This Friday Feb. 1, 2019

Dear Fellow Rotarians,

I hope you are staying warm in this frigid weather! I find it stimulating, but grateful we have warm homes and cars to keep us above it all.

Last week Bill Fishman, a long time Rotarian from the White Plains Rotary Club and also the head of Rotary Means Business, came as our guest speaker. His talk was excellent and reminded us that Rotary is a great place to network with other professionals in your club and beyond. He holds monthly meeting at his law office in White Plains, that is directly focused on business networking. You can also bring a friend to any of these meetings, which could be a way to bring others into Rotary.

Tomorrow we will hold our monthly general meeting. I would like to open this meeting up to discuss what you like about Rotary and our club, as well as suggestions for improvements. There is always room for making things better, but to do so, we need everyone’s authentic and constructive voice to be heard.

Hope to see you all tomorrow. It will be cold outside, but it’s just a few steps from you home to your car and your car to inside the Briars and I promise, your hearts will be warmed and you belly’s full and satisfied!

Mark J.“Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It's about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.” 
― Brene Brown

This Friday Jan25, 2019

Here’s hoping your week is going well. It’s rather hard to know what to wear these days, long underwear or shorts!!

Last week was unique and exciting. We had three wonderful young High School ladies who came sharing about the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, sharing about their competitive efforts to raise at least $20,000 for research and to hopefully become Students of The Year of this this organization, through their efforts. Their ability to speak and share publicly was amazing, they did a great job. Two of the girls parents came to support their daughters and were quite moved by our Rotary Club. Jeff Cadge, the father of one of the girls, came up to me after the meeting asking if he could join our club. He called me today saying his check is ready and application is filled out and is hoping to be excepted into our club. I will bring it up at tomorrow’s meeting and we will check to see if anyone has any objections for Jeff to join us. If all are in agreement, Jeff will join us at our Feb. 1^st meeting.

This Friday we are still working on finding a guest speaker. The person who planned to speak had something come up last moment so we had to change our plan. If I hear more soon, I will let you know. If you know of someone, or if you want to share about something yourself, let me know.

Hope to see all of you tomorrow.

Mark J.

Here is beautiful poem, by Mary Oliver who just passed away a few days ago. She was an American Poet who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 as well as the National Book Award.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

This Friday

Hi Everyone,

This past Friday, Sean Pica, the head of Hudson Link, an education program in NY prisons, gave a deeply moving presentation. Sean spent 16 years in New York prisons for a serious mistake he made as a teenager. Once in prison, he learned that many inmates did not know how to read or write and was asked to read books and read and write letters for many. To make a long story short, Sean was able to eventually get a college degree and once released earned a master’s degree. Sean has made it his mission to make sure that others would get the same opportunity as he had and, through private funding for this program, many hundreds have been able to get degrees themselves. From those who have earned a degree and left the prison system only 1% have returned compared to a 67% return rate that did not earn a degree. What a remarkable man Sean is!

This Friday we have three young ladies coming to share about the 2019 Student of the Year campaign for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and the great work they do to find a cure for blood cancers.
I have included the full bio of each, so you understand how special our young speakers are:

Shannon Hoffman is a junior at The Ursuline School in New Rochelle. Shannon has been at Ursuline for six years now and is involved in many activities. She has been on the Ursuline Track and Field team for six seasons and competes in the long and triple jump events. She is also part of the Peer Ministry program at Ursuline where she helps underclassmen grow spiritually. Shannon was a part of the National Junior Honor Society and was recently inducted into the National Honor Society. Shannon is very passionate about fundraising as it’s a big part of her life. Her father does fundraising for a living and it has always interested and inspired her. She hopes to raise a lot of money for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society especially because she was so touched by the honored hero’s story about his fight against Leukemia.

Kristen Cadge is also a junior at the Ursuline School. Kristen went to Saint Augustine School in Ossining from Kindergarten to 8th grade and is now also part of the National Honor Society and Peer Ministry at Ursuline. Kristen is part of many clubs, and one of her favorites is Warm Hands Warm Hearts where students cook meals for the Soup Kitchen. Kristen also helps out at Midnight Run where she prepares sandwiches that are brought into the city for the homeless. Along with clubs at school, Kristen has been volunteering at Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville over the past two summers each week, and has been part of the Girl Scouts since Kindergarten. Kristen is very excited to be a part of this amazing cause to raise money for LLS, and is very determined to not only raise money, but to support the fight against cancer.

Like Kristen, Tori has also attended St. Augustine’s from kindergarten to eighth grade. Tori is now a junior at the Ursuline school in New Rochelle. At Ursuline, Tori has discovered her passion for medicine and for a future as a possible physician. To pursue this dream of hers, she has volunteered at Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, stayed on the UCLA campus for a Future Doctors of American event, and started Ursuline’s very first medical club. When Tori heard about the fundraising competition for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society not only was she interested in the medical aspect of raising money for cancer research, but also the fact that this competition supports such an amazing cause that is so dear to so many people that she loves.

I hope to see each of you there and, as always, please bring a new guest!

Mark J.