Our next meeting is Tuesday, July 17. The speaker will be our new District Governor, ROLLIE MANTHE. Since it is so early in the year, we can look forward to hearing about where we are going, not where we have been. That’s usually more exciting anyway. Most DGs schedule our club in midwinter because they know our roads are plowed and they can get home, or at least get a decent hotel room, if it snows. This year, ROLLIE is braver, and we’re at the head of the line. Hopefully that won’t get him in trouble next December or January.

At our last meeting, things started out quietly enough, as the TailTwister was not there and no one volunteered to take his place. New Pres. DON NEVIASER opened on schedule and, happily, OTTO FESTGE was present to lead the song. As is his practice on national holidays, he had us sing “God Bless America”, and with him to set the pitch we managed to do it. BOB BOHN can’t escape the invocation, but he did change his title to “Vicar” and got the job done. As usual, he needs invocators for future meetings. Please pick out a 1st or 3rd Tuesday in a future month and tell BOB you’ll do it. Your editor is not familiar with the ecclesiastical progression in the Anglican church, so it will be more difficult to get BOB promoted this year, but we have a source and we’re working on it.

Sight Conservation Chairman SCOTT GROVER is looking for an optical shop in the central city that would be willing to provide glasses for people we assist. Our present providers are near the East Towne and West Towne shopping centers, and thus not easy for central city residents who don’t have wheels to reach. If you know of someone downtown who might help, tell SCOTT. Better yet, recruit someone from such an establishment as a member. We used to have an optometrist on State St., and we need to find another one. There are a lot of small business owners down there that would make good members, if only we could contact them. Does anyone know anybody?

The current District Newsletter has information about the Birch-Sturm Golf Outing at Iola on July 28, the Sports Raffle For the Kids (Jodi has tickets), and the Lions Day At The Camp, which is in September this year. Read about them all at the Insider.

MICHELLE VETTERKIND will lead a Lion Birthday celebration at our next meeting. Those with service anniversaries are: WARREN RANDY, 39 years; JIM KEMMETER, 27 years; JIM SCHUTZ, 26 years; GREG MILLER, 26 years; MICHELLE VETTERKIND 15 years; and SAL AL-ASHKAR, 13 years. This is our opportunity to recognize them for the service they have given (and maybe win one of the gifts in the drawing.)

LINDA BERGREN introduced our speaker, Dr. Suresh Chandra from UW Health. He is founder and Chairman of the “Combat Blindness Foundation ”, and has been active in the fight against blindness for years. He gave us information on the dimensions of the problem - it is worst in Africa, where they have one ophthalmologist for every 1 million people. By contrast, India has one for every 100,000, and the US has one for every 3,000. There are roughly 45 million blind people in the world, and in half of them the cause is cataracts, which as your editor well knows are relatively easy to fix if you have a surgeon and an operating theater. Cost of the operation has been reduced to about $20 each in India and Africa.

Vitamin A deficiency is a leading cause of blindness in children and his Foundation is active in supplying nutritional information in developing countries. Supplements help, but aren’t sufficient by themselves in many cases - the individual must improve their general nutrition and health.

His foundation has been working with Lions Clubs in Africa, particularly in Nairobi, Kenya. There is an opportunity for our club to work directly with the Lions Club there, in support of programs for cataract surgery and Vitamin A supplementation. His foundation matches grants made to these projects, and it would be an opportunity for us to communicate directly with the Lions doing the work on the ground in Nairobi, and even to visit there to see for ourselves. Obviously, there is a lot still to be done.