“Memory is a great artist. For every man and for every woman it makes the recollection of his or her life a work of art and an unfaithful record.” ― Andre Maurois

“Negative emotions like loneliness, envy, and guilt have an important role to play in a happy life; they’re big, flashing signs that something needs to change.” ― Gretchen Rubin

Announcements

(notes provided by the unconventional and unorthodox Paul Conforti).

Rod distributed our slate of officers for the coming Rotary year.

Laura announced that June 2 is Wear Orange Day.  Wear Orange was created to make it easier for people to show their support for common sense solutions that will save lives. If you believe there’s more we can do to help end gun violence, wear orange on June 2nd. But don’t stop there. www.wearorange.org

This initiative will be a community-wide effort that will include a variety of events and activities throughout Champaign, Urbana and the University of Illinois, including a bring-your-own picnic hosted by Moms Demand Action beginning at 6 pm in West Side Park. During the picnic, Champaign Mayor Deb Feinen will be issuing a proclamation declaring Champaign’s support of this important day.  Look for other activities throughout the community and get ready to be a part of something big!  champaignparks.com/event/wear-orange-national-gun-violence-awareness-day

Program

Laura also introduced our speaker, T.J. Blakeman, who gave a presentation on about the Champaign County Historical Museum at the Historic Cattle Bank

T.J. Blakeman, is a senior planner for economic development for the city of Champaign and the president of the board of directors for the Champaign County Historical Museum. T.J. is a transplant from his native Ashland, Illinois and moved to Champaign to attend the University of Illinois in 1999. He is a 2003 graduate of the College of Fine & Applied Arts with a degree is Urban and Regional Planning.

The mission of the museum is: To discover, collect, preserve, exhibit, study and interpret objects relating to the history of Champaign County, and to provide educational programs about the County’s heritage and the Museum’s collections.

T.J. was involved in the decision to close the museum for over 12-months to start a desperately needed renovation. The entire 1stfloor was remodeled into what can now actually be recognized as a museum. The Champaign Rotary received a matching grant which provided the flooring. The grand re-opening is scheduled for this week.

The museum has over 20,000 objects in its collection including one of the largest and most significant collections of 19th century clothing and millinery. Currently there is a permanent collection room and one rotating theme room, “When We Went to War”.

How Can You Help? The museum is 100% membership driven, so become a member. Volunteers are needed to be docents at the museum, to provide office staffing, skilled labor in the areas of flooring, building and construction. For more information please visit: www.champaigncountyhistory.org/

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UPCOMING SCHEDULE

June 2nd – Geri Wirth, representing Avicenna Community Health Center

June 9th – Megan Casey, Frances Nelson and SmileHealthy

June 16th – TBD

June 23rd – TBD

June 30th – TBD

July 7th – TBD

July 14th – TBD

July 21st – TBD

July 28th – TBD

August 4th – TBD

August 11th – TBD

“An inexhaustible good nature is one of the most precious gifts of heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather.” ― Washington Irving 

Announcements

(notes provided by the crafty and courageous Barb Lintner)

Lou will send out a schedule for weeding and watering the Decker Garden this summer.  Please sign up to help us keep it looking great.

Program

Our program today was the presentation of the CU Sunrise Outstanding Citizen Award for a person from our communities who exemplifies “Service Above Self.”   Each year a donation is given in honor of the recipient to the charity of his or her choice.   This year we honored Janet L. Kane who selected a feeding program in Haiti.  We were pleased to present the award to Janet and to hear about her service to the community and to the world.

Janet told us that she wanted to receive this award as an honor to Service.  As a Christian, she feels she has not just been called to be in service, but has experienced a way of finding God, especially in areas of need such as Haiti.  She made her sixth trip to Haiti this January as she participated in a vision clinic which takes new lenses and frames to patients who wait in long lines in the sun to be screened for both readers and glasses for distance vision.  Lay people are trained by a Bloomington church on the devices used to pick lenses and they travel to Haiti.  The clinic hired one of the fewer than 50 Haitian eye doctors to determine health needs and perform surgeries during the clinic. 

In addition, Janet is involved in a feeding program in Haiti.  Five years after the earthquake there, those who were formerly in the tent cities are now in plywood cities with many needs including food.  The feeding program started out helping 50 to 60 young children by supplying enough food to feed them 4 to 5 times a week.  Many young people would not accept this food while their older siblings had none, so the program was changed to include those up to age 12 with food supplied twice a week. 

Janet is also involved in Austin’s Place, a women’s shelter which is open mid-December through mid- April in our community.  She drives and also spends time staying overnight, when she is able to visit with the women and serve as a needed listener to their stories.

She participates in the Backpack program sponsored by Trinity Lutheran Church which for the past 6-7 years, which has provided food to 10 Wiley School students.  The program has done more than just supply food on the weekends; it has provided more stability for the children.  In the past few years the turnover rate of children has plummeted as an unintended but much desired consequence of this service.

In addition Janet has served as a substitute reader in the same Book Mentor program in which many CU Sunrise members participate.

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UPCOMING SCHEDULE

May 26th – (meeting held in Savoy Room) TJ Blakeman, President, Champaign County Historical Society

June 2nd – Geri Wirth, representing Avicenna Community Health Center

June 9th – Megan Casey, Frances Nelson and SmileHealthy

June 16th – TBD

June 23rd – TBD

June 30th – TBD

July 7th – TBD

July 14th – TBD

July 21st – TBD

July 28th – TBD

August 4th – TBD

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” ― Abraham Maslow

“Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.” ― Norman Vincent Peale

ANNOUNCEMENTS 

(notes provided by the erudite Mary Hodson)

May Bucket Money is going to the University of Illinois Pollinatarium.   June Bucket money goes to Champaign Central Drama Club for their trip to competition in Nebraska.

We received a thank you note from the Daily Bread Soup Kitchen.

The Club welcomed Jack and Penn back into town.

PROGRAM

Dave introduced C-U Sunrise Rotarian Darrell Hoeman.  Darrell is a graduate of the University of Missouri at Columbia.  He is retired from the News-Gazette.

In January, Darrell and his wife Katherine were chaperones for a study abroad program with the College of Business.  They took MBA students to India to study marketplace literacy.

They flew into Bangaluru, which has a population of 9 million and where great wealth exists alongside dire poverty.

The group visited NGOs and entrepreneurial projects in the surrounding communities.   The first project they observed was testing potable water in Tamu Nadu.  Middle class people get water from delivery trucks.   This project involves a testing device that allows poor housewives to know if their water is safe enough to drink.   Another project allows nurses in rural communities to use smart phones to screen for eye disease in children.

One problem in India is that kids finish school at age 14.  Even if they go on to college at age 18, they have a four year gap.   One NGO the group visited addresses this gap.  Every six weeks, they teach English and basic technical skills to 200 kids.    The students will go on to work in call centers or hotel service.

Darrell shared a lot of interesting anecdotes about life in India.   Every place they visited was like a state visit with tea service.  They experienced lots of traffic jams but never observed road rage.   Cows are everywhere and ladies follow the cows to pick up dung for fuel.   Buildings are not taxed until completed, so many buildings are not finished.

The last leg of the trip included a visit to the Taj Mahal.    Agra has been designated an industry free zone, to avoid pollution damage to the monument.   Therefore the only industry is tourism.

For more information, see www.marketplaceliteracy.com.

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UPCOMING SCHEDULE

May 19th – Outstanding Citizen award presentation

May 26th – (meeting held in Savoy Room) TJ Blakeman, President, Champaign County Historical Society

June 2nd – Geri Wirth, representing Avicenna Community Health Center

June 9th – Megan Casey, Frances Nelson and SmileHealthy

June 16th – TBD

June 23rd – TBD

June 30th – TBD

July 7th – TBD

July 14th – TBD

July 21st – TBD

July 28th – TBD

“To have influence, you really don’t need to have power. But what you need more than anything else is to have that almost uncanny understanding of what matters to people.” ― Anne Sweeney 

 “Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.” ― H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

ANNOUNCEMENTS
(Notes provided by Allan Penwell)

Rod has completed the Rotary Leadership Institute and is ready for taking over in July if he has enough electoral votes.

At the District 6490 conference, C-U Sunrise received honorable mention for outstanding small club.  It helped that Mary was on the selection committee.

Also at the District 6490 conference, Mary Hodson and Tom Hodson were recognized as major donors.

Mary announced that she is lining up speakers so please let her know if you have one of interest.

It is our goal to be a “Star Club” for the Rotary Foundation which means that every member donate $100 per year to the Rotary Foundation.  Right now we are $13.90 per member short of that goal which needs to be reached by July 1st.  Go on line and donate as a one-time payment or sign up to donate monthly debited from your bank account.  Thanks for your support!

PROGRAM

Ed introduced our speaker, Chris Barkan, who is the head of RailTEC at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  RailTEC is an academic department that focuses on railroad engineering and transportation.  Chris also brought, Francesco Bendini, who is a PhD candidate at UIUC as well as an employee of the Illinois Department of Transportation. 

The UIUC has had a long and distinguished history in railroad engineering. Significant contributions of the UIUC railroad engineering programs date back to the early years of the 20th century.

The early 1970s were a low point in railroad development as focus was more on truck transportation (rumor also has it that UIUC student Ed Perry contributed to the demise of railroad education).  At the time many rail lines became obsolete and unused, and as a result the rail lines were taken up. Since then, rail transportation has been on the upswing and RailTEC has increased its curriculum to complement this progress.  The current curriculum includes railroad infrastructure, mechanical, energy, freight, and intermodal transportation. 

Funding has come from suppliers from the railroad industry like BNSF, and there are eight professors in the department and 19 affiliated instructors.  There are more railroad related courses taught at UIUC than any other school in the United States.  Chris stated that RailTEC is a world leader in railroad education, and the program includes international students.  Railtec collaborates with a university in Sweden on projects and conducts an annual international conference.  They also have a new testing lab which is located on the CERL campus. 

There is a significant focus on high-speed rail by the school which has come out of studies of the rail efficiency in France.  An obvious high-speed rail system would include Minneapolis, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, and Cincinnati.  Such a system is about the size of the rail system in France.  Locally, high-speed rail proposals would have a line from Chicago to Champaign or Springfield and then to St. Louis.  The Chicago area would include stops at O’Hare, Union Station, and McCormick Place.  Think of taking a 220 mph train from Champaign to Chicago in 45 minutes vs. two hours, and you can imagine how interconnectivity would speed commerce and create new opportunities to tie into other means of transportation like airports. 

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UPCOMING SCHEDULE

May 12 – Darrell Hoemann, CU Sunrise Rotarian and Photographer Extraordinaire, will discuss his trip to India

May 19th – Outstanding Citizen award presentation

May 26th – (meeting held in Savoy Room) TJ Blakeman, President, Champaign County Historical Society

June 2nd – Geri Wirth, representing Avicenna Community Health Center

June 9th – Megan Casey, Frances Nelson and SmileHealthy

June 16th – TBD

June 23rd – TBD

June 30th – TBD

July 7th – TBD

July 14th – TBD

July 21st – TBD