The Editor's Blog

Literacy. It’s something we take for granted. Whether it is reading the morning paper, a book or even this newsletter, reading is something we do everyday. Rotary has taken a positive step by partnering with country music Legend Dolly Parton ‘s Dollywood Foundation’s Imagination Library which provides a book each month to children from birth until aged five. The program is designed to help in underserved areas. Today, the project which began in 1996, serves 47 states and has provided more than 15 million books.

The Topeka Rotary Club has been involved with promoting literacy on a local scale for years. Each week, we donate a book to Avondale East Elementary School in honor of the week’s speaker. We also donate books through other projects like Ross Elementary School.

When we promote literacy, we promote learning. Preschoolers who are at least exposed to books are far more likely to finish high school and go to college. Reading also promotes family interactivity. District Governor Vickie Randel.

This month we also recognize the work we have done for our youth in our community with the 3rd Annual Rotary Career Day at KATS. Twenty community businesses were on hand to help provide career information to sixth, seventh and eighth graders at Topeka 501 schools.

We also helped our community this month through a clothing drive to benefit the Topeka Rescue Mission. I commend the new member class for working together to make a difference in our community. (see p. 3). Hopefully the idea of the new member classes will continue for years to come.

Have a great month,
Greg Hill,
Editor

On the Eve of the Inauguration

I scrapped my first editorial. It just didn’t seem right on the eve of this historical event in our nations history. You see, as I wrap up this issue and send it off to press, I am re-writing my editorial at 9:30 p.m. on January 19, 2009. For the Rotary historians who might be reading this in some sixty years, this is the night before Barack Obama is to be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States.

I can’t tell you how history will look back on this event. But I can tell you how I hope that this amazing sense of optimism we as a country feel on this date will continue well beyond the pomp and circumstance of the Inaugural. I could write how President Obama should look at the Rotary Four Way to help guide him over the next four or eight years, but I think he already has a pretty good grasp on what it means to put service above self.

No, what I have to say is that I believe we as a nation are going to be stronger tomorrow and that what President Obama is going to bring is a sense that we are ALL responsible for making our world better each and every day.

I am proud to be a Rotarian and proud of those things we are doing throughout the world. I sense that in a way, we are all being called to service and to act in unison, bound together by promise and hope of a better world around us. We are called to use our resources and our own unique abilities for the betterment of the community in which we live and to help our fellow human beings in their time of need.

Each of us as Rotarians must do something more than come to a meeting once a week. We must utilize our talents and our unique skills to harness the power of our millions of members. Acting together, we can continue to change the world.

My thoughts on Rotary Live

I am proud to be a Rotarian. Knowing that I am involved in an organization that does so much to help people around the world inspires me to do what I can for that organization. I am thirty-six years old, I have a wife and two young kids, and a fairly demanding job that doesn't allow me to travel the far reaches of the earth to do Rotary's work. I don't have the financial ability to make the generous gifts that I hope to someday make and I don't have any special medical skills that would enable me to deliver health care in underdeveloped countries.

I recently gave a presentation in which I quoted Albert Einstein who once stated "I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." Like Einstein (who did possess a special talent, regardless of what he says) I am passionately curious. Curious about how technology and sharing of ideas and resources can change the world. I believe that by reaching out to not only our own members through technology, whether it is the Rotopeka, the Rotary eNews (the weekly meeting updates), or Rotary Live, the new live stream of our club, we are not just enabling more people access to our club, we are spreading the mission of Rotary.

Here is my vision. Grandiose maybe, but here it is. I think that Rotarians all over the world will find that watching our club meet will satisfy their makeup requirements. I think we can and should offer the opportunity for those people to make a small monetary contribution to our club to support our efforts. Those funds can then be used to provide us greater ability to serve our own community and the world in which we live.

If over the next year, a hundred Rotarians around the world donate $10 for a makeup, that $1000 is more than I personally would contribute financially to our club. By helping provide the avenue to our club, our community and our world, I am doing far more to enhance Rotary through technology than I ever could do without it.

From the Editor

I hope you have noticed the changes. Beginning this month, you will notice that the Rotopeka, the Rotary Website and the club email, now the Topeka Rotary Club eNews all have a similar look and feel.

You might sense an almost vintage or nostalgic look to the new design. That is intentional. It reflects the rich history of Rotary and those who have served to make this organization great. But at the same time, it reflects the future of Rotary and the digital revolution.

Profiled on the Rotary website is a Rotary International video from YouTube which is one example of how Rotary is moving into the future through digital communications. The new Rotary Club of Topeka website will bring video and other web-based content designed to connect you to services of Rotary in new and exciting ways.

This month’s cover is an actual screen capture of the new website depicted with an artists hand, brush and pallet. You will see the brushstrokes throughout the website and other publications. It’s usage is symbolic of the artistic expression I hope to bring to the Rotary publications.

When I began this effort a few years ago, I found a project that I truly enjoyed and I hope that you find this issue and new design to be fresh and innovative. It’s part of my ongoing effort of continual improvement and I hope that you can see this result.

I would like to thank John Christenson for his hard work and efforts over the past several years on the website and the club email. John was extremely helpful during the transition and I appreciate his help.

So here is to a new year of Rotary and one I am very excited to begin.

From the Editor

Okay, I have to admit, when I started this issue on a Friday night just before my deadline, I was looking for an easy way out. It sounds bad, I know. I mean, how much easier can it be to devote an issue to the activities of RI. Just visit the website, re-print a few articles and photos and I can have this issue knocked out in about an hour. But a strange thing happened along the way.

You have to understand something from the outset. Rotary inspires me. I look at all of the wonderful things that Rotary does around the world and I see an organization that I am proud to belong to. As I look at the articles and pho-tos on the RI Website, I see something far more than just words on a screen. I see real changes and real people that we as Rotarians are helping across our planet.

So as easy as it would have been to pick any five articles online, I carefully chose the stories and probably spent more time selecting those stories than I usually do writing. I got lost in many of the stories I read, amazed at the work of fellow Rotarians. It is truly an example of Rotary Shares and I hope you take the time each month to read through The Rotarian and you visit the RI website from time to time. While it is important to attend our club’s meetings, you are shortchanging your Rotary experience.

April is Magazine Month, a time to celebrate the global network of Rotary’s official magazines, which provide valuable information to 1.2 million Rotarians.

And speaking of Rotary publications, last January I submitted a letter to the editor about how the Rotopeka is using RSS feeds and the Rotopeka Blog to share our club’s stories on the internet. That letter finally ran in the May issue which arrived in your mail about a week ago.

I hope you enjoy this month’s look at Rotary International.

From the Editor

I wrote several months ago about sharing. It is, as you might remember, the theme for Rotary this year. There are many different ways in which you can share, I wrote, but I guess I forgot at least one.

Another way to share with Rotary is to speak to another Rotary club, which I had the opportunity to do earlier this month when I was asked to present a program on the Kansas Mission of Mercy dental project at the Independence, Kansas Rotary Club.

I enjoy every opportunity I have to speak about this project and to speak about it at a Rotary club is even more special. But for me, the real pleasure was speaking to a Rotary club in the town in which I was raised and having the privilege of sitting at the head table with my parents who came to hear me speak.

While speaking, I realized just how important that Rotary is to me and how much I enjoy the opportunities Rotary has already given me, a thirty-six year old, who has already had the chance to serve three years on the club’s board of directors, and now a four year editor of the Rotopeka. I hope that someday to have the chance to travel the world and see the work that Rotary has done.

Each week, Rotary has something new and unique to offer and we can share the Rotary experience with a new member. President Wagnon writes this month about the Presidential Citation Award. One of the requirements is a very simple “one net new member.” So far, we are down. So on page 6, I have brought back the “membership thermometer” to show where we stand and where we have let to go to achieve this very simple goal of one new member.

This month, Governor Kathleen Sebelius spoke to our club and I was amazed at just how vital Kansas is to the rest of the world. There are so many things that we as Kansans take for granted. It’s great to have people out there touting Kansas and to see it so well respected around the world is something that we should all be proud of.

From the Editor

Recently at a church service at the First United Methodist Church in Topeka, Pastor Max Clayton of our Rotary Club, preached in his sermon that it "all will go back in the box at the end of life." It is an interesting concept and one that deserves further thought and comment. One of the things I enjoy writing about is leadership and making positive steps to improve my life and to offer thoughts for others to con-sider. Your legacy as a person is that which you leave behind.

This is what people will remember you for long after you are gone. The greatest people who have walked this earth have left behind a legacy of goodwill and service that benefited all mankind. It is a legacy that Rotary promotes. It is a belief I have and I sincerely believe that if others exhibited the Rotary Four Way Test, the world would be a much better place. I have great admiration for those that live their lives, even in private, in a way that shows leadership. I believe that true leadership to ourselves is just as valuable as leadership to others. I have a tendency to look at things a little different. For me, the box is what we spend our life building and in the end, people will remember only those things in the box of life. This includes our personal integrity. Rotary helps fill that box with truth and fairness to all mankind. We all have some natu-ral desire to leave a legacy. By following the principles of Rotary, that legacy is one in we all should be proud.

February is Rotary‘s World Understanding Month (p.7). It‘s imperative that we not only understand the world around us, but do our best to ensure that it will be around for future generations. More importantly , I believe we have a duty to leave the world better than we found it.

Understanding the world is also about sharing our resources. The front cover of this month‘s issue includes eight thank you cards from children in Paraguay who benefited from a gift of $500 we made for the creation of a library (p.8).

So let‘s all move forward and celebrate World Understanding Month

From the Editor

The Measure of a Year

The song Seasons of Love from the musical Rent begins with the following verse:

Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes
How Do You Measure - Measure A Year?
In Daylights - In Sunsets
In Midnights - In Cups Of Coffee
In Inches - In Miles
In Laughter - In Strife

Exactly, how do we measure a year? Is it four seasons? Twelve months? Three hundred sixty five days? Or as the song says, five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes?

The end of the year and the beginning of another offers a logical opportunity to look back on the successes and failures of the past year and to contemplate those “resolutions” for the upcoming year. It’s easy to write some simple goals on a sheet of paper, yet it is hard to make meaningful changes. Here are my resolutions for 2008.

Read. I’m not talking the sports pages here. I’m talking about the classics, history, words that define the richness of our society.

Listen. There is much to learn by listening to others, even if you disagree.

Write. I have found few things I enjoy more than sitting down at the computer and writing. My mind is full of ideas. This is the year to put them on paper.

Help. Our community has needs and many of those needs can be addressed by volunteering.

Finish. It’s difficult sometimes to follow through on something to the very end. My resolution this year is to leave no task incomplete.

Develop. Like writing, my mind is full of ideas. Like a chess game, I have spent this past year moving pieces into place for what I hope are some fun and exciting projects ahead.

These may not seem like monumental goals, but by achieving these six things, I feel like I will be a more complete person living life to its fullest. For me, the daylights, the sunsets, the midnights and the cups of coffee are pleasures of life, not measures of life. The miles run and the laughs are things I am thankful for and fortunate to have.

I welcome 2008 with its challenges and its rewards. I can’t see the future. However, if I can read, listen, write, help, finish, and develop for the next five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes, I will have a wonderful story to tell on the eve of 2009.

--Greg Hill

From the Editor

In many ways, technology is changing the way in which we live our lives. Whether it is a parent snapping a digital photo or a grandparent receiving that photo or it is using cellular phones to track an order your company has shipped, we all use technology in different ways.
Service organizations are not immune to technology and we should embrace the power that it provides. The Rotopeka is striving to use technology to help spread the message of Rotary and the service our club provides to our community.

In this issue, the Rotopeka is taking a new step into technology and I would encourage you to join this exciting new world. The Rotopeka is available on the club’s website as well as http://rotopeka.blogspot.com. This new site will include all the stories in the issue along with informative links which you can follow to learn more about Rotary around the world.

One of the more interesting ideas is from a Rotary program called Shelterbox (Story on page 6). This project , based on England, provides relief boxes to needy families around the world. Using Google Earth, this program will take you on a virtual tour around the world, not only demonstrating what it does to help, but where it helps in a way that is innovative and powerful. Not-for-profits are using the technologies in Google Earth in ways that are creating amazing awareness. If you have not used this program, I would highly encourage you to take a look at it.
Rotopeka has served as a monthly publication that is mailed to its members. Through this new technology, Rotopeka is branching out and incorporating the technologies that are just beginning to emerge. Besides the new “blog”, the Rotopeka is available in an exciting new format this month. But you have to visit the website to check it out.

Digital photography also was a focus of one of our club’s presenters this week. My wife and daughter just returned from Disney World and they took 345 photos. I took the advise of our presenter, Mike Worswick of Wolf’s Camera and immediately burned the photos onto a CD and put them in safe keeping. In the next few days, we will send our photos off to be printed and then pick them up an hour later.

There are many ways in which organizations such as Rotary are using the internet to advance their message, not only through traditional means like websites, but through blogs, video podcasts and Google Earth. The world is opening itself up and we are gaining more information all the time that can help us create a better world.
Hop aboard the and see what you can learn.