We held our regular club meeting on January 29, 2020, at The Mark Restaurant and Bar. A District Award was given to our club and was accepted by our last year's President, Ms. Amy Smith, for our significant donation to International Rotary Polio Plus fundraiser. Li Gibbs again announced that KernYes needs volunteers for their event at The Historic Fort in Taft, California on February 22, 2020. For those interested, you can sign up as volunteers (which they badly need) on the KernYes website. Brad and Andrew jointly inducted Ms. Ashley Diaz into our club as our newest member. Ms. Diaz is a duel member of Roteract club and our Rotary club. Our program was past-President, Ms. Amy Smith, educating us about all the great work that Bakersfield Museum of Art does in and for our community. The Museum has 350 pieces of art in their permanent collection. They have multiple educational programs such as Art Works which focuses on developing and enhancing artistic skills in kids. Art Reach program provides in classroom art lessons to fifth graders. They reach at least 4,000 kids through this one program alone. They also have Extended Learning after-school program; Museum in the Move program (they take art activities outside the museum during the lunch hour); and Art Camps and Workshops during summer, Spring and Fall. They also do group tours, art parties for ages 3-11, and adult art workshops. Overall, the Museum serves over 9,000 kids each year. Thank you Amy for educating us on all the great things that the Museum does in our community.
The Centennial Interactors joined East High School Interactors and East Bakersfield Rotary Club on Monday January 20, 2020, on a clean up project at David Nelson Park and neighboring areas. A great community service project on this The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. This is what Rotary and Interact is all about, community service and making the world a better place.
Last night, we held our weekly meeting at our usual meeting place, The Mark Restaurant & Bar. Our speaker was Mr. David Gordon from the Kern Arts Council.
Prior to the beginning of our meeting, Kat invited everyone to come out and see her play, Grey Gardens, at Ovation Theater next weekend. She also announced that on March 10th, the Bakersfield Leadership Ethics conference will be held at Hodels and we need five volunteers and people quickly raised their hand. President Nancy is going to come up with an idea for us to do for the teachers at Mt. Vernon Elementary School for Valentine's Day such as taking them cupcakes. Li announced that Kern Yes still needs volunteers. You can go to kernyes.org to sign up. You can sign up for many volunteer jobs such as a counselor or a registrar which they really need. The event will take place on Saturday, February 22, 2020. March 7th will be Pucks for Polio fundraiser that Roteract is organizing to take place at the Condors game. It will be a Star Wars theme. Nancy also recognized Vince and Brad's efforts on behalf of the club by going to the Bakersfield Museum of Arts and bringing all of our stuff still left over there to The Mark to be stored here. Amy announced that Jeremy's band will play for our fundraiser "Concert in Garden" at Bakersfield Museum of Arts. Vince indicated that he has heard Jeremy's band and they are really good. In fact, he said that he purchased two of their albums and he was surprised how great they were. Our even will take place on Sunday, May 3, 2020, in the afternoon. Brad suggested we call it "Ireland in the Garden."
Our speaker was Juanita from Public Safety Professionals Retreat (formerly known as Rotary House Retreat), a program geared specifically to support first responders suffering from a variety of disorders and ailments including PTSD. Also in attendance was the Chairman of PSPR, Steven Gibbs (husband of our President-Elect Li Gibbs).
On December 4, 2019, our club held its Annual Holiday Program at Mt Vernon Elementary School. We continued our wonderful, annual tradition this year with our members, Centennial Interactors, Kern County Rotaractors and our Rotary Exchange student, Caludia (from Spain). Everyone enjoyed hot chocolate, cookies, music, making cards for the troops and we held our ugly Christmas swearter contest. Everyone there enjoyed themselves.
Our Centennial High Interact Club held a Cat People event today. The volunteers made cards and spent time giving some cats lots of love. Great job Interactors.
We met on the evening of December 18, 2019, as we do every Wednesday at The Mark Restaurant and Bar for our weekly meeting. This weeks speaker was Ms. Dianne Hoover who is the Director of Parks and Recreation for the City of Bakersfield.
Centennial High School's Interact Club held its 2020 Winter Board Retreat by getting away to fresh, crisp air, nature, snow and special bonding at Piute Mountain Ranch. Of course, our own, Li Gibbs, and her wonderful husband, Steven Gibbs, were there too.
On January 8, 2020, we met for our 18th regular Rotary meeting of the Rotary year at our usual meeting place, The Mark Restaurant & Bar. President Nancy had forgotten to assign club duties for this meeting. She randomly picked people to do each duty and as a helpful President, she helped each person to perform his or her duty. She even gave Manuel a printout to read for the Inspirational Moment which was a message from Governor Savi. She also announced that a new memeber, Ashley Diaz, will be joining our club. She encouraged everyone to sign up to read at Mt Vernon Elementary School. Amy announced that the concert fundraiser idea is off the table. After her and Cecil's meeting with Crystal Palace it became apparent that the cost is too much especially for a club of our size. A new idea is being kicked around which will take place at the Bakersfield Museum of Art since that venue is free to us. Thanks Amy. We then played "I spy" about all the things we have done in our club so far this year. Robin won, but we still don't know what she won. President Nancy then went through the goals that were set for our club at the beginning of the Rotary year and we have already met most of our goals. We may be small, but we are mighty. Jeremy then decided to do "sad bucks" instead of "happy bucks." In doing so, he gave us all two pieces of advice: don't play fantasy football and don't bet with a friend. Apparently, he lost to his friend by a very little margin. As a result, he now has to listen to an entire Yoko Ono album and the last track is 17 minutes.