Scarlet and I are in Arizona overnight en route to Cabo for her Spring Break.

How come I never got to go to Cabo for a Spring Break?!

Ah well, better late than never.  

Perhaps there's a meat space club down there I can crash.  I'll keep you posted. 

Trying to get without first giving is as fruitless as trying to reap without having first sown.

It does not do to leap a 20 ft chasm in two ten foot jumps.

TWENTY ONE DAZE

Dressed up Thursday, 

Sixteenth century Henry- 

Obnoxtiously the 8th.

Ambiguous to ladies;

Instructional for students.

Created new website,

"artWORKS"-for humanities.

Up for award

"Innovator of Year

In the Classroom"

We will record

What happens next.

An interesting week-

Hide and seek.

Just three words

Fashions a rhythm

And a rhyme.

This is Joe.

Just little slow,

On a Sunday!

YOU NOW KNOW!!

Great idea, Mamie and Joe!

My week was busy with the usual business and home stuff. At work, I am the sales department for a young company that manufactures a complete buiklding system for very tight energy-efficient homes, offices, and high-rise buildings. Two new commercial projects came in the door with blueprints this week for pricing . Also partnered with a large company in Phoenix (2 hours away) that is going after the same commercial projects that I am. We will share leads and do some join sales calls and marketing.

At home, our big news is that we are about to start (finally!) building a new house. This will be very energy-efficient, and will get LEED certified. Beth and I are VERY excited about it. . . and we're working with a great builder who is also excited. I think we might start a blog about it or something. . .we'll see.

Catching up on desk work at home this weekend. Also, Beth and I sing in the Prescott Master Choral, and have a concert this afternoon at a local church. Singing the Rutter Requiem. I should be a wonderful concert. We hired a small orchestra to accompany us! The church has great acoustics, and hold about 300, so it will be fairly intimate.

All for now. I'm setting a reminder to update this weekly when I do the weekly program.

Have a wonderful week!!

Larry 

Larry Levenson
President Elect 2009-2010
Prescott, Arizona USA
===================

Back from Arizona.  Plenty of activities planned.  Lunch with a group from our old Rotary Club, we are the Monday Lunch  Bunch. Working with Patricia, my daughter-in-law on Shayla's 5th grade 'graduation" on Tueday.  Will also go and work with the Birds of Prey in the afternoon.  Posted a picture with a great horned owl. Her name is Eve.  Wednesday and Thursday are play days with granddaughter Linnea, 26 months, and a dynamo.  By Thursday night, it will be lights our early.  We also are having dinner with friends, to make up for all the time we are away.

I am eagarly awaiting a new Chemo Buddy.  It always feels like something is missing when a Buddy moves on. 

Hope you all have a great week. I love seeing waht eveyone is doing.

Carol Anderson

Read all of the above.

Larry

Larry Levenson
President Elect 2009-2010
Prescott, Arizona USA
===================

I had the opportunity to spent all day Saturday with the Rotary Club of Albuquerque, working on the Seed Festival, sponsored by the City of Albuquerque, The Bio Park and the Rotary Club.  Again I was playing with the kids.  We did wonderful art work with seeds and pods, and made bird feeders with pinecones, peanut butter and bird seed.  What fun and oh how messy.  A liitle sun burned and very tired , but it was a fun and rewarding day.

Carol Anderson

Last week was mostly work: grading final projects, final essays and late work by students; preparing materials for the 72-hour eMeeting of Rotary Global History Fellowship; and babysitting with our grandchildren, Erin, 8, and Matthew, 4. It takes at least several mindsets to exist in any real world: 1) a professor's mind which takes data and asks, "How did this student use it, create something interesting with it and learn from it?;" 2) a CEO-kind of mindset, being President of RGHF, where you must balance consistency of action with inventiveness of expression; and 3) a large-child's mind where we three children played hide and seek and sardines for most of Sunday afternoon. My daughter keeps on saying, "Dad, you are too old to try to hide in closets and lie down behind the bed. You have trouble getting up." And I keep on doing it because if I am to ask Erin and Matthew to play school with me, I must give them something in return. They do accept, now, "Grandpa is tired. Let me rest a moment."

Today, Monday, I used at least two of the mindsets to adjust to the YMCA (working out all the aches and pains, improving the tone of the muscles), working on a long newsletter to members of RGHF about our 72-hour board eMeeting (also coming up with something interesting to hold them as they read about jobs, goals, objectives and fulture plans- the consistent mind), and lastly the professional artist's mind who tried to figure how to reverse time and be young again. All that I could come up with in the latter attempt is to: eat backwards for an extended time(that is, steak, a potato, salad with blue cheese and several rolls for the beginning of the day, a normal lunch and then fruit, an apple, two breakfast rolls and a banana-my normal breakfast) for a night's meal. It was silly, I know, but that is what happens when you give a professional artist an impossible chore: he sinks into surrealism. What is surprising is that it makes a strange sense of how to live each week, each day,each year of our lives: a heavy, big meal to start the day, something simple for lunch and then a smaller, pick-me-up meal at the end of the day. It was interesting getting into the weekly eClub program and finding nothing there with my breakfast because anytime I find a void I fill it in with something that I create, inside or out.  

The working on the long newsletter, about five hours work, was a new pain in the chest muscles and my brain was foggy when I finished it. I needed a little silliness after being so intense and serious for such a sustained time. Some weeks are like that. Mental work that exhausts the body (as well as tires the mind) is an added burden for people like me who refuse to admit that the body (and mind) are aging. I look in the mirror and sometimes do not recognize the old face that shines back at me. Oh well, in a concrete way, c'est le vie. The alternative is still unthinkable. Like Mark Twain, I have enough vises that I can give up one or two when I get sick therefore I should live forever. As I told the members of Rotary Global History Fellowship in my newsletter, TO KNOW IS TO GROW.

Well, that is what I did this week? As Mamie asks, what did you do, inside or out? It is interesting that Carol works mostly "out" and a great deal of my time is spent "in." Of course, there is always INSIDE OUT.

Joe 

Sherry and I will be in Phoenix on the 6-8 of May. We were thinking of visiting the flag ship PF Chang's in Scottsdale for lettuce wraps and wine flights. Anyone else interested? Maybe the 7tj in the early evening, say 5:30 ish?

Sherry and I are on the right.

Jack  Selway, Founder & CEO of RGHF, Rotary Global History, Pueblo, CO, USA

After having my last Chemo Buddy Graduate, (completed chemo and is doing well), I received my new assignment.  She is a five year old battling cancer.  My work and volunteer time is largely spent with children, but this will be my first with a very sick little child and family. As I look at my very healthy children and grandchildren, it breaks my heart to know she is so ill.  I hope my prayers, letters, and gifts to her and her family help.

Carol Anderson

Fellow eRotarian Carol

You do much

Reaching out hands

To heal hearts

And allow children

A little magic

In their lives!

I am moved....

Joe, another eRotarian.

Wow, Carol! I am a Big Brother to a seventh-grader who has his problems and his family situations, but I can't imagine extending that to a little girl with cancer. You're a saint! Thank you for all the wonderful things you do!!

Larry 

Larry Levenson
President Elect 2009-2010
Prescott, Arizona USA
===================

This week was all about friends. People who can be trusted. People who like to "play" and participate. People who care.

The richness of my environment of friends is amazing to me. I was sitting at breakfast in a little cafe in Phoenix (I live in Prescott, AZ -- two hours away), and a friend walked up to me and asked me if I saw his email. I hadn't, so he verbally gave me a business lead that was interested in talking with me. Then my friend ran off to another meeting. 

A little later, I was meeting with three people at the same restaurant. I know one of them very well, and he brought the other two. I was kicking around a new business idea with them, looking for input. The next thing I know, one of my new "friends" said he'd like to quit his executive-level job and become the president of this new company!! Extraordinary!

In Prescott, it's not unusual to be walking down the street and run into people you know, either as friends or you just see them around from time to time. Saw several folks this week that I hadn't connected with in a long time.

A past business associate said, "Let's meet on a bench on the Courthouse Square after lunch" -- and sure enough, there he was, waiting for me. We found out what the other was doing now, talked about family, and he offered several ideas for summer employment for Liz, our daughter, who is majoring in International Business. Even offered to make a few phone calls on her behalf.

Friends. Sometimes I forget and take them for granted. Then I open my eyes and see how much we really contribute to each others' lives, and how blessed we are by our relationships. 

Larry 

Larry Levenson
President Elect 2009-2010
Prescott, Arizona USA
===================

^^Great post Larry.  Friends are key, and so often overlooked in the rush to be 'successful.'

Scarlet and I go to Jamaica Thursday.  Though I have traveled a great deal in the Carib, I've not been to Jamaica.  I did see 'Life and Debt' though and would recommend it to anyone interested in documentaries.  

I also saw 'Cool Runnings' which isn't a bad movie.  John Candy does a credible job and it's based on a true story.

Anyway, cool runnin's to you all, and to all a good week! 

Trying to get without first giving is as fruitless as trying to reap without having first sown.

It does not do to leap a 20 ft chasm in two ten foot jumps.

May 5-12:

It has been a trying week. Anne went in to MD Anderson Cancer Center last Monday for her routine yearly checkup and was told that she again had a mark on her lung (the same one that they cut the cancer totally out of in 2005.) We spent Thursday and Friday again at MD Anderson.

They are marvelous. By far, the best run organization that I have ever encountered: caring, professional, exceptional service, follow through and being on the cutting edge of research and treatment. When we first discovered that Anne has lung cancer (not confirmed but suspected) by our Waco doctor, we immediately moved to Houston so that she could have the best care that the world does offer. MD Anderson is like visiting the United Nations- all the rainbow colors of the world come here, all the cultures and all the languages (they have someone on staff- many- who speak the language that is needed to impliment service.) Of course, we also had grandchildren in Houston and were weighing the move before we actually moved here. All that was changed was our timetable. 

Anne talked to the doctors this Thursday, and had the biopsy on Friday (both days were all-day affairs.) We have a meeting with her primary MD Anderson doctor this Wednesday and will get the news of what comes next (or does not, which is what we hope.) We are concerned but not overly. It is early in any process like this (a very small spot) and we have been through it before. But it was a week of some stress and some concern. We will see. Of course, it has kept me away from the computer, all those emails (surprising how they pile up when the world is a neighbor) and all the work for Rotary Global History Fellowship (disaster relief and getting ready for the 72-hour May Board of Director's eMeeting) at the end of this month and the eClub (getting signage made for the booth at the LA Convention.) Today, I am trying to catch up but I am losing the battle. It will sort itself out- all of it. It always does.

It is surprising how just a simple thing like looking for a new dishwaster and stove on a Monday and taking the car in for repairs can be a joy-filled, welcomed, needed break from a routine that we did not expect. We put off a decision on those purchases until the end of the week (but paid for the repairs.) One of my favorite rules for living is: "Never make a decision until you absolutely must." It is surprising how the world makes some decisions for you. It goes along with one of my other rules: "First you shoot the arrows, and THEN YOU PAINT THE TARGETS." A third rule that was not possible this week is: "Whenever possible, always play on your home field and by your own rules."

Joe