• Paint the Town Red with Rotary Roses!
  Order your Rotary Roses now and for $14 you will receive 12 roses (wow!), 2 ferns and a packet of flower preservative. All proceeds-to the tune of $6.50 per sold bouquet--stay in our community are benefit our Ithaca Rotary Community Grant program. Please help support this very important Rotary fundraiser! Place your order by April 16, and all Rotary Roses will be delivered on April 23.

• Four Avenues of Service Citation awarded to George Gull
  Pres. Jean presented this RI award for George’s extraordinary service to Rotary. The award recognizes that the strength of the Rotary movement is founded on the service carried out by club members worldwide, and this citation personally recognizes George for his outstanding efforts in the Four Avenues of Service.
  
  Award recipients are Rotarians in good standing in their clubs who have consistently demonstrated their support of the Object of Rotary through participation in service activities in each of the avenues of club, vocational, community, and international service.
  
  Thank you, George, for all of your valuable efforts in our community and in our Club.

• This week the club gave a special recognition to all of our current Paul Harris Fellows. Each of the 85 Fellows wore a carnation to designate their wonderful financial contributions that they have made to the Rotary Foundation. On amazing fact is that over the life of the Ithaca Rotary Club, we have given over a half of a million dollars to the Rotary Foundation! Our annual goal is to send in about $15,000 to the fund.
  
  For more information on the Rotary Foundation and how a significant portion of the money is actually sent back to the donating club, read more at online.

• Rotarians in the News
  Pres. Jean congratulated Rotarian Cal Walker for his publication of an excellent op-ed piece in the Ithaca Journal on March 21 about the Village of Ithaca.

Brian Hall gave us an brief history of how he came about to write such an extensive work on the Lewis and Clark expedition, especially when he started out will very minimal familiarity with the subject! It turns out that there is a great deal of existing records about the famous journey, thanks to the fact that the daily journals of Lewis were saved and archived after they returned. These records allowed Brian to delve deep into the personal interactions between the two adventurers.

He noted that the majority of historical accounts on the expedition focus on how difficult and successful the entire mission, and approach the subject in a way that paints Lewis and Clark as typical bigger-than-life heroes. However, Brian came to realize—and was comforted by the fact—that Lewis and Clark were really just two guys; two humans who made the same mistakes we all do. So, the book focuses on the relationship between Lewis and Clark, which was one of a very unique, even a little odd, friendship.

About the Speaker: Brian Hall is an Ithaca-area writer who has written for travel magazines, for Time, the New Yorker, New York Times, and two previous books. His most recent novel about the characters of Lewis and Clark is currently available at the Bookery in Downtown Ithaca or online at Amazon.com.