RadioRotary

In a live show at Millbrook Rotary RadioRotary interviews George Ouimet, this year’s president of the Millbrook High Interact Club, and Luisa Pereira, this year’s incoming Youth Exchange (YEX) student to Millbrook Rotary. Ouimet describes recent projects of Interact, including two canned food drives, two recent blood drives, the Purple Pinkie Project, and the Scott Meyer Memorial 5K Run. George joined Interact in his sophomore year because he wanted to give back to his community. Luisa Pereira competed with 180 other students to become a YEX representative from Brazil. Being a YEX student and living with three families in the Millbrook School District for a whole school year is not the entire exchange experience. She has traveled to Vermont, Connecticut, and New Jersey, and visited New York City several times. Luisa strongly recommends the YEX experience—the best year of her life so far.

RadioRotary is visited by Newburgh Rotarians Allie Sacks, Bob McCury, and Debbie Johnson on the occasion of the ninth annual “Taste of Greater Newburgh” festival of food, drink, music, automobiles, and art. Local restaurants and other food and drink suppliers form the foundation of this annual fundraiser, but a local band supplies music and in 2016 the festival featured both an automobile show and works by local artists. The money raised by the event is used by Newburgh Rotary to help fund fifteen community nonprofits, including the Salvation Army, services for senior citizens, and Peace Poles, physical reminders of the important Rotary goal of peace throughout the world.

RadioRotary interviews Kingston Rotarians Donna Miller and Georgiana Pangborn about the 100th anniversary of their club, the oldest Rotary club in the Hudson Valley. Rotary was only eleven years old itself when the Kingston Club was chartered by the Association of Rotary Clubs (which became Rotary International six years later). By then Rotary was active in Great Britain, Canada, and had its first non-English-speaking club in Havana, Cuba. The Kingston Rotary also became one of the first to admit women as members, beginning with Nuise Bhityakul and two other women in February 1988. Nuise is still an active member and brings many benefits from her association with Thailand to the club. Kingston Rotary meets each week for lunch, but for those who cannot attend a lunch, the Kingston Sunrise Club meets weekly for breakfast.

Once again RadioRotary travels to the Red Hook Rotary Club for a live broadcast from the Bread and Bottle Bakery and Wine Bar. Red Hook Rotary for the past fifteen years has been the sponsor of the great spring festival, Apple Blossom Day, which has taken place in the village for over thirty years. Co-hosts Jonah Triebwasser and Sara O’Connell interview Red Hook Rotary president (and hot-dog cook) Susan Simon along with chair of this year’s Apple Blossom Day Dave Wright about the event that features music, dance, food, and crafts. An addition to the event this year is the Red Hook Film Festival. Robert George, producer of the Film Festival is on hand to tell about the showings, culled from about 700 short-film entries, with one full-length production on the Rhinebeck Aerodrome a special feature this year.

Millbrook Rotary hosted a broadcast of RadioRotary with guests Steve Pressman, Executive Director of the Mid-Hudson Addiction Recovery Centers, Inc. (MARC) and Laurie Quinn (Philmont Rotary Club), a director of the MARC Foundation. A main problem facing MARC and the entire nation is the heroin and opiate epidemic. Currently in the United States 129 persons each day die from a heroin or opiate overdose. MARC is a residential program that both sends persons with addiction to other appropriate facilities as needed and houses and treats the addicted in several ways—A Crisis Center, three residential treatment centers, and nearly 30 sober housing apartments. Ms. Quinn is trying to help erase the stigma of drug addiction by shining a light on the problem. She tells the story of her son Eric: About a year ago he showed his mother needle tracks on his arms and said he needed help. At that point, despite holding down two jobs, he was using ten bags of heroin daily.

Crystal Snow-Hebel is one of the co-founders of Faith House (Linda Arzu is the other), a proposed maternity home for 18- to 24-year old girls and their newborn children. This would be a refuge for girls who otherwise would be homeless, in abusive relationships, or living in poverty. The idea is to provide for spiritual and emotional needs in a real family environment. Many volunteers are already working on this project, which is still in a fundraising stage. In addition to providing parenting skills, there would also be prenatal care and skills and educational development for when the girl and her child re-enters society.

RadioRotary interviews Patterson Rotarian Mike Ingber about his club’s exciting fundraiser, Men Who Cook. Ingber is not only one of the organizers for the 20th installment of the popular event, but also one of the cooks, specializing in smoked salmon or ribs. This edition of Men Who Cook honors the Honorable James Reitz, judge of the family court in Carmel, NY, and of a drug court that helps addicts become rehabilitated rather than prisoners. Men Who Cook has about 15 professional chefs from local restaurants and about the same number of amateur foodies who man stations at the Star Ridge Banquet Center in Brewster. For a $70 entrance fee, you can patronize all of the stations featuring a variety of ethnic foods and American classics—but bring your own drinks and stemware. Everything else for a grand meal is provided. Patterson Rotarian Rich Parente, Owner/chef of the Clocktower Grill does a whole hog, which is spectacular.

Broadcasting from the Red Hook Rotary meeting, the RadioRotary cohosts interview Kimberly McGrath, Executive Editor of the Red Hook Area Chamber of Commerce. The Red Hook Area Chamber has more than 280 active members representing 170 businesses and is still growing. Primarily it acts to promote local businesses with its weekly newsletter and to help local business persons meet and get to know each other, the latter with breakfasts or mixers every month. The Chamber also has several annual events: the Summer Camp Fair to help parents and children find the summer camp that fits best; a golf tournament in cooperation with the Rhinebeck Chamber that is a fundraiser; the Community Arts Network (CAN) to promote every form of art in the Red Hook Area; and, in cooperation with other local organizations, the annual Chocolate Festival.

Rhinebeck Rotarian Bob Phillips, along with 23 other Rotarians from around the United States (and some from Canada and the United Kingdom) went to Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa in the summer of 2015—mission, prevent polio. As he told the RadioRotary co-hosts, the ten-day trip was the most memorable experience of his life, from the West African Fair to actually administering the two drops of polio vaccine to infants under five years old, the target group. Of course, this was part of Rotary’s PolioPlus project, which since 1988 has worked with UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and the CDC to eradicate the disease, which was causing a thousand cases a week when they started. As a result of this effort, there were only 70 instances in all in 2015, all of them in Pakistan and Afghanistan, with the disease essentially eliminated from the rest of the world.

Pleasant Valley Rotarian, registered nurse, and RadioRotary producer Kathy Kruger is on the other side of the microphone as co-hosts Jonah Triebwasser and Sarah O’Connell interview her about the Rotaplast program to correct cleft lip or palate, burn scarring, and other deformities. Cleft lip or palate causes many health problems as well as affecting speech, impairing ability to eat, and causing social rejection. Kruger has personal experience with the program as a participant in a mission to the Philippines but she also has been the principal representative from Rotaplast to District 7210. A typical Rotaplast team of about 15 medical professionals and 15 nonmedical volunteers, often Rotarians, travels to a locations where few facilities exist for repair of these defects, then over a couple of weeks treats hundreds of patients, mostly children but some adults as well.

Michael Christophides, Chief Inspector and Laboratory Director of Granit Inspection Group, joins co-host Sarah O’Connell and guest co-host and physicist David Kruger to describe the hazards of the gas radon, which can accumulate in buildings or in well water. Radon is an odorless radioactive gas that is released from rocks of all kinds, but especially from granite or dark shales found in the Hudson Valley. Radon in the air is the second leading cause of lung cancer (and adds to the risk of cancer in smokers), while radon in water can increase the risk of stomach cancer and may also be released into the air. Testing is the only way that you can tell whether or not radon is present in dangerous levels. Mr. Christophides recommends testing every two years, since levels can change based on seismic activity, changes in structures, or other factors. If a test reveals excess radon, remediation usually consists of suctioning air away before it can enter the house.

RadioRotary interviews Maggie Kwet, the Aging Information Services Specialist at the Dutchess County Office of the Aging, on the many services provided for seniors in the County, which deal with health, the law, transportation, home care, food, energy and heating, grandparenting, and more. The Office of the Aging (845-486-2555) conducts group and individual help with Medicare. It offers programs to improve movement and health for seniors such as “A Matter of Balance” and regular exercise groups. Legal services include living wills, health-care proxies, and advice on bankruptcies. Nearly every problem confronting a senior has a friendly staffer of the Office for the Aging ready to help solve.

RadioRotary interviews Kayo Iwama, Associate Director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at Bard College, about music education at the college and the performances open to the public. Bard has an unusual undergraduate degree program in music because each student must also obtain a degree in another subject, such as mathematics or political science. The Graduate Vocal Arts Program owes its existence to the renowned soprano Dawn Upshaw, who developed and directs it. Performances by students, faculty, and guest artists occur throughout the year at Bard, some of them free and many at the famed Fisher Center designed by Frank Gehry. Every two years, the Vocal Arts Program mounts an opera for the public, complete with a full orchestra accompaniment. Bard actually hosts three orchestras, including the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein.

Rotary Foundation's motto of “Doing Good in the World” is the subject of this show.

Rhinebeck Rotarian Lou Trapani, Artistic and Managing Director of The Center for the Performing Arts at Rhinebeck, returns to RadioRotary to discuss some of the upcoming performances at the big red barn on Route 308. Also in the interview, Mr. Trapani describes the education program at the Center, which includes a touring company that performs The Wizard of Oz, Rip Van Winkle, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow at local schools. These fit will with the Center’s theme for 2016, which is “All-Americana,” featuring plays by American authors such as Kaufman and Hart, Tony Kushner, and Arthur Laurents. Among the unusual attractions will be a new opera (Godfather Death) and pairing the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival’s Romeo and Juliet with West Side Story.