President – Elect Nelson is in Singapore for the Rotary international gathering.
Our May 23 lunch at Seascape had 16 folks in person, not sure if anyone one was on zoom because our AV crew wasn’t there.
President Lowry said that his debunking will be at the Bassi lakefront beach club and Marina, date and time to be determine UCSC has selected our Piatt fellow for 2024/2025, Diana Escalona.
Diana is currently in her fourth year of pursuing a Ph.D. in the department of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology. With the support of this fellowship, she aims to advance her research focused on the interplay between the innate immune system, inflammation, and long noncoding RNAs.
Dr. Art’s thought for the day:
If you can’t be good
Behave.
Nice to see Karen back from her trip to Europe, we are waiting for stories, adventures, YouTube videos
Detective Julia quizzed us on wine we did pretty well.
The study of wine is enology
Before it became the wine capital of the US, the main crop in Napa Valley was prunes.
Really? Those tens of thousands of acres were used for dried plums and now it’s for wine grapes? Who says the world is not a better place?
The Hungarians don't clink glasses because of the Austrian General Haynau who orchestrated the execution of 13 Hungarian martyrs and then celebrated by clinking beer mugs. If glasses accidentally clink, saying "Down with Haynau" honors the martyrs.
The lawyers were grateful for Julia‘s reference to the Hammurabic code which decreed that person who made false or poison wine would be drowned in a river. if it was fraudulent.
Fitting, and not the worst way to go?
But maybe a waste of wine. Drowned in prune juice might be more appropriate.
The phrase drink to your health comes from an era when apparently invitations to dinner could have lethal consequences. The host would drink the wine first to show that it wasn’t poison.
Your author is unclear on the spelling of the host who originated that tradition, but it sounds like
“ hey now!” Which was the title of a semi hit song that some of us are old enough to remember?
Our Speaker was Julia Feldman who runs the Conflict Resolution Center for Santa Cruz County. It’s a non-judicial organization that tries to resolve disputes in a number of areas without resorting to lawyers and the courts. It is endorsed by the judges, and those lawyers who are not bottom feeders.
There are similar organizations nationwide. The concept has its roots in the civil rights act.
Julia is a UCSC grad .She worked in Juvenile probation for about 20 years and has worked as a court appointed special advocate for kids in the juvenile justice system and so is very familiar with the court systems and the inherent difficulty of resolving disputes between family members and neighbors through the justice system which is by nature adversarial.
The conflict resolution program handles about 200 neighborhood cases per year, the mediation costs $150.
It also does workplace mediation, parents-teenager mediation, housing mediation and small claims mediation
Julia also spoke about the victim/offender dialogue program and victim awareness education class
There is also a program called Let’s Talk About it in Scotts Valley where people can walk in and start a conversation to try to resolve issues. Julia says it is very helpful in these polarizing times.
Julia won the raffle.
There is no lunch meeting this week though there is a club foundation board meeting.