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OnFebruary23,1905,a young Chicago attorney by the name of Paul Harris formed the very first Rotary Club. It was formed as a place where pro- fessionals with diverse back- grounds could exchange ideas and form mean- ingful, lifelong friendships. Today there are over 1.2 million members in 33,000 clubs in over 200 coun- tries across the globe. The Rotary Club of Red Bluff was formed in 1924. I have been a member of Ro- tary since 1981. The motto of Rotary International reads as follows: "Service Above Self—He Profits Most Who Serves Best." Few clubs are more hands-on than the Ro- tary Club of Red Bluff. I say this in spite of many changes that have occurred over the 34 years that I have been a Ro- tarian. For the first 60-odd years of its existence, Red Bluff Rotary was an all-male club. When I joined in 1981, the club num- bered about 100 members, with dry-witted local busi- nessman Bill Kemp serving as president. In those days, attendance was mandatory; the member who missed the most meetings each month was required to take home and care for a big old noisy rooster named Henry. I re- member clearly the day Sher- iff Ron Koenig reported that the rooster had expired while under his watch. It's amazing the effect a Colt .45 can have on a noisy bird. Red Bluff in 1980 was a very different town than it is today, and the Rotary club membership reflected that dif- ference. In those days a signif- icant percentage of the mem- bership were small indepen- dent business owners. There was no Walmart, Tractor Sup- ply Co. or The Home Depot. The fact that not one of those big box behemoths has a rep- resentative in the Rotary Club is more than telling re- garding their commitment to this community and what we stand for. Rotary changed forever in 1987 when the Supreme Court ruled that membership could no longer be based on gender. Like most clubs, Red Bluff Ro- tary registered a mild objec- tion at being forced to accept women into the sometimes- ribald world of Rotary. Like most clubs, the Rotary Club of Red Bluff would now admit, some 30 years later, that the hard-working women in our club are an important part of who we are. Jeweler Don Jones showed his usual moxie by sponsoring the very first fe- male to join Red Bluff Rotary, Ms. Maralyn Minch. The first female President of Red Bluff Rotary was Ann Illian, who served as President in 1995. With the inclusion of women in Rotary, member- ship levels increased signif- icantly. Our local member- ship peaked around the turn of the century, when the club boasted nearly 120 members. It was also around that time when a second club, Sun- rise Rotary, was formed in Red Bluff. I would be remiss if I did not tell you that the 20-member Sunrise Rotary Club, while small in member- ship, is pound for pound one of the more productive clubs in the world of Rotary. They do so much for this commu- nity, and we welcome them to our neighborhood. For a variety of reasons, membership in community service clubs has declined over the past couple of de- cades. Like most service clubs, our membership had declined from its high water mark of 120 in the year 2000 to around 65 a couple of years back. The Kiwanis Club likes to refer to Rotary as "the old man's club." I sit at what is re- ferred to as "the old man's ta- ble." My table includes "lady in the box" attorney Rol- land Papendick. At age 70, the counselor and I are the young- sters at the table, though Rol- land looks much older than I. My friend Jack Fennel, at 80, is a retired optometrist and Pan Am pilot who abso- lutely lives to fish. Seated next to Jack is Jim Howell, Paint Store czar and a lifelong res- ident of Red Bluff. Also at my table is senior club mem- ber (53 years) 88-year-old Bob Stoufer, who is fond of refer- ring to me as "Salmon Ass" or "Scissorbill." The table pa- triarch is my good friend and mentor Doug Sale, who at 93 is the oldest living member of the Rotary Club of Red Bluff. It is truly a pleasure to swap lies with these great gentle- men each and every Tuesday. It is also particularly grat- ifying as a member of "the old man's club" to be consis- tently victorious when com- peting with the much younger Kiwanis Club in golf tourna- ments, Farm City night at- tendance contests, Christmas party attendance and most other community support ac- tivities. I am sure they are do- ing the best they can. While growing our mem- bership remains difficult, I am pleased to report that due to the leadership of Pres- ident Tom Amundson, our hard-working board of direc- tors and a club membership that gets it, the state of the Red Bluff Rotary Club is posi- tive indeed. Our membership decline appears to have bot- tomed out. Our current roster exceeds 80, and continues to grow on a monthly basis. Most importantly this "old man's club" consistently puts its time and its money where its mouth is. During calendar year 2015, club members do- nated over 2,000 man hours and raised nearly $70,000 in support of such activities as Super Bowl pancake break- fast; 4-H Project Judging project; Valentine's Day din- ner fundraiser; SERRF Dem- onstration dinner; Develop- mentally Disabled holiday dinner; 3rd Grade Diction- ary project; Kelly Griggs sup- port; Sober Graduation; Lit- tle League sponsorship; Boy Scout sponsorship; Hallow- een children's program; Stu- dent of the Month; Interna- tional Student visitation pro- gram; Young Farmer of the year; Camp Venture; PETS; ALS Foundation; Tap into Te- hama sponsor; Tehama Con- cert Series sponsor; 8th Grade Career Day; County Fair Dem- onstration Day, Special Olym- pics track meet; 4-Way Test speech contest; Camp Royal Leadership Camp; Foster Chil- dren Christmas program; Tax Aide Preparation Program, State Theatre sponsor; West- ern Open Fiddle Contest; Tim Mercer Memorial; Fam- ily Counseling Center support; CHP Explorer sponsor; Las- sen Volcano Adventure Camp; Children's Library Project; Red Bluff Round-Up beer con- cession; Tough Enough to Wear Pink Bar-B-Q event and our Scholarship program for graduating high school se- niors. It is great to be a mem- ber of the Rotary Club of Red Bluff. BillCorneliusisalifelong resident of Red Bluff, a retired Chief Probation Officer, a champion of the State Theatre and an exceptional athlete. He can be reached at bill. cornelius@sbcglobal.net. WilliamTells RedBluff Rotary's history, impact Cartoonist's take Here's something you don't see in the winter much any- more: unsupervised kids sled- ding alone. I drove by a popular sled- ding spot af- ter it snowed last week. I only saw a handful of younger kids and every one of them had at least one adult keeping a watchful eye over him. When I was a kid in the '70s, about a million kids hit the sledding slopes every time the snow fell. Unlike today, when you see two or three adults chaperoning every one kid, there wasn't a single adult in sight. We were left free to exper- iment and invent. We made jumps and obstacle courses. Sure, about every 20 minutes, a kid would wipe out caus- ing his mittens, ear muffs and boots to fly in every direction, but, man, it was fun. We made new friends sled riding — I met my best friend that way and we're still good buds four decades later — but we also had to deal with bullies, such as one kid who caused me no small amount of grief. We had to learn to fend for ourselves, too. One Sun- day, after a fast run down the hill, I was picking up my to- boggan when a kid rammed his sled into my shins. I went posterior over tin cups, as he laughed heartily in his unusu- ally deep baritone voice. I spent the rest of that day with vengeance on my mind. Just after the kid jumped on his sled and took a run, I jumped onto my plastic tobog- gan just behind him. My goal was to hit him in the shins as he ended his run and got to his feet — but it would require perfect timing and I failed on the first several runs. As the day wore on, I tried to blend into the background. I shadowed that kid — trying not to reveal my fury as he mowed down one kid after an- other — looking for the per- fect opportunity to strike. Finally, as the sun began to fall, I saw my chance. Just as he finished a run and got on his feet, I hit him square in the shins, causing him to go posterior over tin cups. I could hear the air exit his lungs as his back hit the icy ground. I turned to watch him writhe in pain as my plastic bobsled continued on down the slope. I laughed the deepest bari- tone laugh that a normal kid — one who hadn't yet gone through puberty, anyhow — could muster. What I didn't know then, but know all too well now, is that life is full of bullies. They thrive in the workplace and they prey on people who are too timid to fight back. I learned at the age of 10 how to deal with bullies — I grew up a little bit more that day because my parents al- lowed me the freedom to do so. "When parents provide their kids with more respon- sibility, kids mature more quickly and I do think that they feel more accomplished," said Richard Gallagher, PhD, an associate professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at NYU in a WebMD article. They also earn self-esteem on their own. According to WebMD, "self- esteem comes from attempt- ing something that's a little difficult and either succeed- ing or failing and trying again until you do succeed." Bingo. My self-esteem soared that winter day more than 40 years ago when I knocked that kid posterior over tin cups af- ter he'd done likewise to me. Tom Purcell, author of "Misadventures of a 1970s Childhood" and "Comical Sense: A Lone Humorist Takes on a World Gone Nutty!" is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Send comments to Tom at Tom@ TomPurcell.com. Tom Purcell Why kids need to sled alone GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIAL BOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS Tom Purcell Bill Cornelius This has been the most dra- matic week in US/Iranian rela- tions since 1979. Last weekend ten US Navy personnel were caught in Ira- nian waters, as the Pentagon kept changing its story on how they got there. It could have been a disaster for President Obama's big gamble on diplo- macy over conflict with Iran. But after several rounds of tele- phone diplomacy between Sec- retary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif, the Iranian leadership — which we are told by the neo- cons is too irrational to even talk to — did a most rational thing: weighing the costs and benefits they decided it made more sense not to belabor the question of what an armed US Naval vessel was doing just miles from an Iranian military base. Instead of escalating, the Iranian government fed the sail- ors and sent them back to their base in Bahrain. Then on Saturday, the Irani- ans released four Iranian-Amer- icans from prison, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. On the US side, seven Iranians held in US prisons, in- cluding six who were dual cit- izens, were granted clemency. The seven were in prison for seeking to trade with Iran in vi- olation of the decades-old US economic sanctions. This mutual release came just hours before the United Nations certified that Iran had met its obligations under the nuclear treaty signed last summer and that, accordingly, US and in- ternational sanctions would be lifted against the country. How did the "irrational" Ira- nians celebrate being allowed back into the international com- munity? They immediately an- nounced a massive purchase of more than 100 passenger planes from the European Airbus com- pany, and that they would also purchase spare parts from Seat- tle-based Boeing. Events this week have dealt a harsh blow to Washington's neocons, who for decades have been warning against any en- gagement with Iran. These true isolationists were determined that only regime change and a puppet government in Teh- ran could produce peaceful rela- tions between the US and Iran. Proven wrong, however, we should not expect the neocons to apologize or even pause to re- flect on their failed ideology. In- stead, they will continue to call for new sanctions on any pre- text. They even found a way to complain about the release of the US sailors — they should have never been confronted in the first place even if they were in Iranian waters. And they even found a way to complain about the return of the four Iranian-Americans to their families and loved ones — the US should have never nego- tiated with the Iranians to coor- dinate the release of prisoners, they grumbled. It was a show of weakness to negotiate! Tell that to the families on both sides who can now enjoy the company of their loved ones once again! I have often said that the neo- cons' greatest fear is for peace to break out. Their well-paid jobs are dependent on conflict, sanctions, and pre-emptive war. Let's hope that this new open- ing with Iran will allow many other productive Americans to grow wealthy through trade and business ties. Let's hope many new productive jobs will be cre- ated on both sides. Peace is prosperous. Ron Paul is a former Congressman and Presidential candidate. He can be reached at VoicesofLiberty.com. RON PAUL When peace breaks out with Iran... OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Wednesday, January 20, 2016 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6