Rotary Roundup

Meets Noon Mondays at the Hilton
www.hbgrotary.org
Executive Director: Linda Freedenberg
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Telephone: 717-234-1208
Fax: 717-234-3234

Speaker: Tom Gentzel, Executive Director,  PA School Board Association
Topic:  "OUR RECOMMENDATIONS ARE NOT THE GOVERNORS!"

A prominent public education leader, Tom Gentzel, Executive Director of the PA School Board Association, takes on the Governor and proponents of taxpayer-funded tuition vouchers!

Greeter and Good News Reporter:  Bruce Grossman
Invocation: Al Schmidt
Club Singing: Doug Pieper
Publications: Steve Baloga

Corporate Member

BIRTHDAYS
David Morrison  NOV 18
Benedict Dubbs  NOV 20
Autumn Lang     NOV 23
Nathan Bitner     NOV 26
Ed Tosti              NOV 27
Duryea Cameron NOV 27
Pat Amice            DEC 3
Marty Manion      DEC 3

UPCOMING PROGRAMS
at the Hilton

11/21 Interclub Thanksgiving Luncheon
11/28   NO MEETING
12/5    Speaker TBA
12/12 Board meeting 10:30
Speaker TBA
12/19  Speaker TBA
12/26  NO MEETING
1/2      NO MEETING
  
For complete programming go to our website: www.hbgrotary.org
and click on calendar.
For meeting cancelations:
Check your e-mail or call the
Rotary office at 234-1208.

PROGRAM: Tom Gentzel is executive director of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, which represents and serves more than 5,000 school directors, administrators and other officials from school entities throughout the state. Mr. Gentzel previously served as a county administrator and, later, as assistant executive director of the state association of county commissioners. He joined the PSBA staff in 1980 as a lobbyist and, five years later, was promoted to head the organization’s Office of Governmental and Member Relations – a position he held for more than 16 years. He became PSBA executive director in 2001 and leads a staff of more than 150 persons who provide a range of publications, conferences and seminars, as well as insurance programs, management and legal assistance, and advocacy services for local school officials.

In his official capacity, Mr. Gentzel is a member of the boards of the Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System (PSERS), the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) and the Pennsylvania School District Liquid Asset Fund (PSDLAF). He chairs the board of directors of School Boards Insurance Company of Pennsylvania (SBIC of PA) and is a board member of the PSBA Insurance Trust, School Claims Service, and EasyProcure, a procurement card joint venture.

In addition, Mr. Gentzel has served as Vice President at Large for the National School Public Relations Association and as a member of the Outreach Advisory Board for The Pennsylvania State University. He was appointed by Gov. Tom Ridge and reappointed twice by Gov. Edward Rendell to the State Advisory Panel on Special Education. In 2009, was named by the governor to the Pennsylvania Early Learning Council. He previously chaired the Pennsylvania Coalition for Public Education and was founder and coordinator of the Alliance for a School Aid Partnership, He is a member of Pi Alpha Alpha, the National Honorary Society for Public Affairs and Administration.

Mr. Gentzel has served on numerous program review teams for state school boards associations. He was elected by fellow state executive directors as chair of the State Association Member Executive Directors’ NSBA Liaison Committee for 2010-11, a position that also places him on the Board of Directors of the National School Boards Association. In the summer of 2010, Mr. Gentzel was unanimously elected by his fellow executive directors, to serve an additional term as chair to guide the group’s transition to the Organization of State Association Executive Directors (OSEAD). This has extended his service on the NSBA Board of Directors for an additional year, until April 2012.

Mr. Gentzel holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Community Development and a Master of Public Administration degree, both from Penn State. He and his wife, Sherrin, have been married since July 1974, and are the parents of three sons and proud grandparents of Rhett and Hudson Gentzel.

NEWS AND NOTES: 
• It’s not too late to send in your Pancake Breakfast money.

• RESERVE THE DATE: Strawberry Square “red kettle Salvation Army bell ringing” for Wednesday and Thursday, December 14-15, from 10:00 AM- 2:00 PM.  Sign up sheets available on Monday.

•On Tuesday, November 8 our immediate past president, Dr. John Judson and his wife Ann Marie were presented the prestigious United Way of the Capital Region’s Tocqueville Society Humanitarian Award.  The annual award is presented to recognize outstanding volunteer service in the Capital Region.  The Tocqueville Society was created in 1972 by United Way of America to recognize individuals or couples who have rendered outstanding community service.  Congratulations John and Ann Marie.  We are very proud of you!!!
• 60% have paid the $100 HRF contribution.  32% have paid the Support for the Troops contribution. Please send in your payments today!

• The Hanson Award Committee welcomes nominations in writing until December 9 for the next Robert Hanson Rotary Excellence Award.

• The Nominating Committee welcomes nominations in writing until January 4 for the Vice-President and the four Board vacancies. Rotarians must have served for 3 years. Please contact Linda with your nominations.

• YOUTH EXCHANGE COMMITTEE: Anti has had an enjoyable experience with the Kooti family and is happy and doing well at Cumberland Valley High School.   We need to arrange for the second and third families to host Anti.   Please let Dave Bedard or Steve Feinour know if you know of anyone who might be willing to host Anti from early December through early March.  

• DISTRICT NEWS:
The November Governors Newsletter is available at:
http://www.rotary7390.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=Ok1pspPQ9Sk%3d&tabid=113

•  If you wish to follow the adventures of the District Group Study Exchange Team, and team member Faith Camp  who is sponsored by the Rotary Club of Harrisburg,  as they travel around Singapore & Malaysia,  go to http://gse7390.wordpress.com/

LAST ROTARY MEETING:  11/7/11
Minutes by Karen Paris:
The first official phenomenon of the day was our traditional call to order by President Bob (mostly human, not a lot of machine or animal) Saline at 12:14 PM .  Wil Everhart dedicated the invocation to our Armed Forces and Beth Persun led us in the always-stirring “America the Beautiful.” 
When he called us back to order Bob recognized our veterans, their mothers and their spouses as Veterans Day is 11/11/11.  (Now the numerologists in our Club might have a comment on that date but not the phenomenologists).  Bob next brought up John Griner to introduce visiting Rotarians and Guests.  Ryan Reilly, Bridget Whitely, and our speaker all brought guests.
Maria Persico made a smooth transition to RI and its Foundation by speaking about the many benefits that occur when a Rotarian from our Club writes a check in support of the multitude of good works that the RI Foundation supports.   Her goal is to see every name in our Club on the RI site noting 100% support of what RI Foundation helps to accomplish throughout the world and in this country.
The next true phenomenon of the day was observing Wil Everhart and Jeff Boswell doing what they’re best at (sorry – I forgot to write that down and now I can’t remember what it might be).  But they kept calling each other “Ding” and “Dong” and then they had the crowd alternately repeating both “ding” and “dong” from one side of the room to the other until you felt you had bells ringing all around you…   But their main point was that our Club raises more money than any other service club in support of the SA (aka Salvation Army) and they want that phenomenon to continue.  Linda has the sign up sheets so prepare to put your name down and do a silent hour of fundraising for the Salvation Army on either December 14 or December 15 at Strawberry Square.  You can choose either “Ding” or “Dong” as your persona that day.  Or, if you can’t make up your mind, you can flip between the two!  And, no, you won’t freeze; it’s inside.  They gave us three (3) great reasons to go: 1) it’s a great cause; 2) it’s service above self; and 3) it’s a lot of fun and camaraderie. 
John Judson announced that this year’s Hanson award will be given out to the Rotarian who best epitomizes the ideals of RI and of our Club.  Nomination forms are on the information table or Linda can send you a nomination form to fill out if you’d like to nominate someone.  There are some wonderful benefits for the person who wins this award:  they get a seat on the Club’s Board of Directors for one year AND a trip to the RI convention.   Start thinking – it shouldn’t be hard to come up with a great name for this award.
Bob Hostetter apparently has been asked about his responsiveness to members’ requests for speakers.  Hearing no comments about that, he went on to note that today’s speaker has been requested by numerous members of the Club.  However, Bob said he doesn’t feel adequate to do the introduction since he can’t quite answer the question, “Phenomenologist: What is That?”  So he noted that Dr. Glen Mazis, our keynote speaker, will have to do that as part of his presentation.  Dr. Mazis is a Professor of Philosophy at Penn State Harrisburg.  He is the author of several books, the latest of which is “Humans, Animals, Machines: Blurring Boundaries” published in 2008.
Dr. Mazis took the podium and noted that the phenomenon he’s dealing with right now is how to best condense an entire book into a 20-minute presentation.  He started by saying that phenomenology is based on what we can experience and it is “we” centered.  His basic premise in the book is that part of each of the three – humans – machines – animals – is, in part, the other two.  He also said that philosophy tends to be negative, with an emphasis on doom-and-gloom, he prefers to look at the positive side of things. 
The theme of his book is how we can all work together for each others’ benefits and how the three parts dovetail together.  He suggested that we should all take our bodies a little more seriously.  People tend to downplay the body in favor of the mind; however, the body connects us to the rest of the world more than the mind does.  And, body is the way we’re interwoven with our environment, including animals and machines.  So much of who we are and what we can do is tied to the environment around us; just sitting in this room, machines make possible what happens during our hour + together each week.
He pointed out that animals are much more intelligent than we give them credit for and they do have emotions.  Machines are so much more advanced than previously that we need to respect them for what they allow us to do. 
We’ve tried to create thinking machines that become like people, and in some cases, have not done a bad job, but these machines are always lacking because adding emotional intelligence to behave in a more human-like fashion is much more difficult than having a machine do quick multi-number exponential factoring equations.
As story-telling animals, humans need to make animals and machines part of our stories and elevate them both to a higher plane.  Do they both need legal rights since they affect so much and we’re responsible for them (e.g. nuclear power plants)?
Our speaker’s vision of humans is to be what God has made, accept it and to partner with both animals and machines to use everything in the world around us to its best capacity.  Humans are, indeed, the Universe’s way of seeing itself.
After a couple of brave questions, Pres. Bob thanked our speaker and gave him a token of our appreciation.  He wished everyone who is on a mission a safe trip and then adjourned our meeting.

OFFICERS:

DIRECTORS:

Robert S. Saline              
Una Martone
Karen F. Snider
John P. Judson, M.D.
Carolyn Dumaresq, Ed.D.
William B. Boles
Richard Utley                

President
President-Elect
Vice President
Immediate Past President
Secretary
Treasurer
Sergeant-at-Arms

Sandra Beck
Caryn J. Carr
David E. Freet
Kent E. Frese
Lisa Lewis
Thomas A. Peluso
Andrew R. Rebuck
Robin Scaer