Oriental Rotary Club

Dictionary Road
Last Friday Mr. Jim (Morris), Mr. Bob (Mininni) and Ms. Debbie (Iannitto) hit the road with the annual ORC dictionary delivery. 3rd grade students from Fred Anderson Elementary and Arapahaoe Charter took possession of their own dictionaries. The ORC is a proud sponsor of The Dictionary Project, a 501(c) (3) nonprofit organization. The goal of this program is to assist all students in completing the school year as good writers, active readers and creative thinkers by providing students with their own personal dictionary. The dictionaries are a gift to each student to use at school and at home for years to come. The Dictionary Project gives 95 cents of every dollar donated toward the purchase of dictionaries.

Mr. Jim enjoyed renewing friendships with the bambini whom he shared books and reading when the students were first graders. Mr. Bob wowed students with his knowledge and enunciation of complex chemical compounds. And Ms. Deb (former librarian) mesmerized the group with her analysis of the Table of Contents. The ORC trio and students thoroughly enjoyed the Dictionary Road Show.

Entrepreneurial Insight
In Step with Rotary’s Four Way test
John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, runs a company with $8 billion in sales and 280 stores. He started as a long-haired counterculture anticapitalist in the early 1970’s. At age 25 he was mugged by reality. “Once you start meeting a payroll you have a little different attitude about things…Most of the companies I most admire in the world I think have a deeper purpose…I think that business has a noble purpose…just like every other profession, business serves society. They produce goods and services that make people’s lives better…Whole Foods puts food on people’s tables and we improve people’s health…And we provide jobs.” Mr. Mackey does not collect a paycheck. “I’m an owner. I have the exact same motivation any shareholder would have in the Whole Foods Market because I’m not drawing a salary from the company. How much money does anybody need? If the business prospers, I prosper. If the business struggles, I struggle…I do think that it’s the responsibility of the leadership of an organization to constrain itself for the good of the organization.” (Wall Street Journal, 3-4 October)
Wordsmiths Unite
against Obnoxious Slang
Turns out most folks agree that the word “whatever” is like totally obnoxious and so not awesome… The popular slacker term of indifference was found “most annoying in conversation” by 47 percent of Americans surveyed in a Marist College poll released last Wednesday.
“Whatever” easily beat out “you know,” which especially grated a quarter of respondents. The other annoying contenders were “anyway” (at 7 percent), “it is what it is” (11 percent) and “at the end of the day” (2 percent).

“Whatever” — pronounced “WHAT’-ehv-errr” when exasperated — is an expression with staying power. Immortalized in song by Nirvana (“oh well, whatever, nevermind”) in 1991, popularized by the Valley girls in “Clueless” later that decade, it is still commonly used, often by younger people.
It can be an all-purpose argument-ender or a signal of apathy. And it can really be annoying. The poll found “whatever” to be consistently disliked by Americans regardless of their race, gender, age, income or where they live.