President Rogo welcomed everyone to the warm and friendly Westwood Village Rotary and invited PP Peter More to lead us in the pledge.  The Invocation today was provided by our Board Director at large,  Brian Whitney and our songmeister, Paul Aslan, led us in "Take me out to ball game."

President Rogo started out by asking for input on the religious panel that Rev. John Woodall organized last week.  After extolling the virtues of pluralism and religious tolerance in our society, he proceeded to tell the following joke;  "There were four men sitting down together for lunch, talking about their wealth and gains in life. The Christian man ended by saying "I'm wealthy enough now that I think I'm going to buy Yahoo."  The Protestant man chimed in by saying "I too have built up wealth and think I will buy US Steel."  Not to be outdone, the Moslem chips in and states, "I will buy General NBC".  They all three look at the fourth man, a smallish and meek little Jewish man, who was looking down at his coffee, carefully stirring it with his spoon, AND replied, "I'm not selling!'

Visiting Rotarians were Frank Rodriguez from the LA/Columbo Club founded in 2007, and Alice Muntean from the Woodland Hills Rotary club.  Other special guests included Holly Lawrence who our International Avenue of Service Chair, Marsha Hunt, introduced.  Holly moved from NY and she and Marsh met while volunteering at Habitat For Humanity. She is a Marketing consultant.

Three of us were fined for not wearing pins!

• President Rogo held a Health and Welfare moment for Sunny Friedman and Connie Baker.  
• Bill Goodwyn shared dinner with your Ex sign ups are now up again online - Please sign up!  
• Zachary Brandler shared about the young professionals strategy meeting scheduled on Oct 9th at Toms Barron's home.  
• Uncle Leo made an announcement about the upcoming San Francisco trip and suggested those interested look into the 21-day in advance reservation.

Phil Gabriel introduced Ron Ziedler to discuss Bartering.  Ron is originally from Israel, went to University High, USC, and Tufts dental school. He is a single dad with four girls so he has utilized the barter system for many things to benefit their schools and lifestyle with travel, etc.  Bartering is defined as a system of exchange without using money by trading goods and services. Einstein even said, "If I had my life over again, I would elect to be a trader of goods rather than a student of science.  I think barter is a noble thing." When Ron entered dental school he was very ambitious to serve humanity but unfortunately learned saving the world is complicated and was introduced to bartering.  Modern day Bartering started with travel cruises and marketing.  Ron provided as an example $1,000 barter dollars for dental services can save you cash, bring you a whole different level of clients to fill holes in your business, and you can use barter dollars for marketing to bring in actual cash. Barter dollars allows you to splurge and can be used for every day things such as dry cleaning, auto repair, music lessons, and creates relationships.

We have info to share if you would like more info but here are two websites as well, www.acxtrade.com and www.itex.com 

Our own Curtis Smith introduced Jack Knight from Operation Gratitude. He is a Vietnam vet, an actor in LA Confidential, and many many other shows we have seen and shared.  He just recently received a residual check for a whopping $.30!  What they do for our troops overseas;

Operation Gratitude started in a living room and with the help of friends has now grown to a 501(c)3 The organization handles $50M in goods and sends 100,000 packages with 40 different items including letters :) In six weeks after 10 1/2 years  they will send their 1,000,000th package and will be sent on Pearl Harbor day from office in Encino.  Jack talked about the 242,000 lbs of candy from dentists donating back candy.  Jack broke down the costs to about $15/box x 100,000 = lots of $ Plus tape, etc and asked if our  club would consider writing a letter to a soldier to include in their packages? Jack write and sang a song to say thank you to servicemen "every time you put your uniform on, you're a hero...."

Next packing date is on their website www.operationgratitude.org10/12/2013 at the CA Army National Guard Armory, in Van Nuys onOct. 12 and Jack will be there!

Marsha Hunt introduced our speakers for the Rotary International Humanitarian trip to Columbia. Sadly no one in attendance today has attended a trip! Alice is Romanian and her Rotary moment was when she was invited to Brazil.  She presented info on Medellin, the host city in Colombia showing Caribbean fashion, The city of eternal spring because of the nice weather.  It's a very innovative city with public transportation and also the 9 projects scheduled are projected to require $500K  in contributions.  The plan is to work during the day, party at night, less than 50 seats available and applications are due byOct 15 so hurry!  President Rogo thanked the District representatives, and presented his own check and application to join on the trip in March of 2014.

The bell was rung and the meeting adjourned!