ANNOUNCEMENTS
(courtesy of the unconventional and unorthodox Paul Conforti)

Our club presented Carl Burkybile with a $500 donation for his Helping Hands International organization to be used towards fresh water projects in Kenya. www.hhi.org/our-work

Fruit Sale: the 1^st mention in the notes this year. Fruit arrives the week after Thanksgiving. Robb (General) Patton reprises his invaluable role as Fruit Meister Extraordinaire!

Speaking of fruit: Tod Satterthwaite is having a Kale Pickin’ party this Saturday 11/3 from 8:30 to 11:30am at the Sola Gratia Farm which is adjacent to the St. Matthew Lutheran Church (2200 Philo Road, Urbana, IL just north of Meijer). Pickin’s goes to the Eastern Illinois Foodbank.

The girl group of Donna & Diana will coordinate our annual essay contest (more info later).

Ed Perry announced that volunteers are being sought to “man” the Eastern Illinois’ mobile foodbank on its 11/10 journey to DeLand.

Ata passed a sign up sheet to attend or donate to the Rotary Veterans event.

Saturday Novenber 10th is our club’s next EIFB Foodmobile volunteer opportunity. We will meet at 9am at the De Land Fire Station, 215 N.Highway Ave., De Land Illinois. We will help unload the EIFB truck, set up the tables and food and help distribute the food. Food distribution takes about 2 hours and then we help load up the truck of any left over food. We should be done by 1:00pm. Let Ed, eperry1049@gmail.com,  know if you can help the entire time or a portion of it.

PROGRAM: Wes Jarrel of Prairie Fruit Farm, LLC

Wes Jarrell and Leslie Cooperband are the owners of Prairie Fruit Farm, LLC. (4410 N. Lincoln Ave, Champaign). In 2003, they moved from Madison, Wisconsin. The first year all of the land previously in cash grain (about 5 acres) was planted with a cover crop of buckwheat to begin restoring the prairie soil. In 2004, 350 fruit trees and 600 berry plants were planted and they obtained four Nubian goats (three does and one buck).

In August 2005, the farm received licenses for a Grade A goat dairy and farmstead creamery.  The farm expanded to 70 goat milkers, put in a milking parlor with a pipeline that carries the milk directly to a refrigerated bulk tank.  The farm rents an additional 32 acres adjacent to the farm providing more pastures berry plants and hay.

The farm vision is to integrate perennial crops and livestock production, and to add value to our products through on-farm processing. They strive to educate the community about organic and sustainable agriculture and the connections between food production and consumption and to serve as a model for others interested in small-scale diversified farming systems working toward building a vibrant local food system in Central Illinois.

Products include Farmstead and Artisan Goat and Sheep Milk Cheeses, Goat Milk Gelato, Organic Fruits and Local, Slow-Food Meals on the Farm.

Please visit the farm’s wonderful website:

www.prairiefruits.com

217-643-2314

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Upcoming Schedule

Nov 1 – Joly Wu, Akbar Agha, and Sherry Wang from AIESEC

Nov 8 – Lisa Sprinkle, Champaign County Forest Preserve District

Nov 15 – Larry Pennie, DGE, Rotary Foundation and Future Vision

Nov 22 – Thanksgiving – no meeting, but join Chuck for tofurkey at his place

Nov 29 – Jim Angel, State Climatologist

Dec 13 – Holiday party

Dec 20 – TBD

Dec 27 – Benny Lapid will discuss Jerusalem

Announcements
(notes courteous of the crafty and courageous Barb Lintner)

Ata reminded us to bring a Veteran to the Veteran’s Day One on One event at Champaign West  on Sunday, November 11, at 4:15.  He is collecting money for tickets for yourself and your guest.  Our Bucket money this month goes to help with that event.

CU at Home is conducting a survey of the homeless in Champaign Urbana and need volunteers for next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.   Go to cuathome.us for more details.

Jeff called for a volunteer from our club to chair the RYLA committee. Please let him know if you are available.

Program

The 17^th Men’s Head Basketball Coach at the University of Illinois, John Groce, was our speaker this morning.  Coach Groce, a member of Rotary Interact in high school, told us the importance of paying it forward and service above self in his life.  His team will conduct a peer vote on captains on Saturday with four staff members included.  He has told that the best way to assess your leadership is to look over your shoulder.  If no one is following, you are not a leader.  His emphasis is on effort and attitude as well as pace and tempo.  He feels the players this summer have adapted well.  The secret to doing tough things well is doing tough things well; so in year one his expectations are that the team will grind it out every day, focus on the process, learn, and get better every day.

In addition to recruiting talent his three goals for success are to create a culture of mental toughness and togetherness; to emphasize that every day is important – every practice, every possession, every game matters; and to create a defensive mind set with rock solid defense and rebounding.  He believes in consistency over greatness and that practice matters so he will play guys “who do what they are supposed to do.”  He invited us to the Monday Orange and Blue Scrimmage as well as the first game with Louis University at 7 pm on      He fielded questions on point guards, ball handling, and his big picture prospective and then had to leave us to fly from Willard to sign an extension of the Illinois-Mizzou Braggin’ Rights series at Scottrade Center through 2017.

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Upcoming Schedule

Oct 25 – Wes Jarrell, Prairie Fruit Farms

Nov 1 – TBD

Nov 8 – TBD

Nov 15 – Larry Pennie, DGE, Rotary Foundation and Future Vision

Nov 22 – Thanksgiving – no meeting, but join Chuck for tofurkey at his place

ANNOUNCEMENTS
(notes courteous of the erudite Mary Hodson)

President Jeff reminded everyone that the meeting next week will be held in the White Oaks Room.

Ed thanked everyone who volunteered to help with the EI Food Bank food repack.

Tom Hodson announced that Champaign West is selling poinsettia’s, red, pink or white for $10.   You can email him at tzhodson@gmail.com or contact Mary at maryfhodson@aol.com.

“Words in the Wind”, a fundraiser for the Book Mentor Project,  will be held at 7:30 PM on November 1, at the Faith United Methodist Church.  Tickets are $10 at the door.

Ata reminded everyone about the November 11 “Veterans One on One” dinner at The Hilton Garden Inn.   Everyone is encouraged to bring a veteran as a guest.  Tickets are $13.  Veterans are guests.

Larry says that the U of I Rotaract Club is in need of speakers.  They meet Tuesdays at 7:00 PM in Room 292 in  the Animal Science Building.   If you could do a presentation, contact Susanna Storm at IlliniRotarct@gmail.com.

Larry also noted the potential to work with the Champaign Central Interact Club to do job shadowing, resume writing assistance, and interview coaching.  Larry will follow up once he hears back from the Interact adviser, Bryan.

President Jeff announced that CU Sunrise will have an outbound RYE next year.   Her name is Elizabeth Michael.

Erick Luedtke thanked the club for the $500 donation to the Nepal Project.

PROGRAM

Leah Matchet, a member of Rotex and the U of I Rotaract Club.   As a member of Rotex, she is responsible for making presentations to Rotary Clubs about her RYE experience and counseling future and current RYE students.

Leah is from Grand Haven, Michigan.  She is a freshman, studying Global Studies with a concentration in governance and conflict resolution and East Asia.  She was an RYE to Taiwan in 2010-2011.   She thanks Rotary for changing her life.

It began with an 18 page application process that culls out the less serious.   Before leaving, she attended the Calvin Conference, the Central States conference for in and outbound exchange students.  It is held in her home district every year.

Her host family lived in a town of 150,000 close to Taipei, at the northern end of Taiwan.    They liked her so much that they immediately asked if she could stay with them the entire year.  They even paid $4,000 for her to be tutored in Chinese, five hours a day.

Leah thinks that Taiwanese students are kinder to each other than American students are to one another.   They don’t laugh at each other.   One of the differences she noticed in Taiwanese schools was that following a half hour lunch, there was a mandatory half hour nap.   Everyday after school, she came home and had tea with her host parents.

Because tourism is stressed, much is spent on restoration projects. Leah showed pictures of ornately carved Taoist and Buddhist temples.  She loved the street culture and especially the night markets.   Food was as much about appearance as taste.   Meals had many courses.   Leah’s favorite food was pig’s blood cake!   She also ate snake soup and fried chicken hearts and butt.

In Taiwan, birthdays are not important unless you are old.  So Leah was surprised when her classmates all gave her cards and presents and her host family gave her a birthday cake.

She got to experience not only the Taiwanese culture, but due to their frequent activities together, the cultures of all of the other RYEs who were in Taiwan at the same time she was.

Leah said that due to her RYE experience, she not only has friends around the world, but she likes herself a lot more, too!  The experience taught her to take chances and built her self-confidence.   “Leaving Taiwan was the hardest thing I ever had to do. Coming back was scary, like a new exchange experience.”

After she came home, Leah recruited several other exchange students from her district and her parents hosted an inbound student.  She describes it as “building peace, one exchange at a time, because you can’t demonize a country if you have a friend from there.”

Leah would one day like to be a Rotary Peace Scholar and work in the State Department.    She is studying Arabic now and plans to tackle Russian next.

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ANNOUNCEMENTS
(courtesy of the striped-tie-wearing Allan Penwell)

Ata announced that Champaign West is again sponsoring “Veterans Day One on One” on November 11, 2012.  They are asking every Rotarian in C-U to bring a veteran to this event.  Dinner is $13 per person, and each Rotarian will be asked to pay in advance their own meal as well as their guest’s.

Les Schulte from Illini After 5 passed the hat for their dictionary project.

Don’t forget that Coach Groce will speak at our meeting on the 18^th.  Bring a guest who might become a member.

PROGRAM

Jennifer Quirk of the UIUC Institute for Genomic Biology was our speaker.  UIUC is a world leader in in interdisciplinary research.  The IGB was founded in 2003 to advance life science research and stimulate bioeconomic development in the state of IllinoisThe Institute for Genomic Biology was founded in 2003 to advance life science research and stimulate bioeconomic development in the state of Illinois.  Construction of the $75 million, 186,000 square foot state-of- the-art facility began in April 2004, and the building was officially dedicated in March 2007.

The IGB has 140 faculty from 30 different departments who conduct studies and collaborate on projects.  Research at the IGB falls under one of three broad Programmatic Areas:  Systems Biology, Cellular and Metabolic Engineering, and Genome Technology.  More than 600 students and post doctoral researchers also work at IGB.

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Upcoming Meetings

Oct 11 – Leah Matchett, ROTEX

Oct 18 – John Groce, Illinois Men’s Basketball Coach

Oct 25 –