Richard, Aurora, Narina and I went marshalling last Sunday. The weather was poor: windy, overcast, and there were showers for a time. It was not exactly my best way of spending a Sunday morning. It didn’t take me long to question the reason for me being there. As I was a cycling marshal (stoping traffic entering the path of athletes), I had plenty of time to think about those things. I recall a comment by one member last year: “We only get $50 for a few hours on Sunday morning; I’d rather pay $50 to the club and stay in bed!” I can certainly sympathise with this sentiment but I did it anyway – sucker for punishment, perhaps.
But then it dawned on me – The $50 (sometimes less) is not the same as a person doing the job. The organisers can have all the money in the world and still have a failed event because of a lack of volunteers. Our role as volunteer marshals does make a real difference to the success of the event. So that makes it community service, right? No, not quite. It would be community service if was for a community purpose. “Hmmm”, I thought, and checked the organisers of the triathalon events, SuperSprint Events Pty Ltd's website. As far as I can tell, it is a commercial enterprise. So arguably, we are just providing cheap labour to them so they can make a profit. On the other hand, Sunday’s event attracted 5,200 athletes. Surely, that has some community service value! Consider how many people will be affected if no one did marshalling next year. I think the jury is still out about whether the marshalling will count as community service. Perhaps the answer is up to each of us. At the end of the day, the real question is: are we prepared to get up early Sunday morning for the club. Perhaps there are other easier ways to raise funds and or do community service? What do you think?

Yours in Rotary,
Gabe

Thanks to Gabe for excellent scribe notes!

We had very good attendance at this meeting. It started with President Gabe’s annoucements including the RC Central-Melbourne Sunrise’s Hypothetical, call for old spectacle frames for the LEHP, the Soccer Camp, and a reminder for a special meeting next week (10 March), with Chris Trueman as speaker on the Xanana Vocational Education Trust. We also had an interesting sergeant’s session with a lot of excitement. This was followed by Chris’s members moment about somewhere off Tasmania no one has heard of, except Rhys, who’s actually been there. The Island is called Maria Island, near Port Arthur. We were told it’s an island that used to be a prison in the 1800s but was abandoned because prisoners were escaping and swimming back to Tassie. After a short stint as farm land, it was eventually developed by Diego Bernacchi, a silk merchant who used it for manufacturing and tourism with a vision of it becoming a resort. Unfortunately, the economic climate at the time was much like it is now and the banks forced the businessman to abandon the project. Chris talked about how beautiful the Island is.  (See: Tasmania/Maria-Island)

Our guest speaker, Erich Fackert, principle conductor, soloist/tenor and Board Member of The Melbourne City Opera was a most entertaining speaker. Our chairperson Inspector G gave a great introduction to Erich, outlining his distinguished career to date. Erich gave a brief but comprehensive introduction to a conductor’s role and the skills required for the job. Most importantly, he gave an insight into the mindset required of a successful conductor. He mentioned the use of not only the conductors hands, and body language but also facial expressions to draw out the emotional responses of the musicials and/or singers to make it a special performance – everytime. A conductor must have been in the roles he/she is conducting so that he/she is aware of the challenges of those roles and can more effectively direct the musicians. The music almost plays second fiddle to the emotions that are conveyed in every performance. It was a most interesting presentation, despite having no visual aids and running overtime, members were still flooding Erich with questions. President Gabe’s 2 thoughts this week was too tricky – but there is always next week.

Please find more information on Erich's website.