Club Update

Club Meeting: Domestic Violence In Our Community: Impact and Response: – Community Works supports and empowers people impacted by domestic and sexual violence. In this presentation, Marion Denard, Development and Outreach Director for Community Works discussed the issue of domestic violence, its impact in our community, and Community Works’ services to address and prevent it in the Rogue Valley.   Domestic Violence is a pattern of behavior where one partner in an intimate relationship chooses to use coercion, controlling and abusive behaviors to establish and maintain power and control over the other person. Tactics can include physical, psychological, sexual, social, and financial abuse. Domestic violence can happen to anyone regardless of race, age, sexual orientation, religion, or gender. Domestic violence affects people of all socioeconomic backgrounds and education levels. Domestic violence occurs in both opposite-sex and same-sex relationships and can happen to intimate partners who are married, living together, separated, or dating. According to the Center of Disease Control, one in three women in the United States will experience Domestic Violence in their lifetime.

Domestic violence not only affects those who are abused, but also has a substantial effect on family members, friends, co-workers, other witnesses, and the community at large. Children who grow up witnessing domestic violence are among those seriously affected by this crime. The abuser interferes with the victims’ ability to parent, causing harm to the parent/child relationship, and many are abusive to their own children. Frequent exposure to violence in the home not only predisposes children to numerous social and physical problems, but also teaches them that violence is a normal way of life – therefore, increasing their risk of becoming society’s next generation of victims and abusers.

Approximately 25% of women and 25% of children experience and witness domestic abuse.  Community Works (CW) receive about 10,000 calls/yr and connect with 3,000 victims.  Choices to leave an abusive home situation are locally exacerbated by our 1% vacancy housing rate.  Therefore,  CW plans to develop a new facility in Medford modeled after a successful youth shelter to provide housing and advocacy for up to 2 years.

How to get involved:

• Host a “Heart Warming Party” to inform people of the situation and plans to address the crisis.
• Help to teach new “Life Skills”
• Get informed on the “Trauma” and volunteer

Marion Denard is the Development and Outreach Director at Community Works.  Marion started her non-profit career by volunteering at a domestic violence program.  Her passion is safe families. 

In Oregon, 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men are victims of domestic violence.  As many as 25% of children in Oregon witness domestic violence and at Dunn House, a domestic violence shelter in Jackson County, 40% of the residents are children. Dunn House, operated by Community Works, provides victims with emergency shelter for as many as 30 days.

For children, exposure to domestic violence is considered an Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE).  A study conducted by Kaiser Permanente revealed the impact that ACE has on lives.  Cancer, drug use, obesity, diabetes as well as lower educational attainment are all greater for those who have experienced ACE.

Funding for Community Works includes individual donations, foundation grants, and Federal grants.   They offer a variety of services to help their clients through crisis including transitional living, youth & family services, runaway & homeless youth services.  For more information about Community Works, go to:  www.community-works.org.

Aaron Santi is a Rogue Valley resident, Principal at Talent Middle School, and part of an elite group of 125 who officiate all games during the NFL season.

During his presentation to our club last Tuesday, Aaron gave an interesting behind-the-scenes look at the requirements to be an NFL official, training, year-around schedules and compensation.

NFL officials are employees of the league and are assigned to one of 17 crews of seven people. Each crew stays together the entire 15-week season. Aaron’s official title is “side judge #50”. Being an official in the NFL is highly competitive and each person is held to a high standard of accountability for each play. The goal of each official is to receive and maintain a rating of “playoff eligible”, even if not assigned to a post season game. Those who do not maintain that standard are fired. Like Aaron, most have “regular” jobs where they live.

During the season, each official is given their game assignment on a Thursday, flies out on Friday after work and returns home late Sunday. Aaron’s crew flies in to their game location from all over the nation. How much does an NFL official make? Base pay for a game rookie is $4,400 per game, and up to $11,000 per game for an experienced official. A Super Bowl official is paid $13,500. In addition, there are many other valuable perks including travel, meals, lodging and 401k.

One of the most enlightening parts of the presentation was a look at the NFL rules book. It is extremely complicated and thicker than the wine list at the Jacksonville Inn.

Mr. Santi concluded by offering up some FAQ’s he receives:

Does he have a favorite team? No.

Does he have to work the same position for each game? Yes.

Do his friends get to hang out with the players? No.

Can you get me an autograph? Absolutely Not.

Does the NFL favor certain teams to win because they represent bigger markets? Absolutely not.

Are players and/or coaches prima donnas or jerks? Sometimes but most are just regular people.

Introduced by Andy Batzer, Cheryl Zimmerer of LOGOS Charter School explained what a Charter school is and does.  A Charter school is really a public school, but is special in that it can offer customized education for students.   The schools also have a “cap” on how many students can attend.  In Oregon, there are 140 Charter schools and there is a wait list to attend all of them.  LOGOS has a cap of 1000 students.   They are a K-12 school and were founded in 2010.  Students are accepted to a Charter School from anywhere.  LOGOS even has a student from Sunny Valley attending.  LOGOS, because it is considered a State public agency, pays PERS for employees.    LOGOS has about 80 employees including 50 teachers.  Their graduation rate is 86.9%.  Many students will graduate from LOGOS with enough college credits to enter college as a Junior.  LOGOS is in the process of building a new 26,000 sq. ft. school out of Rossanley.  For more information on LOGOS, please go to:  https://www.logoscharter.com/

Last week, our guest speaker Dave Baker shared stories and photos of his expedition around the Svalbard Archipelago aboard the National Geographic “Explorer”.

The Svalbard Archipelago is a cluster of islands about 1,300 north of Oslo and since the late 1800’s has served as one of the takeoff points for North Pole expeditions. Svalbard has a permanent population of 2,600, mostly Norwegian and Russian people who support the coal, fishing and tourism industries. It is a land where polar bears outnumber humans. Svalbard is also home to the Global Seed Vault, which houses millions of seed varieties in underground vaults.

Although the archipelago is inhabited by a variety of animal species, the real star attraction for visitors is the ice. Mr. Baker’s photos of glaciers and ice formations was nothing short of stunning.

Without getting political, Mr. Baker explained some of the science behind global warming. The Albedo Effect is an expression of the ability of surfaces to reflect sunlight (heat from the sun). Light-colored surfaces return a large part of the sunrays back to the atmosphere (high albedo). Dark surfaces absorb the rays from the sun (low albedo). Ice and snow-covered areas have high albedo, and an ice-covered Arctic reflects solar radiation which otherwise would be absorbed by the oceans and cause the Earth’s surface to heat up. The proportion of the Earth’s surface that is covered by snow and ice has a great deal to say for how much of the incoming solar radiation is reflected or absorbed. Low albedo (dark surfaces) leads to higher uptake of energy and, hence, warming. Moreover, when more ice and snow melt, there will be more dark surfaces. This is therefore a self-reinforcing effect. Climate change in the Arctic is consequently important for the development of climate change globally.

Our own Rotary District Governor Bill Grile gave our club a personal update on our goals and direction under his leadership.

“Bill was having a GOOD Day, feeling good and optimistic.  Then a Doctor told him that he actually had a rare form of Leukemia and after some soul searching, DG Governor Bill came across the recommended book, “Man’s Searching for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl and his chronicling of experienced as an Auschwitz concentration camp inmate during WW2, describing his psychotherapeutic method which involved identifying a purpose in life to feel positively about, and then immersively imagining the outcome.  The Real Meaning of Life for these amazing survivors distilled down to they identified a life purpose, things that one can do to add to one’s life in,  “Service”.  And Rotary is exactly and obviously such an activity.  If you can’t travel to give polio vaccines and build schools then, by all means, keep giving to the Rotary Foundation, “and get stuff done”!

Also DG Bill urged us all to come get inspired and attend the District 5110 District Conference in Coos Bay next Spring!

Respectfully submitted,

Ray Kistler

What was once thought impossible, the idea of fully self-driving automobiles, is now inevitable. That was the pronouncement of our guest speaker Tim Morgan, President and CEO of AAA for Oregon and Idaho.

The goal of fully autonomous vehicles is to ultimately reduce traffic fatalities. Last year saw a spike in driving deaths to 37,000, largely due to distracted driving (i.e. texting, alcohol, navigation, video screens, etc.).

While the road to fully autonomous vehicles is fraught with issues far beyond technology, advances are moving quickly. Mr. Morgan then proceeded to outline the five levels of autonomy, where every function of the car is controlled by the driver, to full autonomy, where the car functions entirely on its own in all conditions. Of the five levels of autonomy, the Tesla auto pilot is the most advanced in widespread use at level three, which is considered conditional automation because it warns the driver to take control of the car in certain instances. There are already documented failures in that arena, to include a recent Uber car that perceived a pedestrian with a bicycle to be a “ghost shadow”. The pedestrian was killed when the “safety driver” failed to react in time.

Full automobile autonomy is being tested around the globe and requires technology that sees or senses the entire environment around the car. The second piece of the technology is trickier: artificial intelligence that is programmed to tell the car how to react in an infinite number of circumstances. In conjunction with technology comes a host of other issues:  insurance, government regulation, environmental concerns, mapping, external factors such as other drivers, the fact that the technology doesn’t work in the snow, etc. etc.

Mr. Morgan concluded his talk with thoughts about the whole concept of autonomous vehicles which begs the question “just because we can, should we?”