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President Lisa Smith called a full house of Rotarians to order and Dick Ammons, with his FM radio voice, gave the invocation. With voices raised, we sang God Bless America. This song has been sung at sporting events since the 40's and according to some Kate Smith and Philly Flyers’ fans is origin of the apothegm “It ain’t over til the fat lady sings.” Of course, this is utter falderal to opera fans who claim it is not an apothegm, but rather a colloquialism referring to the valkyrie Brünnhilde from Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. But I digress.
We had guests, a bunch of them, ranging from Lansing’s art cognoscenti to alternative news media moguls from Colorado. Oh, and it is open season for student guests again. No, we don’t get to shoot them, but it would be helpful if you’d make them feel welcome and take your turn at introducing them to the club. Who knows, maybe one day one of them will be our guest speaker. The highlight of Teresa Kmetz’s remembrance report was that Rick Foster was back at Rotary, flashing a peace sign. Kurt Guter took us on a stroll through Rotary History, 90's style. The 90's featured a go kart grand prix, bone chilling first opening day for Lugnuts, Blue Ribbon Committees, a non-atomic steam clock tower, Y2K (we’re still here computer geeks), the introduction of the Euro, the fall of the Red Menace, the Reunification of Germany, the end of Lou Brand and Ted Swift’s 35+ year reign of Christmas terror (Santa’s not coming!), the replacement of 60 year pianist Milt Berg with the then unknown John Dale Smith. 84 years of club history, all of which predates our current president’s tenure with the club!
Michelle Reynaert presented our $15,000.00 Golf Outing check to the Arts Council of Greater Lansing. Deb Mikula accepted indicating your munificence will fund 10-12 youthful artists in residence who will touch the lives of 1000 students with artful enlightenment. We were fortunate to have Zion Jackson perform two songs, the first in Italian which reaffirmed our belief that the Italians are masters of love and the other a Spiritual which resonated with many in the audience.
Our chair of the day was Maureen Hirten who introduced Graham Couch, a sports columnist for the Lansing State Journal. Couch’s professional life involves attending sporting events and reporting them, whereas most Rotarians report to a couch and fall asleep watching sporting events. Graham loves his job and the access it grants him to local folk heroes Dantonio and Izzo and their less famous colleagues at Michigan’s community colleges and high schools. He’s quick to point out that you can’t be a friend of the subject you’re writing about. In this Golden Age of Spartan sports success, a loss has a better story hook than the expected win. Sports news reporting is now a 24/7 job with print media becoming less relevant. There’s a certain beat comradery amongst sports writers that gives way to the competition of getting a story out. Graham enjoys having a voice in his hometown and that he is paid for his thoughts. He fielded a lot of questions from the audience including best/worst Big Ten Fans (Nebraska/Ohio State), best interview (Nix/Green) and he let us know that he got schooled by his mother in basketball at LCC. President Lisa thanked the speaker, and told him our appreciation is in the form of precious, clean water biosandfilters to help those who don’t have clean water (we should send some of these up to Flint, seriously, Flint matters).
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Rachel Barton Pine is an American violinist. She debuted with the Chicago Symphony at age 10, and was the first American and youngest ever gold medal winner of the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition. The Washington Post wrote that she "displays a power and confidence that puts her in the top echelon".