The drivers of homelessness are not necessarily what many people believe. And Marie Barth is in the house!!
Notes from the January 18 meeting of
The Rotary Club of Clover Park
recorded by Tom McClellan
President Becky Newton was away on an undisclosed mission of vital importance, and so Pres. Elect Sue Potter was pro-temming. She thanked our ace setup crew of David Cotant and Mike Killen, and our greeter Tom Faubion. Jeannie Hill kicked things off with a brief quote of inspiration and contemplation:
None of us is getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an after thought. Eat the delicious food. Walk in the sunshine. Jump in the ocean. Say the truth that you're carrying in your heart like hidden treasure. Be silly. Be kind. Be weird. There's no time for anything else. - - - Sir Anthony Hopkins
We welcomed one guest to this meeting, Desniege Haywood of the Tacoma Rescue Mission.
David Cotant then gave a brief history of why Rotary adopted the Four-Way Test. It was created in 1932 by Rotarian Herbert J. Taylor, who later served as RI president in 1954-55, when he was asked to take charge of a company that was facing bankruptcy, Club Aluminum Cooking Ware.
This 24-word test for employees to follow in their business and professional lives became the guide for sales, production, advertising, and all relations with dealers and customers, and the survival of the company is credited to this simply philosophy. People learned that the Club Aluminum brand would give good service, and you could depend on what the salesman said.
Adopted by Rotary in 1943, The Four-Way Test has been translated into more than a hundred languages and published in thousands of ways.
Announcements
Future Programs
Feb. 1 Fellowship meeting, no speaker
Feb. 8 Bobby Arkills, Tacoma Area Youth For Christ
Feb. 15 Former Sheriff Paul Pastor, Criminal Justice Reform
Our major fund-raiser, the Clover Park Rotary Invitational (CPRI) is coming up soon, March 17, 6 PM, at the McGavick Center. The expectation is that all members will attend, hopefully with their spouses or significant other, plus anyone you can invite from the community who would like a fun night of fellowship and games. The further expectation is that ever member will donate a prize for the board, with suggested value of $50 or more. Please start bringing those to give to Alan Billingsley who will be accepting and storing them ahead of the event.
The week before, Alan highlighted a service trip our club is planning for late September 2023 to the Dominican Republic.
If you have an interest in being a part of this trip, or just learning more, please contact Alan Billingsley or Tom McClellan.
Paige Hansen mentioned that the Lakewood Playhouse is now preparing to present Shakespeare’s whimsical play, Much Ado About Nothing in March. 60 actors auditioned, and 22 were cast. She also noted that her own personal jazz ensemble, The Playtonics, would be performing on Sunday, Jan. 22 at McMenamins in Tacoma.
Foundation Minute
Scott Adams filled in for Foundation Director Georgene Mellom to offer a quotation from Ian Oxman, a former Group Study Exchange member from California:
“In Warsaw, Woijeich Sierpinski, a Rotary Club President, took me on a tour that I will never forget. We visited his parents’ house - where they lived during World War II. There in the kitchen, under a dusty stack of crates was a secret wood panel in the floor. Woijeich removed the panel to reveal a tiny room underneath the kitchen floor where his parents hid their neighbors - a Jewish family - during the war. As I stood speechless, listening to Woijeich describe how they evaded the Nazis, I realized the full value of the Group Study Exchange program.”
President-Elect’s Minute
Sue Potter took her moment at the microphone to celebrate that Nourish Pierce County made a list of the top 300 food banks in the USA. Woot!
Fun And Fines
This week’s Finemaster Pro Tem was David Cotant, who started off inviting confessions, especially for travel, and reminded everyone of the longstanding standard rates of $5/night for pleasure travel, and $1/night for business travel.
Marie Barth was back from Montana to deal with some property listings, and she said it is great to see everyone. The house in Roundup, Montana, is done except for the fireplaces. She shared the irony that while her family owns a rock quarry there, they don’t have the rocks they need for the fireplaces. Their house is a restored 1903 bank building, complete with 2 vaults. Remodeling it has been reminiscent of the 1984 movie The Money Pit, with Tom Hanks and Shelley Long. Life is kind of normal now. She contributed $50 in honor of her pleasure in being back among friendly faces.
Randy Black confessed to a dual purpose trip with wife Tina to their other home in Arizona, where Tina went to see the doctors who confirmed her diagnosis of CVID, common variable immunodeficiency, which will mean long term antibody infusions. 10 days for $50.
Last week, Sue Potter did WA State trivia, and David Cotant continued it.
Bob Lawrence paid $5 for not knowing that the State Motto is “Alki”, a Duwamish word meaning “bye and bye”, which apparently is another way of saying “into the future”, as in “I will see you, bye and bye”. It has nothing to do with purchasing items on Seattle-based Amazon.com. See https://leg.wa.gov/Symbols/pages/default.aspx.
Jeannie Hill just happened to know that the State Flower is the rhododendron. And no one asked her to spell it.
Ramona Hinton, who is a relatively new Washington State transplant, paid $5 because she did not know that our state has a total of 10 volcanoes, active and extinct.
Marie Barth correctly guessed that it is TRUE that Washington is the most glaciated state in the USA. Washington has more than 3,000 named glaciers. Alaska has more snow and ice, but not more glaciers.
This Week’s Program
Desniege Haywood is a Development Officer for the Tacoma Rescue Mission. She has been with the Mission for 9 years, doing case management, supervising the donation center, and managing volunteers. She is committed to helping the homeless, both human and pets, and volunteers also at the Tacoma Humane Society in her spare time.
Haywood went through some facts about the causes and conditions of homelessness. Housing availability and pricing is a big factor, not so much for the people we see in tent encampments, but for others affected by low income. Homelessness is usually a short term situation. Most who enter the system leave and do not reenter.
The big causes are:
- Housing supply
- Mental health
- Employment disruption
- Domestic violence
- Generational poverty
Drug addiction is not a big cause, which may surprise some people. People often become addicted AFTER becoming homeless.
The Tacoma Rescue Mission was formed decades ago, and last year served 3,076 people across four campuses. They fed 253,000 meals, and offer job services, mentoring, and mental health counseling.
Their Family Shelter Campus is a 90-day emergency shelter, with one family per each of their 38 rooms. It offers early childhood and youth education support.
The Tyler Campus has 36 apartment units, and is built to look like a neighborhood. Half of the unites are for a treatment program for drug and alcohol abuse, and the other half is “clean and sober” low income housing.
The Jefferson Campus has 41 studio apartments for adults needing extra support, many of them are long term residents.
The Downtown Campus is perhaps the most well-known, just off I-5 on South Tacoma Way. It has 38 rooms, housing four people to a room, averaging 120 people per night. It also serves as an overflow site on very cold nights. There is a new women’s shelter on the site with a capacity of 80 women. Both portions are “low barrier”, meaning no drug test. There is a special veterans area in the men’s shelter, with case managers from the VA.
Chronically homeless people have drug and mental health problems more than most people. The Rescue Mission’s New Life Program is a faith based drug treatment program, offered for free and lasting 12-18 months.
The Mission has a Search And Rescue Program, with two vans going out to scout encampments to bring people back to the Mission who are willing, or to offer resources. The Outreach Team meets with people who do not want to come to the shelter, in order to do case management.
What can you do? Volunteers are needed, for a wider variety of possible roles than you might imagine. Come take a tour. You can also donate by dropping off “crucial items”, either in person or through the Mission’s Urgent Needs Amazon Wish List. And they take monetary donations at https://www.trm.org/donate or sent to Tacoma Rescue Mission, P.O. Box 1912, Tacoma, WA 98401.
Raffle:
With 4 aces still in the deck, and $158 in the pot, Jeannie Hill performed a useful service to other club members by improving the odds of someone winning next time, but did not seem very happy about that “service”.
And Finally…
Given that our own Paige Hansen insists on performing “jazz” music, and even hosts a radio program where it is played via the radio waves, your faithful scribe offers this admonition from the estimable Dr. Harris, of the Brooklyn State Hospital, as reported by the United Press some time ago.
