President Helen Oloroso began the meeting with a recitation of “Why We Are Rotarians.” 

 

 

 

President Helen sent an agenda to Rotary members with a basic outline.  She also announced that Marv Edelstein sent out a reminder for protocol using Zoom.

 

President Helen further announced that Katherine Peterson was scribe for today, and reminded that all announcements intended for The Light may be emailed to her.  Katherine posted her email address in the Zoom Chat.

 

Katherine Peterson introduced Dr. Chris Nemeth, our speaker for today.

 

President Helen announced there were two announcements from District Governor Suzanne Gibson’s newsletter. The governor called out Evanston Lighthouse Rotary about the program last week and encouraged further discussion of this topic by sharing a link to our recording.  With great timeliness, April 24 to 30 is World Immunization Week.  Governor Gibson states: “As scientists work to find a vaccine for the new coronavirus, we can do our part to keep our communities healthy by helping Rotary spread the importance of vaccination during World Immunization Week.”

 

Helen Oloroso came across a fun fact from 1949: “In the midst of the polio epidemic, a disease that placed tens of thousands of children inside iron lungs and many thousands more quarantined around the country staying at home, a young San Diego schoolteacher named Eleanor Abbot invented Candy Land, one of the most popular board games of all time.  Abbott invented the game in a polio ward, as a patient herself, with the hope of giving immobilized children a momentary sense of freedom and mobility.  As a way of further connecting with the kids, she featured on the game board a boy in a leg brace.  To this day the game continues to be popular, nearly 65 years after the disease was contained.

 

Kathy Tate-Bradish announced that The Taste of Evanston is moving on with two more restaurants we are highlighting: Taco Diablo and Lulu’s.  An email will be coming out today with details about how MaLu Simon and Paul Brown had created a group order for the featured restaurants.   We are also suggesting ordering beer from Sketchbook.  President Helen added that if you are ordering from a restaurant, you might check to see if they are serving alcoholic beverages, as the food pays for itself, but the alcohol pays the bills.  President Helen further added that in addition to the two restaurants that were supported last week, Koi was also supported by a lot of people.  There were 13 people ordering from Koi, 10 from Edzo’s and 10 from Kansaku last week for a total of 33 orders.

 

Paul Weber later updated last week’s restaurants for The Taste of Evanston.  He reminded the club to email him with the details of orders placed with our featured restaurants, so he can track the details for TOE. 

 

Neil Gambow announced that Rotary'sYouth Exchange programs were cancelled for everybody.  Right now the district has one other youth exchange student remaining, who is from Venezuela, and the district determined it was not safe for her to return home. Our exchange student, Potter, as many of you know, is from Thailand, which has closed its borders.  There are now ways for allowing exchange students to go back with a lot of work.  Another wrinkle is that Potter was supposed to go back on Japan Airlines, but they have stopped flying to Thailand until June.  Neil said that one can buy a round trip ticket to Bangkok for $560.  The district bought a ticket for Potter to go home on May 18 to Thailand, where there are far fewer cases of COVID-19.   Linc Janus added that Potter would be making a presentation to the club before his departure.  Neil thanked Linc for supporting and staying the course of Potter’s exchange.  President Helen assured that on May 12 we will have an opportunity to hear from Potter before his departure.

 

Linda Gerber talked about the non-Taste of Evanston from the committee, stating that they were in the process of redefining the event planner’s role with TOE for the transition between this year and picking up next year.  Also, with a new responsibility for the event planner to pick up this event on line.  President Helen added that she knew from conversations with Bill Glader that there would be more information next week.

 

Linda Gerber announced that the International Service Committee is very active and went through a major hurdle with their partner in Kenya, whose district has apprised our project which we have been at for four years to date.  Kathy Tate-Bradish added that there are three clubs in the county that our participating organization would like to do HIV work in, and the oldest club in that district has finally gotten authorization to move forward on the grant, and to let you know what a struggle it has been.  Our district person authorized in January 2019.  It’s been quite a while but we have yet to meet with our grant officer at Rotary International.  That was the necessary but not entirely sufficient big step.  Linda Gerber added that the International Committee will have a meeting on Monday, via Zoom, and will be going through the new action plan for 2020 to 2022.  All are welcome.

 

Ann Weatherhead announced that the update about the Housing Committee is still in the process of putting together a committee, and hopefully will have a meeting next week.  Please call or email if you would like to join us.  So much has changed here.  Many people are being housed in hotels and the question is what happens from there?   In addition to the issues of how homelessness has become a health issue in the shelters if someone is testing positive or showing symptoms, the question becomes what to do, what are the next steps?  The committee is discussing what the issues are, and would love to have your input.  President Helen added information from an NPR broadcast in California that a possible agreement with Motel 6, who was in dire financial shape, created potential for investigation for permanent housing for the homeless in California. 

 

 

Steve Goranson boasted the 50^th anniversary of Earth Day.  The best things the government did, he said, was to establish EPA.  USEPA Alumni Association created a series of reports. Protecting the Environment: A Half Century of Progress  The goal of these reports is to inform high school and college students and others about the major environmental problems and issues encountered in the United States in the 1960s, how they were addressed , and the importance of continued effort to overcome remaining challenges and address newly and emerging problems. Today let us contemplate a wonderful new environment free of pollution.

 

Jean Saunders boasted Patrick Owuor.  RI is working on a new public service announcement (PSA) and looking for video footage of what members are doing around the world.  Patrick shared what his club is doing and generously offered to capture the work of Pamoja on video.  Their work is supported by our club.  It was shared with colleagues from RI, with fingers crossed that it will be put into the PSA.  In case it doesn’t get added it will be put  into the RI archives for alternative use later.  We are hoping to showcase this, and Jean added that she thinks she can give the club a “sneak preview.” 

 

 

 

 

Katherine Peterson introduced the speaker, Chris Nemeth, Ph.D., who is Principal Scientist and a Leader with Cognitive Solutions Group. He has a Ph.D. in Human Factors from the Union Institute and University, Master of Science in Product Design (IIT), seven years in the Department of Anesthesia at the University of /Chicago Medical Center, 26 years adjunct faculty at IIT, Northwestern University, 30 years active duty and a Naval Reserve career, retiring as Captain in 2001.  Chris is a competitive distance runner, bassist in 2 jazz ensembles, and an Evanston resident for 38 years and counting.

 

Chris overviewed his main topics as a human factors research scientist.  He shared recent respiratory protection research about hazard protection and a major project he will be talking about and a project that is currently under way.  Chris highlighted that in a pandemic, science is your friend, and that technical concerns exist in a behavioral, social, cultural, and political context. 

 

He gave an example of context via work he did at the University of Chicago with the study of an infusion device, which is the most widely used technology in health care.  It used to be a drip, controlled easily, that evolved to be a microprocessor controlled to mediate the delivery of more small and concentrated medications.  There are about 600 possible states it could be used in. 

 

When you think about this, it is maintained and operated and trained by people at the work level, and then there are not only groups that take care of developing and producing it, and acquiring it and organizing, maintaining and purchasing it, but above that the companies that manufacture, associations such as manufacture associations, international standards and professional organizations that have to do with the way the infusion devices are implemented, and finally at the governmental level the Center for Devices, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and others make decisions about the use of these devices. 

 

Chris explained that his organization, Applied Research Associates (www.ara.com), solves critical national problems to improve safety, security, and way of life.  A majority of the work is with government agencies at federal and state level.

 

Chris then reviewed recent projects that include the Dept. of the Army, NASA International Space Station, US Coast Guard and Transportation Security and Airport Screening.  Research is available on the Center for Disease Control site as well as the ARA site. 

Chris went on to review the details of a recent project and paper authored by Chris, “ARA, Research to Mitigate a Shortage of Respiratory Protection Devices During Public Health Emergencies.”  He briefly reviewed a paper also written with a colleague of Microbiology and Biopathogens about preparing for an Influenza Pandemic.  Chris went into depth about this and other respiration protection projects from a human factors standpoint and more, which can be reviewed in his presentation slides, which include links to scientific papers and other research.   

 

 

 

Margaretta Swigart of the Rotary Club of Nairobi.

Patrick Owuor, visiting from Kenya.

 

 

Gui, a former exchange student assigned to our club, who joined the meeting from Brazil though Zoom.

 

 

Kathy Tate-Bradish, April 24