April 9, 2010
OPENING CEREMONY: The opening ceremony was spectacular. (Special kudos to the naked dancing ladies.)
PRAYER AND BLESSING: Bishop John gave the prayer and blessing with great gusto and a blast of power.
ANNOUNCEMENTS: A check for $5,000 from Rotary International has gone out to the victims of the recent hurricane in Haiti for the purchase of “Shelter Boxes. Two Rotary banners have been donated to the newly chartered Cortlandt Rotary Club. And our club president, Mark Seiden, has sent a $2,000 check to the Rotary Foundation in our Club’s name for Polio Plus to help achieve a polio-free world.
NEXT WEEK’S SPEAKER: Our speaker on April 16 will be Ben Cornelius. His subject: “Engineering Art In Culture.” It should be, and will be, most interesting.
THIS WEEK’S SPEAKER: Our speaker today is one of our own: Zen Eidel. He spoke on a subject that he knows inside and out: “The Anatomy of a Painting.”
Zen spoke about line; he spoke about color; he spoke about the subject matter of paintings; he spoke as an artist and a designer about the various elements that comprise a first-rate painting—and he was fascinating!
He advised us to do more than LOOK AT a painting, He urged us to LOOK INTO IT. Don’t look at a painting narrowly--try to see what the artist saw when he or she applied brush to canvas, to understand what the artist is trying to tell us through line and color and form! If you do that, he advised, you will experience the world in a way you’ve never experienced the world before—in all its color and variety and multi-faceted glory. It will be as though you have been reborn. You will see in a way you’ve never seen --and it will send shivers of excitement galloping up and down your spine!
Zen was wonderful.
Would that we had more speakers like him!
THE LOTTERY: There was absolutely no money involved. (Are you listening IRS?) In place of soul-less cash, we were rewarded with something a great deal better. The lucky winner of this “something better” was—drum roll, please!—me.
CONCLUSION OF THE MEETING: Our weekly meeting ended precisely at 1:30 p.m., at which point we repaired happily to our homes and to our families—some of us, that is. An unnamed few repaired to a local bar for invigorating refreshment. And I am pleased to report that the refreshment was nonpareil.
Respectfully submitted by,
Dr. Donald R. Wilde, Club Recording Secretary.
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