A few words from the Club President
As the Rotary year unfolds, it’s becoming a long night’s journey into day, to change the title of Eugene O’Neill’s play. What began with a full and confident Changeover has lurched forward in a series of Zoom meetings for both full membership and Board. On top of that have been other Zoom togetherness occasions at District and Cluster levels. I feel that I’ve been Zooming around like a fly in a bottle for the past three months.
The two September meetings, held on the second and sixteenth, seem a long time ago. However, both were well-attended, lively and informative in their own ways. If Secretary Rodney keeps up his quizzes, we’ll be the most informed bunch in District 9800; the collective name for platypuses, the stats on Olympic Games? No problem. On September 2, the CEO of Volunteers West, Thu Trang Tran, told us about the history and objectives of that organisation and how it might potentiate some of our future projects. On September 16 we had no external speaker but our assorted heads and shoulders held animated conversations.
There’s no doubt that such online meetings help to keep us together while we’re apart and I’d hate to think of what we would have done during lockdowns in times past, but they fall short of real in-person meetings with their kaleidoscopic conversations and sense of fun. Roll on the end of lockdown!
Two side effects of the lockdowns are an inability to hold any project events and a muted ability to induct and welcome new members. With regard to projects, we can plan for some but we have been unable to progress our golf day which is receding like a desert mirage. DG Dale Hoy has recognised that many club events will be compressed into the second half of the year and they find themselves competing for the same participants for art shows, sports events and any other group activity. In addition, I suspect that we’ll all be manically trying to escape the city for overdue pampering and rest at whatever oases we can find, whether OS or OZ.
We are in the happy position of having potential new members and it may be that they will be Zoomed in before we can meet in person. I don’t want to cheat anyone of their first and only free meal or for the warmth of hand-shakes and applause therefore induction may be a two-step process. Nevertheless, we are in a good position to bounce back from the decline of recent times. Two features determine how long a new member stays, how well we embrace them (figuratively) and how involved they become in a hands-on project. Indeed, hands-on projects are the glue that holds us all together.
For reasons too obvious to mention, Partick Thistle will be glossed over in this edition.
President Jamie Robertson