ISSUE NO. 24
JANUARY 12, 2001
OUR 79th YEAR
http://RotaryClubofSantaMonica.org
“My suspicion is that the universe is not only
queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
J.B.S. Haldane
Saturn
is an immense, gaseous, half-formed world 95 times as massive as Earth but
only .7 as dense as water, or about as dense as a milk shake. Saturn would
float if plunged into some gigantic sea. Its stormy atmosphere is a dense
poisonous mix of hydrogen, ammonia, and methane. Three rings of whirling ice
or frost-covered gravel girdle it.
Titan,
a satellite of Saturn, is the largest of the 32 moons in our solar system. It
is about the size of the planet Mercury. It has a dense atmosphere, brilliant
red clouds, and a surface temperature much higher than scientists would have
guessed for a body so far from the sun. For a closer look at Saturn and Titan,
Cal Tech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has built a $3.26 billion spacecraft it
calls Cassini. Launched three years ago, the craft has been streaking toward
Saturn ever since. Last week it curved around the huge planet Jupiter to
slingshot itself on the final leg of its 3.5-billion mile journey.
Cassini
will hurtle into Saturn’s gravitational field in 2004, then circle for four
years, taking observations and sending out feelers. “By most measures, this
is the most ambitious planetary mission to be launched to date,” JPL says.
“It is unlikely we will see missions as ambitious in the foreseeable
future.” Cassini is more than twice as large as previous planetary
explorers.
This
Friday our speaker will be one of the people guiding the mission – Dr. Kevin
R. Grazier, JPL’s “investigation scientist” for the program. He knows
how to explain space probes to non-scientists; he has been featured on radio
talk shows, sometimes hosts presentations at the Griffith Observatory, and
writes for TV’s Discovery channel. He’ll show us slides of the best photos
ever taken of Jupiter, Saturn, Titan and other heavenly bodies. We’ll see
sights that few people outside JPL have ever viewed.
January
19 – “Plastic Surgery in the Third World,” talk and slides by Dr. Anthony
Sokol, UCLA professor who
devotes his spare time to remaking faces, for free.
January
26 – “Rotary Reads to
Kids,” a talk by our own
Shirley Dowling, spearhead of
last year’s
massive drive to provide books for school libraries.
“I
remember one young boy,” writes RI President Frank Devlyn in the December Rotarian,
“who led his grandfather by the hand to a Rotary-sponsored eye camp to receive
cataract surgery. The man had been blind for years – then suddenly he could
see his grandson. For just $100 Rotarians can provide three cataract operations
in India.
“There
are 50 million blind people in the world. Many of these cases can be prevented
or corrected. I have appointed a task force to encourage Rotary clubs and
districts to take action by supporting 1,000 projects to prevent blindness or
restore sight. In addition I have the support of the Rotary Foundation Trustees
to make matching grants available for projects that support this effort. Funding
will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. . . .
“Rotarians
have already launched projects ranging from a mobile eye clinic in Peru to two
districts that have provided medication to prevent river blindness in Tanzania.
One Rotarian led a surgical team to Argentina to perform 100 surgeries including
corneal transplants.”
(see page 39)
A local woman who was nine months pregnant heard about
the offer of free medical services, and walked the entire day to the clinic. At
about midnight the Rotary team delivered a healthy baby girl.
– page 49
Kenneth Behring, owner of the Seattle Seahawks football
team, founded Wheelchairs for the World in 2000 with a $15 million grant. The
foundation’s goal is to “deliver a wheelchair to every man, woman and child
who needs one.” Some 20 million people, says the foundation, are deprived of
mobility because of the lack of wheelchairs. – page 3
Eradication of polio is Rotary’s highest priority. Endemic on five continents in 1988, polio’s greatest challenges today remain in countries where years of war, civil unrest and damaged infrastructure makes immunizing children especially difficult. – page 43
(One of a
series on lesser-known aspects of our club’s operations)
One day next May, eight of our members will meet and
plan how to give away about $15,000. They make and carry out such plans twice
yearly. Since their gift giving started in 1972 the group have written checks
for more than $300,000. It isn’t their money. It comes from a
half-million-dollar principal (which moneymen in their scholarly fashion call a
“corpus”) that sits intact in the possession of the Santa Monica Rotary Club
Foundation.
The corpus isn’t supposed to shrink – or to grow,
except by gifts. Otherwise it stays the same, earning interest at 6% a year.
This interest is the money that is given away. The money goes out in chunks of
four to ten thousand each, two or three at each semiannual meeting. All the
chunks go to charities and social agencies in the Santa Monica Bay area.
The Rotarians who decide how to distribute the money are
the board of trustees of the Santa Monica Rotary Club Foundation. As board
president, Jack Michel runs the meetings and handles the transactions. The other
trustees are John Bohn, Jim Cayton, Nat Charnley, Bill Cummings, Bob Fredricks,
Bill Fritzsche, and Dick Rice. Until recently Hal Quigley was a ninth trustee,
but when he was elected club president for 2001-2002 he removed himself from the
foundation’s board.
Meetings of the board of trustees are quiet. The members
mostly thumb through a handful of letters that went earlier to each of them. Any
organization seeking a grant writes a letter to Michel, who sends copies to all
trustees. Organizations don’t send speakers to plead their case, nor do they
send elaborate presentations. “Grantsmanship,” an art cultivated by experts
at obtaining support from big national foundations, isn’t a part of the game
here.
The simplicity of our foundation’s operations arises
from the fact that nearly all people concerned are longtime acquaintances,
familiar with all local charities. Executives of most of the movements are
Rotarians themselves. So are many of the volunteer officials of the groups.
Consequently trustees already know most of what they need to know, without
asking many questions. If there are doubtful aspects, one or more of the
trustees will visit the organization before the trustees meet.
They never give money for an organization’s salaries,
operating costs, or promotion. “We only put money into bricks-and-mortar kinds
of expenses,” Michel says. “Equipment or improvements that last for a long
time.” Organizations understand this, and don’t seek money for purposes
outside the rule. Likewise the trustees seldom refuse an appeal.
From time to time the foundation has helped all 25 major non-profit welfare organizations in Santa Monica. Michel ticks off examples at random: “Dental equipment to serve the needy, labs for high school classes, computers to help the elderly, VCRs for hospital patients, vehicles for the Red Cross, fork lift for the Westside Food Bank, kitchen remodeling at the Salvation Army.” Sometimes requests are so few that trustees check around town to find an agency that needs better facilities but hasn’t asked. Now they are spreading the word, “We are interested in identifying some less-recognized, smaller worthwhile non-profit organizations within our community to assist. Can you help us identify some?”
(To be continued)