Oakland Rotary News

President Ces Butner called our Civic Thursday Zoom meeting to order at 12:30 p.m. noting this is the 5,329th meeting in our 111-year-old Club and invited us to recite our vision statement. Ces explained that our meeting format will be a bit different today in order to accommodate our annual Richard D. King Annual Youth Speech Contest, with the winner advancing to the next “Area Level” of the annual Rotary Speech Contest.

Four high school students were recently selected to spend six weeks of their free time learning from Rotary mentors the art of public speaking. They have since written their own speeches on the theme "Rotary Creates Opportunities" and integrated what they have learned about the 4-way test. Join us in supporting their creativity and diligence, after which a winner will be selected to advance to the next level. The winner of all four levels will be awarded up to $1550 to use towards their education.

At the end of the meeting, a winner was chosen, and it was Speaker C now revealed to be Alvin Wang, a student at Mission San Jose High School. Committee Co-chair Barbara Beery announced that he will receive $100 and will advance to the next round in the Area Rotary Speech Contest. Also introduced and thanked for their participation were Mya Nguyen from Alameda High School as Speaker A; Grace Tan of Oakland Charter School as Speaker B and Peiwen Lin of American Indian Model School as Speaker D. A virtual and much-deserved round of applause was given to all!

Co-chairs Alex and Barbara acknowledged and thanked all Speech Contest Committee members for their work including Debo Sarkar, Riza Hernandez, C J Hirschfield and Greg Annis.

Missed our meeting but interested in checking out the next one? Click here to learn more: https://www.oakland-rotary.org/calendar #serviceaboveself #rotaryinternational #rotaryclubofoakland #rotaryopensopportunities

President Ces Butner called our 5,327th “Civic Thursday” meeting in order and welcomed all of our Zoom guests.

Rotarian Abel Guilian shared Barak Obama's quote for 'Thought For The Day', "Democracy doesn't work if we constantly demonize each other. For progress to happen, we have to listen to each other and see ourselves in each other, and fight for our principles, but also fight to find the common ground, no matter how elusive that may seem."

President Cess announced that 2 new members are going to be inducted into Oakland Rotary Club today. Rotarian Isaac Kos-Read introduced Zeydi Gutierrez while Rotarian David Kirsten introduced Nancy Williams to the club.

Rotarian Winter Williams introduced our speaker for the Civic Thursday, Terrence Brewer - award-winning Jazz Artist, record producer, concert performer, studio musician, bandleader, music educator, instructor, lecturer, and workshop facilitator. Terrence gave an amazing music performance and shared details of how the last 10 months in pandemic have been for an artist, musicians, and educators of music as him.

Missed our meeting but interested in checking out the next one? Click here to learn more: https://www.oakland-rotary.org/calendar

#serviceaboveself #rotaryinternational #rotaryclubofoakland #rotaryopensopportunities

President Ces Butner called our 5,326th “Civic Thursday” meeting in order and welcomed all of our Zoom guests.

On learning about our speaker today, Maestro Micheal Morgan, Rotarian Joe Goralka is reminded of time enjoyed at the Oakland Symphony with family and fellow Rotarians listening to the orchestra perform works by some of the greatest musical composers on exotic instruments. He shared 2 brief thoughts today:

Philosopher Henry David Thoreau writes in the world of peach and love music would be the universal language.

Organist and Theologian Albert Schweitzer claim “There are only two means of refuge from the miseries of life: Music and Cats!"

Rotarian Steve Nicholls introduced our guest and Civic Thursday Speaker for today, Michael Morgan - Maestro Oakland Symphony. Michael addressed 2 current issues that classical music and the Oakland Symphony are facing. He mentioned that "The Black Lives Matter movement, which is highlighting classical music's history of devaluing Black composers, Black conductors, Black artists, Black members of symphony orchestras, and even Black audiences." Secondly, he highlighted the financial collapse of the performing arts as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Click here to watch his segment.

Missed our meeting but interested in checking out the next one? Click here to learn more: https://www.oakland-rotary.org/calendar

#serviceaboveself #rotaryinternational #rotaryclubofoakland #rotaryopensopportunities

President Ces Butner called our 5,325th “Civic Thursday” meeting in order and welcomed all of our Zoom guests.

In reflecting on President Joe Biden’s recent environmental administrative actions, Stephen Murphy shared quotes from Van Jones, author of “Green Economy,” about how building such an economy will lift all boats in a green wave benefiting us all, and the polar bears too.

President Ces invited us all to recite our vision where Service Above Self connects us all.

Marie Saverimuthu introduced our speaker of the day, Selvi Stanislaus, Executive Director of the California State Franchise Tax Board (FTB). Selvi is the first woman appointed to oversee the FTB and its 6,000+ employees charged with collecting $66 billion annually to fund state projects, programs, and state infrastructure.

Selvi spoke of the progress made in upgrading a multi-phase IT system to re-engineer how our state tax returns are processed in order to maximize collections and efficiencies (an interesting factoid considering all the media reports of the state’s challenges in sending money the other way, to unemployment claimants, blamed on antiquated IT systems at the EDD).

Missed our meeting but interested in checking out the next one? Click here to learn more: https://www.oakland-rotary.org/calendar

#serviceaboveself #rotaryinternational #rotaryclubofoakland #rotaryopensopportunities