Minutes of Meeting
Durango High Noon Rotary
April 29, 2004

Chessa Gill invoked the universal power to focus on thoughts upon our many blessings and led us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Chessa extended hearty appreciation to Susan Sanders for  hosting a wonderful Fireside Chat/wine tasting in her home last Saturday.

Guest were introduced: visiting Rotarian Mark Barendt from the morning club, and Mark Donahue, Jean Walter, Tyler Silvernail and Marge Pozo-Alonso.

Pam Moore took a head count for the upcoming workday at Durango Nature Study.

Dan Morganstern announced Habitat for Humanity's ambitious plans: seven townhomes under way on Florida Road with four to be completed this year.

Frank and Angie soliticted volunteers for the Durango Motor Expo and circulated sign up sheets.  Our activity support of this event is compulsory; this event is undertaken in lieu of our Mexican Food Fiesta during this time of year.  The event occurs over Memorial Day weekend, May 28 - 31.

Charlie Albert announced the schedule for the Wheelchair Foundation event in Mexico City, leaving July 13 and returning July 18, via flights from Albuquerque to Mexico City.

A "Thank you" note was read from a local 4-H club.

Our 112th member was inducted: Mark Donohue, a 58-year-old, retired real estate salesman transplanted from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with an impressive track record of service and fund raising for United Way and YMCA.  Mark now yearns to enhance his retirement by focusing his considerable experience and energy for the betterment of Durango and Rotary.

Red badges graduating to blue were Manuel Pozo-Alonso and John Windsor.

Manuel Pozo-Alonso raised the bar with his presentation of "This Is My Life" in slide show format.  We learned and saw vividly illustrated this gentleman's love and devotion to song, dance, family, wife and children, and his adopted country.  A native of Spain, Manuel studied three years to be a priest,  spent two years and visited 20 countries with Up With People and met his wife who he married in 1984.  He became a US citizen and joined the US Navy in 1990.  While in service, Manuel toured in Japan, worked in medical clinics, obtained training in dentistry and orthodontics.  Manuel continues to serve in the Navy reserves as a Commander and recently toured in Ecuador on a humanitarian mission with the reserves.  Manuel moved to Durango in 2002 and has established a private orthodontics practice.  In five minutes, Manuel shared his compassionate and exemplary life with the aid of pictures to add meaning and "put faces" upon his words.

Our guest speaker Judith Reynolds explained a fascinating slice of Southwestern history with the story of the first scientific excavations of Mesa Verde by the Swede Gustaf Nordenskiold.  Gustaf spent the summer of 1891 studying Mesa Verde's ruins.  Controversy arouse when Gustaf's collections reached Durango via railroad.  Local authorities impounded his artifact collection and arrested him upon the only charge that could be cooked up: trespass by a foreigner upon Indian reservation land under an antiquated 1834 law.  No laws prevented excavation or transportation of artifacts out of the country: the gravamen of local antipathy against Gustaf.  The episode expanded into an international incident and contending factions lobbying the U.S. Attorney General and Secretary of the Department of the Interior.  Cooler heads prevailed and the charges were dropped. Congress eventually filled the legal void exposed by the incident with the adoption of the Antiquities Act in 1906.  Gustaf's collection enjoys to this day excellent treatment, nay even superior to the treatment America itself has given Mesa Verde National Park's own collection of artifacts.  Gustaf's collection resides in Finland's Ethnograpic Museum and is the largest collection outside the United States.  Before his death from tuberculosis at age 26, Gustaf published the first, and still a highly regarded, scientific study of Mesa Verde and Anasazi culture as a result of his field work, leaving the world to wonder what other contributions might have been forthcoming from his precocious mind

Terry Price, reporting