Our June 20th lunch meeting at Seascape had 23 attendees in person, none on zoom.
President elect Nelson couldn’t regale us with his tales of adventure from the Rotary international conference in Singapore because he was too sick to attend.
None of our musicians were there, no was Kelly presents to lead us in a cappella
Dr. Art’s thought for the day: think of how stupid the average person is, then we realize that half the population is stupider than that.
That certainly seems to explain a lot about politics
Rich told a funny joke involving the presents were absence of women’s undergarments. Decorum precludes further details, but not sure how much more can be done since our attendees included two of our high school scholarship winners.
Lowry quipped
“And welcome high school students.”
Our scholarship recipients included Mia, who will be attending UCSC- major undeclared; and Jack, who will be majoring in engineering at Colorado State
Trish announced the RYLA Scott’s valley bbq next Thursday
The July 4th sign up sheet for our beer and wine booth was circulated and there are still some spaces.
For the newbies, and folks who haven’t gone yet – the event is a lot of fun and raises a lot of money for our charities.
Several thousand people attend the event and everyone is in good spirits, especially after visiting our alcohol booth.
Our guest speakers were Ken Docter and Ashley Hammer from the online news outlet LookOut Santa Cruz
Ken is the founder and managing editor, Ashley is the marketing Director.
Ken is a career journalist and is an active supporter of social causes and community involvement of the media
Ashley has overseen the remarkable growth of the outlet; she is also local, a UCSC basketball star and Athlete of the year
Ken said the overall goal of LookOut Santa Cruz is reviving a robust trustworthy news source that also provides community service
LookOut Santa Cruz won a Pulitzer for coverage of the winter storms- the Nobel prize of journalism.
In addition to the daily newsletter it has a weekly newsletter.
There are also 25,000 instagram readers.
Memberships are for sale.
The office is by the Santa Cruz bookstore. They have their Pulitzer Prize wall outside; check it out.
Ken echoed what many of us have seen: that print news is failing and its quality has been compromised by the takeover by corporations and hedge funds who value the bottom line over the provisos of reliable information. Local print news has been devastated nationwide
LookOut Santa Cruz sponsors a number of charities and non-profits.
They are starting another LookOut in Eugene Oregon.
Their news coverage focuses on election events and local issues including pesticides near schools; Jail overcrowding ; opioid deaths; homelessness and the unaffordability of living here.
They are starting neighborhood briefs which provide work and delays on local highways, crime and community events.
They also have crosswords and opinion columns.
They support non profits by a program called Accelerate. Lowry pointed out that we used accelerate for our fundraising for the park.
Our next meeting is noon at Seascape.
Best wishes to Nelson for a speedy recovery!
