon is standing in for John P. to present out training on our Adopt-a-Highway program. He did an excellent job as finemaster! Here’s what we learned from the finemaster:

  • The Lincoln Highway was the first transcontinental highway from NY to SF. It was first driveable in 1913. It took an average of 20-30 days to drive the whole route at that time. It was paved for the first time in 1938.
  • There are currently 50,486 total miles of highways in CA.
  • 9,925 miles of highway have been adopted through the Adopt-a-Highway program.
  • As of 2013, in one year’s time, 16,100 pounds of trash were picked up. (We are doubtful of this statistic!)
  • 8 million hours of volunteer time were donated to the Adopt-a-Highway program in 2013.
  • In 2013, 1800 abandoned cars were picked up through the program.

We had a technical glitch when trying to view the Adopt-a-Highway training video, and did not have sound. We will need to reschedule our training, so that we can begin work cleaning up our adopted section of Highway 1, from Big River to the Lansing St/Hwy 1 intersection.

Raffle winners:
Donna and Gary had the winning tickets — we are now playing with a new full deck (of cards), and neither drew the joker. The pot will continue to grow!