March 10, 2007 Spokesman

Guests and visiting Rotarians were introduced :

 Shatu Gupta and her mom Dr. Rajno Gupta, a past president from District 3216 from India were welcomed; Jason Sherard and Natalie Som were welcomed as recent participants in Business Week. Jason gave a short report of his experience.  He was sorry they were unable to actually produce and sell the fictional product developed.  Natalie was also a student of the month.  Jamie Walter, their teacher was also present and introduced.

Heidi Constantine an engineer from Boeing at Everett was in attendance to find out more about Kirkland Rotary.

Pascal Weber our Exchange Student gave a humorous report of his adventure in getting a ride home from a Rotary meeting. Apparently in disregard of the four-way test, President Rachel called Bill Taylor on his cell phone who had declined giving Pascal a ride for some reason I missed, that she saw Pascal walking in the rain.  When Pascal got home, Bill Taylor showed up at his door, ever the humble servant to apologize.  Everyone except Bill enjoyed the joke.  Pascal taking a positive turn on it said he thanked Bill profusely because he cared.

April Madley a Rotarian from Seattle Four was introduced and welcomed. Lia Greidos from the Redmond Club was introduced.

Former Rotarian Rick ("Wordsmith") Smith was introduced as an itinerant novelist and poet who is sponsoring a writers project to award scholarships to winning students in local high school to pay back the community for what he gained as inspiration.  He will come back as a speaker later.

Announcements:

Bob Webb reported on his PETS seminar experience, praised a number of the speakers as near the top of his list of the best of all time and wore a jacket to prove he is a "man of many buttons", some of which could not be read without the aid of a magnifying glass.  Joanne Primavera reported on the Kirkland Courier Rotary Supplements and requested a poll of article preferences and politely announced that if no volunteers to write them are forth coming, a draft lottery will be implemented.  Miriam Gilbert announced that the Service Above Self Day on March 29^th at Kamaikin Jr. High will assemble World Vision Care Giver Kits.

Speaker:

Rick Ostrander introduced our speaker, Larry Ishmael of the Issaquah Rotary Club who heads an international consulting firm, Suasor Consulting Group, Ltd., that specializes in "privatization" of previously run inefficient industries in countries to the south was our speaker.  He puts together groups to buy the firms from governments in various countries that have not been doing well (too much debt and inefficiency).  One successful purchase was a telephone company in Ecuador.  He reported on a clean air project in Sao Paulo, Brazil, a very polluted city from auto emissions due to a wintertime inversion of climate.  It was called The Clean Screen Project and attacked the problem of carbon emissions from poorly performing automobiles by mobile test stations that measure carbon emissions from auto exhausts by some ultra violent measuring device with camera shots of license plates for enforcement.  In a year, the air was cleared significantly judging by the pictures shown and 850 lives were estimated as saved.  He also reported on other unexpected sources for pollution of the air such as Moose belching in Norway equivalent to 8000 automobiles and that cows expel methane gas to the extent that 11 pounds of expelled methane equals 23 pounds of carbon in the emitted air.  Remarkably, according to Larry, over 40% of all carbon emissions in the atmosphere are due to methane gas from animal sources everywhere.  You might say, "that is a lot of "bull" in the air.  He says biodeisel fuels consume more fossil fuel in their production than is gained and food costs are higher from the corn and wheat that is diverted to fuel production from food.

As a result, the law of comparative elasticity and relativity of demand and the law of unexpected consequences cannot be eliminated by the desire to make it look like you are accomplishing something.  Does the term "politically correct" enter in here?  At the end of Larry's speech, one member asked, given these great accomplishments (excluding the production of methane which wasn't his project by the way), what is next for you?  He said he would run for congress.  That would be a good place to implant the "Four Way Test".  Larry signed a book for Robert Muir's library and was thanked by all with applause.

Chuck Morgan had the lucky ticket but his number 5 guess was not matched by the draw of ducky number 1.  The meeting was adjourned at 7:30PM.

John E. Woodbery

Scribe