Reflections – Leonard Sullivan
Rotary Reflections By Leonard E. Sullivan Shoe repair A man working in a men’s clothing store told me recently that he had never had a pair of shoes half-soled or repaired. This was difficult for me to grasp. There was a time when everyone had their shoes and boots repaired. If you wore only one […]
The Will to Survive – Ron Page
“The Will to Survive” By Ron Page The soil in my home area of northern Illinois is black silt loam of glacial origin. The terrain is flat as a pool table and trees are seen only in farmyards. In the middle part of the twentieth century, we tilled the soil with mouldboard plows that cut […]
How Safe Do You Feel?
-Paul Moore OK, I’ll admit it. I do Facebook. Having lived in 9 places during my career, plus 3 before and one since, I have scattered friends like breadcrumbs, from New York to California. I must admit, I sometimes wish my life were more like some of yours. You’ve lived in Central Oklahoma all your […]
The Active in Activation
-Mike Knopp January 16, 2016 marked the 10th anniversary of the Chesapeake Boathouse, the facility that helped inspire a new attitude about the river that runs through our great city as well the availability of amenities that influence our urban active outdoor culture. The occasion was marked not by a cocktail reception in the warmth […]
Meaning of Community
-Leonard Sullivan Before Yellow Pages, Angie’s List and rental stores, neighbors depended on each other. If your automobile wouldn’t start, you summoned a neighbor that knew what to do. He could check the spark, the fuel flow, and either get it started or tell you what you needed to get it running. There was one […]
An Assignment to Afghanistan
-Dick Hefton I’ll bet you think this is a lesson on current conditions in the war zones in the Middle East. And it’s a pretty safe bet many probably never heard of Afghanistan before 9/11, or maybe in the ‘70s when the Soviet Union invaded – and to the Free World’s delight – got mired […]
Rotary Reflections
– Larry Edwards Friday the thirteenth was indeed tragic for several hundred people living in Paris. While what follows is not perhaps the uplifting message typically found in this column, I feel burdened to share some thoughts on the most recent, but sadly not the most outrageous act of terrorism. Almost all of us can tell you exactly where we […]
How to Diversity Oklahoma’s Economy
Bart Binning, Ed.D. My original plan was that this article would be a second part to my “Foundations of Democracy” series. However,things happen… Specifically, I scheduled October speakers for the Club 29 Thursday Breakfast Makeup meeting; my October 30th speaker failed to appear. As a last minute topic we had a special form of “Table Talk” – we recapped the month’s topic, which […]
Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again
-Michael Whittington Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again. This simple, but profound, phrase is attributed to Siddartha Guatama, who was born in India around 500 BCE and later became known as the Buddha, or the “Enlightened One.” It’s a powerful metaphor for the importance of […]
Disruption
– Larry Stone “Disruption is not about what happens to you. It is about how you react to what happens to you.” – Jay Sammit From its start, Rotary has served as a vector for “disruption,” a disturbance that interrupts a standard event or process. While we often think of disruption in negative terms, it […]
Oklahoma City – Confident, Enthusiastic, and Productive
– Ron Page Economics is not something I’ve studied, and, for that matter, it is not something I even begin to understand. But they tell me that somehow, when people are productive and no king or abusive central government takes an unfair share, prosperity emerges. So far, no one has been able to explain to […]
Reflections – Mike O’Neal
Seeking the Better Way Though there are many divisive issues and personalities in our country, I believe most thinking Americans agree that there is something missing, something lost in civil society—that we are somehow losing the glue that holds us together. Unfortunately, the thought leaders in our culture—locally, regionally, or nationally–are not seeking […]