Granite Chips Feb. 19

President Bill opened the meeting with 11 members and 2 guests present.

A rather quiet gathering through lunch (lasagna and salad) until Jack stood to offer a happy dollar for his brother, a Marine veteran who was exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam and recently required a liver transplant.  Jack said the transplant was successful and that on the same day as his operation, his brother became a grandfather for the first time.   

Ted stood to offer a happy dollar on the return to the club of snowbird Ron Parnigoni (who looked suspiciously like Tom Babic).   Ron/Tom said the weather in Florida has been great and he was "happy to be back".  President Bill asked Ron/Tom for an update on planning for this year's Rotary Breakfast, to which Ron/Tom replied "it's in July". 

Secretary Sue gave her report, introducing two guests, visiting Rutland Rotarian Catherine Nelson (last week's program, the CEO of the Times-Argus and Rutland Herald) and her son Zach, also a Times-Argus employee, who was presented with an application for membership by Karl.

Today's program was presented by Dr. Carl Brandon, a professor for 37-years at VT Technical College in Randolph. Contrary to the old saying "this isn't rocket science", today's program actually WAS rocket science, having to do with CubeSat, small satellites that VTC is launching into space piggybacked on commercial payloads.  Your writer must confess that I'm at a total loss in trying to summarize Dr. Brandon's presentation, other than to say it was very interesting.   However it was about 3 college degrees above my level of understanding, so today's Chips will be abbreviated.

Dr. Brandon pulled the winning ticket, belonging to PP Jim Catone.  Ted managed to find new marbles to replace those we lost, but no word on whether Jim pulled the white one or not.

Next week's program will be long-time Barre attorney Rusty Valsiangiacomo talking about his career in law here in Barre.