Oct 29, 2014

Rotary Club of Eureka Burl October 27 2014

The Pledge of Allegiance was led by Ziggy Ziegenfuss.
Our invocation was given by Dan Price. He asked us to keep Dick Nash’s family in our prayers as Dick’s wife Jeanne has passed.
Greg Williston, Carol Rische, and Carlton Nielsen all brought guests to the meeting.
Lisa, our exchange student from Belgium, talked about her participation in Rotaract’s Spirits and Spirits event in Old Town. She enjoyed dressing up in a Halloween costume and scaring people. She is enjoying Eureka High and is playing varsity soccer. Her last game of the season is on Wednesday.
John Fullerton was fined for not sitting at the head tables during his birthday month, in spite of being forewarned by President Gregg. John claimed to be 39, but then confessed to being 62. It cost him $26.
Diane Mettam’s birthday is today. She is spending the day tutoring kids and going to Rotary.
Keith Crossley gave us the Rotary minute. He described the various funds at the Rotary Foundation including Polio Plus, the Permanent Fund, and the Annual Fund which is unrestricted giving. Keith also pointed out that because of how Rotary administers our funds that they are one of the highest rated charitable organizations in the world. Keith encouraged us to be an Every Rotarian Ever Year club.
President Gregg recognized Susie Smelser for being a visiting former Rotarian.
President Gregg inducted new Rotarian Bill Tuttle. Bill owns the Chalet and soon to be re-open Cutten Inn. He is a 20+ year veteran of the Marine Corps, and is involved in Toys for Tots and the Marine Corp League. Past President Pat Folkins delivered the Past Presidents charge.
PP Pat then went on to fine President Gregg $26 for not knowing which days the Giants won games this week. Pat went on to say that he had an opportunity to go to a World Series game and didn’t because every time he has gone to a post-season Giants game they have lost.
President Gregg went on to remind us of the importance of sponsoring a Rotarian into our club. All of us were called on to name the Rotarian who asked us to join.
Gambling Interlude
Diane Mettam won the bottle of wine; fitting as it is her birthday. Unfortunately, President Gregg forgot to bring said wine and promised to deliver it to her. Joan Davies tried to draw the Joker from the remaining deck of cards for $210, but ended up with a Queen of Hearts.
PP Kim Bauriedel introduced our speaker Kevin Patterson. Kevin is the Boy Scouts Council Chair for the Crater Lake council. The Crater Lake council administers Boy Scout packs, dens, and volunteers across 8 counties in southern Oregon and northern California. It works with 825 scouts and 325 adult volunteers in Humboldt and Del Norte counties.
In his presentation he included the Scout oath and Scout law which many of us in the room instantly recognized from our involvement with scouting. He had everyone in the room raise their hand if they had been a Scout or had been an adult volunteer. Almost everyone in the room raised their hands. He also asked those of us who had been an adult volunteer for 40 years or more to keep their hands raised and we had four members who had been involved that long.
We have two primary scout facilities in our county. First is the scout shop on M St. The second is Camp Riggs Johnston near Headwaters. Our Sign Smith fund has donated $20,000 towards the shower house there, and Rotary raised an additional $10,000 towards a water filtration system so that they have sufficient potable water at the site.
Rotary and Scouting have worked together for decades. The Cliff Dochterman Award is a Scouting/Rotary award, and it just so happens that our own PP Kim Bauriedel has been a recipient.
The national jamboree this year was in West Virginia and had 45,000 attendees. Scouting is also updating merit badges to reflect changes in industry and national trends. Their new STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) program is geared towards focusing on these areas with less emphasis on outdoor activities. The ages of participants for the various Scouting programs starts with Tiger Cubs in first grade, Cub Scouts from second to 5th grade, Boy Scouts from 6th grade to age 18, and Venturing from 14 to 21.
With a ring of the bell we were gone.

Respectfully Submitted,
Carlton Nielsen

Oct 20, 2014

Rotary Club of Eureka Burl October 20, 2014

Ted Welton led us in the pledge, and Mike Leggins gave the invocation. He asked us to remember Tom Schallert’s nephew who became a paraplegic due to an accident.
We did not have any visiting Rotarians. Carlton Nielsen brought Deborah Claesgens, the new Director at the Sequoia Park Zoo Foundation.


Lisa Pireau
Our exchange student, Lisa Pireau from Belgium, regaled us with her trip with 42 other past and present exchange students to San Francisco. She said San Francisco was the most beautiful city she had ever seen.
Kathy Smith announced the CR was having its 27th annual Science Night. They have 26 demonstrations, experiments, and activities for kids of all ages to participate in. It is also an opportunity to meet with faculty and staff, as well as to visit their classrooms and labs.
Bruce Smith announced that we are looking for raffle items for our annual Christmas party. If you would like to participate look him up in our roster book.

Lisa Slack announced the 100th Anniversary of Northwest Pacific Railroad in Humboldt County co-hosted by the Timber Heritage Association, the Clarke Historical Museum, and Eureka Main Street. The original Golden Spike will be on display, speeder rides will be available, and much more.

Keith Crossley
Keith Crossley gave us the Foundation Minute. Friday, October 24th, is World Polio Day. Keith challenged us with what we can do in Rotary’s effort to end polio. This is Rotary’s number one goal. If you have any questions or would like to know how to donate to help end polio please see Keith, or go to endpolionow.org.
President Gregg led us through a slide show of the progress on the Boys and Girls club roof replacement portion of our annual project. Teen Challenge, McMurray & Sons roofing, Schmidbauer Lumber, and Recology have all been a part of this effort. The rest of the roof portion of the project should take another 3 to 4 weeks. Please consider stopping by and take a look at the progress that has been made in making the Boys and Girls club a better place for kids.
President Gregg then showed a number of slides with photos showing deteriorated conditions at several of the Eureka City Schools campuses.
He then had a number of us on our feet for travel. The initial criterion was if you had traveled greater than 500 miles during the summer or since. Several members ponied up dollars for trips to Rome, Oslo, Azerbaijan, New York, Italy, etc.

Our President Elect
President Elect Jay Bahner announced our club’s annual fundraiser and raffle to occur on February 14. CC Market will be doing the catering which will consist of tri-tip, chicken, and a vegetarian option. Jay is looking for drawing, live, and silent auction items. As it is on Valentine’s Day you can guess the theme. For a bit of trivia Jay informed us that Valentine’s day is the second largest spending holiday of the year bringing in $20 billion.

We have a winner
Raffle Interlude: Steve Allen won the bottle of Rotary Red, and Russ Harris mad an unsuccessful attempt to draw the joker. The pot is up to $180.
Program
Adam Dick is one of the founders of Dick Taylor Chocolate with his business partner Dustin Taylor. They are currently located in the Almquist lumber building. They make the only whole bean chocolate in Northern California. They came up with their business plan on the way back from a wedding in Santa Barbara after seeing a video on the chocolate industry. Their original chocolate making experimentation started in Adam’s laundry room where they made “really bad chocolate”.


Adam Dick
Adam described the current trend in high end chocolate to be migrating along similar lines as coffee and beer. Coffee went from everyone drinking Folgers like products to higher end beans, more specific brews, and a better quality product. Beer has gone through a similar migration from Budweiser like comparables to products with a much wider array of styles, better quality ingredients, mare specific flavors, and a high price tag. The higher end chocolate industry has started to move in a similar direction.
In 1879 a device called a conche was developed which enabled chocolatiers to create a smoother chocolate that could be turned into bars. Previous to that chocolate had been predominately consumed as a drink. Large scale production began soon thereafter and currently 5 companies control the majority of chocolate production in the world. Most chocolate that we eat originates at one of these five companies and is resold to producers. In the early 2000’s the “Chocolate Renaissance” began with the sourcing of higher grade cocoa beans.
Dick Taylor Chocolate started making single source chocolate starting in 2010. Single source chocolate is made with all of the beans involved in that batch coming from one farm or plantation. He added that chocolate making is a very machine intensive endeavor. They have outgrown their space at Almquist and are moving into the old Alternative Building Concepts space at 4 West 4th St.
They currently produce about one ton of chocolate per month, and only a small percentage of their chocolate is consumed in Humboldt County. They have distribution points as far away as England and japan. Locally you can buy their products at Eureka Natural Foods, both Co-ops, Wildberries, and Murphys.



Jonah Folkins
 In closing President Gregg noted that Pat Folkins had been to four Giants World Series games, all of which the Giants lost. He went on to ask Pat to go nowhere near San Francisco for the next few weeks.
Respectfully Submitted,
Carlton Nielsen

The Rotary Club of Eureka Burl October 13, 2014

The meeting started off with a bit of a change in our venue as someone had told the Elks that we were dark on Columbus Day. Their staff did an excellent job of accommodating us and we met in the lounge. We next moved to the martial music of the day which was the Navy Hymn with a bit of the Marine Corp Hymn thrown in at the end. This writer wonders how that happened?
Chris Freeman was our only Navy veteran in attendance and led us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Bruce Rupp gave us the invocation and asked us to keep Tom Schallert’s nephew and Wayne Wilson in our prayers. Tom’s nephew suffered a broken back and Wayne is still dealing with the challenges from an aneurysm. Bruce imparted the story of the history behind the Rotary motto.
Visiting Rotarians were Jim Siler, Rick Roberts from Southwest, and Dennis Reinholtsen from Fortuna.
Guests of Rotarians were Richard Grissom and Greg Sparks.
Our exchange student from Belgium came to the podium and told us about her experience with Homecoming at Eureka High. She failed to mention that she was also nominated for Homecoming queen and was one of the Homecoming Princesses in the parade, but President Gregg reminded her. This is the first time in recent memory that we have had an exchange student nominated to the EHS homecoming court. She is also playing on the Varsity soccer team. She’s is having quite a year already, and she has only been here 8 weeks.
Joyce Haynes from the Humboldt Senior Resource Center thanked the club for the Sign Smith Fund’s donation to their PACE program. The Sign Smith fund paid for several pieces of equipment in their new senior medical care facility. They are having their Grand Opening on Saturday the 18th from 10 am to 2 pm. Joyce invited us all to attend.
Richard Grissom from the Fieldbrook Volunteer Fire Department thanked the Sign Smith Fund’s donation of equipment for their rebuilding of their firehouse. Five Rotary clubs participated in the project and Chief Grissom said that there had been a tremendous amount of community support with the project.
Rick Roberts from Southwest Rotary invited us to their fundraiser on the 25th of October. It will be held at the Eureka Inn and features a Vampire Ball and Murder Mystery. The fundraiser is to benefit the Boys and Girls Club rehabilitation projects as well as Evergreen Lodge. Tickets are $55 and can be purchased at Redwood Capital Bank, Coast Central Credit Union, and at the Eureka Chamber of Commerce.
President Gregg re-introduced us all to Bruce Smith. Bruce is leading our Sgt.-at-Arms committee. He reminded everyone to read their emails as he has not gotten any responses to his requests for members to help set up and take down our meetings. It does not take much time and is necessary for our meetings to function well. We also need a few of our more technically inclined members to learn how the laptop/projector, sound systems, and digital camera function.
Brad Mettam gave us the Foundation Minute and talked about the role of expanding peace in the world that our Foundation does. We can now setup our Foundation giving on their new system at predictable increments so that we don’t forget to give. The Rotary Foundation Dinner North is on the 8th of November in Crescent City. Raffle tickets are $25 of 5 for $100.
Birthdays this week and recently are Jeff Leonard, Nancy Dean, John Fullerton, and Steven Lafferty.
Alicia Cox celebrated her 12th Anniversary as a member of our club.
Greg Williston turned in his Spare Change for Change canister which consisted of pennies, nickels, and dimes as his kids had all of the quarters.
Neal Ewald was our program from Green Diamond Timber Company. He graduated with a degree in Forestry from UC Berkley and has an MBA from HSU. He is the Senior VP for their western operations.
Green Diamond started out 124 years ago as Simpson Timber. The own 400,000 acres of timber production land in Del Norte and Humboldt counties. They are also the largest private landowner in both. He gave us a background on logging practices in which large bulldozers were the harvesting tool of choice, and they used napalm to burn slash after cuttings. Tree felling has changed a great deal in the last 20 years. They have moved to shovel loggers which are far less intrusive on forest floor. Roads have become more narrow as logging equipment has gotten smaller, and there is no more broadcast burning.
The Endangered Species Act has had a significant impact on forest management. Neal reminded us that the Spotted Owl was listed in 1992. As part of their habitat conservation efforts Green Diamond leaves about 25% of their acreage involved in harvesting standing, particularly in riparian areas. He showed slides of the two types of forested areas that he manages. The first he inherited, and the second they developed. The primary difference be between the two is that the managed forest acreage in the areas that they developed have larger trees and is less prone to fire damage because of pre-commercial harvest thinning. He also noted that the largest concentration of spotted owls on their lands is in the Mad River Watershed.
He spoke about the protests involving proposed harvesting near Strawberry Rock. The outcome was a process put in place to transfer those lands to a public entity. The protesters seem to not be taking yes for an answer.
Lastly, Neal addressed Green Diamond’s move out of the timber milling business. He cited competition that had contract with Home Depot and Lowes as one of the primary reasons for the decision. They will continue with their timber harvesting business. They are trying to find a buyer for their redwood mill and would like to see it converted to a Douglas fir processing facility. They also purchased the former Jeld Wenn forest lands in Southern Oregon.
President Gregg reminded us that growing membership is our primary focus this year. If we get our membership back up to 150 we can reduce our dues back to $400, we can replace the funding that had to be removed this year from several of our programs, and we will have the opportunity for camaraderie with fellow community minded business people.
With a ring of the bell one more meeting was off the books for Emperor Gregg.

Respectfully Submitted,

Carlton Nielsen

Emperor Gregg