Talk to us!

We hate junk mail just as much as you do, so it certainly brightens our day to get an actual letter from you, even if it’s just to blow off steam. Or maybe you want to share an opinion about something you’ve read or want to read. Don’t just tell your club – tell us and the rest of the Rotary world too. So keep those cards and letters coming with your suggestions, insights, criticisms and yes, even compliments, to yourletters@rotary.org or The Rotarian, One Rotary Center, 1560 Sherman Ave., Evanston, IL 60201 USA.

No more bottled water

District 6290 [Ontario, Canada; Michigan, USA] has distributed bottled water as a way of raising awareness of water issues, just like the Rotary Club of Petaluma Sunrise, Calif., USA, does [Up Front, November]. However, we stopped the practice when we became aware of another issue: the negative aspects of bottled water.

Imported bottled water may come from a country where many of the citizens have insufficient access to water. And much of the bottled water that is sold is nothing more than tap water with the beneficial minerals removed. We move one billion bottles of water across the country each week, which has tremendous environmental impact.

We are all trying to promote good actions, beneficial to all concerned. But sometimes this is more difficult that it first appears. However, working together in Rotary, I believe that we will succeed.

Ginny Ryan
Spring Lake, Mich., USA

New Web site isn’t user friendly

I must admit that I almost laughed out loud when I read the “RI Web Site’s New User-friendly Upgrades” story [Up Front, November]. I have tried to locate information on the Web with little or no success. When you pull up the new Web site, it is very impressive (even with all the unused space), but once you try to locate something, it becomes a nightmare. I hope this is still a work in progress.

John Henson
Joinerville, Texas, USA

Birth control education needed

I’m writing in support of Dean Barlow’s letter in the November issue [“Population Control”]. Dean is absolutely right, as was Rafael Canton’s letter in August and Harold Manhart’s in October. I wish to add a few thoughts to their excellent presentations.

I acknowledge the explosive [potential] if Rotary took a stand on the emotional issue of espousing birth control as a tool to make life better for a population that is stressing the supply of food, fresh water, and clean air. The fact that this is a difficult subject should not be an excuse for Rotary to avoid making it a goal along with water purifiers, polio inoculations, school support, shelter construction, etc. These are noble and important projects but will never have a lasting effect if not accompanied by educating and supporting populations (including our own) on the necessity of birth control.

Birth control education should not be a position dependent on an individual RI president. It should be an integral part and a definitive position of Rotary.

Dave Albert
Tiburon, Calif., USA

Literacy key to family planning

In the August and November issues, Rafael Canton and Dean Barlow wondered how family planning could best be implemented to control world population growth while respecting the beliefs of the people involved. I suggest the answer is education, the cornerstone of which is literacy. Research has clearly demonstrated that the better educated a community, especially its women, the lower the birth rate.

Population growth is straining, and in some areas even exceeding, the natural resources of the planet, particularly in developing countries. If Rotarians want to help resolve this problem through family planning that respects the beliefs of those involved, they should tackle literacy with the same vigor and tenacity they brought to polio.

Terry Simms
Halifax, N.S., Canada

Focus on U.S. service work

I love all the shiny pictures and articles about Rotary’s good work around the world. The In Focus section in the November issue was beautiful.

But I’m sort of a community activist who works with a very poor unincorporated neighborhood in our area, and one of the things I keep wishing is that there were more emphasis in our magazine on the domestic work Rotary does.

Although it’s exciting to travel to exotic locations and do great stuff, I do sometimes think of Rotarians’ efforts abroad as feel-good trips for the bored affluent – though this is not to disparage all the good work that does get done or to denigrate the results of letting people have a firsthand experience of life in another part of the world. There just seems to be a disconnect in Rotarians’ priorities, doing so much good work in foreign communities when there is so much that needs to be done in the communities of our own country.

The community I work in doesn’t have a Rotary club. But it needs a library. Its third graders would benefit from dictionaries – and so many more of the things we take for granted in our Rotary communities.

Mac Lingo
Berkeley, Calif., USA

Unhappy with new look

While giving my monthly review of the October issue of The Rotarian to our Rotary club, I read the letter “Old Format Was Better” and asked for a show of hands from our members familiar with both the old and current formats of the magazine. They unanimously agreed that the old format was better.

We are also forming a Stripped Gears fan club, the mission of which is to bring back Stripped Gears to the magazine.

Jim Skelly
Houston, Texas, USA

Technology unites Russia, U.S.

When the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik I satellite on 4 October 1957, it also launched the space race between the United States and U.S.S.R. From that came technologies that would eventually unite the world in ways unthinkable 50 years ago.

Two Rotary clubs used the anniversary to further friendship and goodwill between our countries. On 17 October at 7:30 a.m. in New England and 5:30 p.m. in the Ural Mountains, the Rotary clubs of Wolfeboro, N.H., USA, and Ekaterinburg, Russia, linked up via a Skype video call and celebrated the possibilities now open to us to work together. Though the video images occasionally flickered off and our voices fell in and out of cyberspace, the glitches in no way disturbed the closeness we felt.

The video call was part of various activities initiated by the Wolfeboro club in honor of the 200th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States in December. Our club has wholeheartedly embraced the anniversary project out of recognition that celebrating the good is what Rotary is all about. When we know the best of each other, enemies cannot be made from an ignorance of that goodness.

John T. Morgan
Wolfeboro, N.H., USA

How did banner trading start?

Do you know of any information concerning the start of the tradition of trading banners between Rotary clubs?

As historian of the Rotary Club of Aiken Sunrise, S.C., USA, I am charged with maintaining our somewhat large collection of banners from other clubs. I am currently researching and working on an educational program for new members that delineates the history of Rotary and am attempting to link our display of banners to the early history.

I would greatly appreciate any help you might provide, including other sources where I might find information concerning banners.

Donald C. Skinner
Aiken, S.C., USA

Editor’s note: The Rotary Club of Galveston, Texas, USA, is thought to have developed the first club banner in 1913 (see, for example, the Rotary Global History Fellowship at www.rotaryhistoryfellowship.org). By 1959, the exchanging of banners had become so popular that the RI Board was concerned that the practice would be a financial burden on clubs. It urged Rotarians to “exercise discretion, moderation and measured judgment in making provision for such exchanges.”

What do people really need?

Sorry for being slow in writing regarding the May edition that has a wonderful juxtaposition of articles on microfinance and poverty [In Focus and “A World without Poverty”]. Unfortunately, mail is slow in arriving on my small island of Émaé in the South Pacific, where my wife and I have been serving as Peace Corps volunteers since June 2006.

I would certainly agree that poverty and hunger are typically linked. However, it is my observation that it’s not always the case. Most people on my island probably earn less than US$1 a day, but there is no hunger here. Everyone has gardens, most families have chickens, pigs, cows, and goats, and there are fish to be caught in the reefs close to the island. Most of the issues around earning money have more to do with the difficulty of getting their products to market in the capital due to a lack of good infrastructure.

We need to learn to ask the question in developing nations, What do you really need? The question needs to be asked not only to the leaders of the country but also to the people who will receive the assistance at the village level. The customs and cultural standards on my island are so different from the standards that I am accustomed to in the United States, and I have learned not to assume that my standards are correct. If the situation were reversed and I were to bring a man from my island to the United States and ask him what he thought we needed, he might suggest we need to raise more chickens and pigs in our back yards and learn how to slaughter them ourselves so we don’t waste our money at the grocery store. You see how that works?

Charlie Hunt
Port-Vila, Vanuatu