From the President’s desk

17 October  2018
 

Hi all

So Pleasant
Last Wednesday, 10 October, was our second week back at Strathfield Golf Club. Should I say the new golf club -- the food and good company are wonderful. Our Club continues to be moving full of activities and life.

Pride of Workmanship
Importantly our next event is the Pride of Workmanship, with Nick pulling the event together. A Pride of Work event requires nominees. There are people we have daily contact with who give a little extra above our expectations. It can be welcoming conversation, to me at the paper shop I am warmly greeted, to be told the paper has been sold out, “OK, I have not read the one from yesterday…”. Of importance, is the proprietor will help and give assistance when asked, also the same to others who come into the shop. I am sure our family and friends tell us of their good local experiences, let Nick and his team know. This event hopefully, as it was last year, included larger employers, opening up our Club beyond the local shops and schools.

Graffiti Removal Day
Graffiti Removal Day is this weekend. I have asked Nick to represent the Club, at the launching of the event at State Parliament House on Tuesday 14 October. Peter Smith declined the invitation to drive our Graffiti removal ute up and around Macquarie Street. All that signage wasted! It would have been cool, Smithy!
The success of graffiti removal in our community and the promotion such as this event, is in my view due to the enthusiasm and efforts of Peter, his team, and other Rotary Clubs, over a number of years. Thank you, Peter.

Last week's meeting
Last meeting the 3rd Raffle Prize was 2 tickets to the Russian Film Festival. This brought comment from the back of the room, from Raymond, asking for a piece of Dostoyevsky. I picked up the offer, and have added a text from “The Gambler”. I have not read a lot of Dostoyevsky, it is heavy reading, but I have read this short story. The extract, while written in the 1870’s is not lost in today’s Sydney.

A final comment, the 1st Prize in the raffle was a bottle of Black Label whisky, thank you Dimitri. The takings were a record at $300. My wife thought it was due to having tickets to the Russian Film Festival as a prize! Appears we are going in early November, having won an earlier raffle at another gig!

literature quote from: The Gambler ( Chapter 2) by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821 -1881)

“The gentlemen gambler …………, he must do this simply for the love of the game itself--simply for sport, simply in order to observe the process of winning or of losing, and, above all things, as a man who remains quite uninterested in the possibility of his issuing a winner. If he wins, he will be at liberty, perhaps, to give vent to a laugh, or to pass a remark on the circumstance to a bystander, or to stake again, or to double his stake; but, even this he must do solely out of curiosity, and for the pleasure of watching the play of chances and of calculations, and not because of any vulgar desire to win. In a word, he must look upon the gaming-table, upon roulette, and upon trente et quarante, as mere relaxations which have been arranged solely for his amusement. Of the existence of the lures and gains upon which the bank is founded and maintained he must profess to have not an inkling. Best of all, he ought to imagine his fellow-gamblers and the rest of the mob which stands trembling over a coin to be equally rich and gentlemanly with himself, and playing solely for recreation and pleasure. This complete ignorance of the realities, this innocent view of mankind, is what, in my opinion, constitutes the truly aristocratic.”

Charles