Please visit our new website at www.hillcrestlions.com
Science Fair Wednesday, March 26th 2014, volunteer members attended and judged the best sight/hearing-related projects from the San Diego County Science and Engineering Fair competition. The club also presents the winners (relating to sight or hearing) of both the Junior and the Senior divisions with a plaque and cash prize. Division winners are invited to present at a weekly club meeting.
As usual our faith in the younger generation was renewed after judging at the Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair this year. Unfortunately, we usually only read about the misfits in the paper.
Our Junior Winner is: Ms Melba Nuzen: “A Specialized Hearing Aid For Musicians.”
Our Senior Winner is: Ms Noorhan Amani: “Learn To See, A Study In Visual Perception.”
Ms Aman was featured in an article about the Fair in the 3/31 UT and she also won awards from the:
* San Diego Chapter of the Human Factors And Ergonomics Society
* San Diego County Optometric Society
* San Diego Psychological Association
* American Psychological Association
There was an article about Ms Amani and her project in the UT earlier this week which is attachment 1.
We will be hearing from Ms. Nuzen on April 20th and Ms Amani on April 27th.
San Diego Center for the Blind The San Diego Center for the Blind is an instructional facility helping educate newly blind persons on how to live as normal a life as possible. The Center them learn to cook, organize, clean, travel on buses and how to continue a normal life. The Center is a major beneficiary of our club's fundraising efforts. The club liaison keeps in contact with the Executive Director of the Center and keeps board and members up to dateis funded solely by donations and grants. Teachers at the Center train students, helping on the needs and developments within the Center.
Student Speaker Contest The chairperson conducts a club level student speaker contest from competing local high schools and arranges post club level competition from zone, regional, district and multiple district competition for the student speaker foundation with the final winner receiving monetary scholarships. Division winners are invited to present at a weekly club meeting.
White Cane Fund Drive The second weekend in October is the national "White Cane" weekend. Lions clubs around the world sponsor various fundraising events to benefit the blind. The committee/chair organizes and implements the club letter writing campaign and white cane displays in front of a local grocery store.
Flag Service One of our club's fundraising activities is to provide our "flag service" to participating businesses in the Hillcrest area on eight flag holidays during the year. These include: President's Day, Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Patriot's Day and Veteran's Day. Members place and retrieve flags in front of businesses sponsoring our flag service.
.jpg)
.jpg)
St. Patrick's Day Parade One of our club projects is to participate in the Saint Patrick's Day Parade in San Diego, CA. For 2011, we were joined by the National City Host and the National City College Campus Lions clubs.
Thanks to their float and our band, we won an award for the Best Service Float. We have won this award several times in the past and again continue to impress the judges.
Flag Education Lessons Another annual project is to provide a "flag history" lesson to selected 4th grade classrooms in the Hillcrest area. Small flags are given to each student and information about flag history, courtesy and symbolism are presented to the classes.
Some of the lesson includes the following:
As best I can recall, since I became a member, our club has been giving a presentation on the U.S. Flag to the fourth graders in the five elementary schools in the 92103 area code, Alice Birney, U.S. Grant, Florence, Francis Parker and St. Vincent. Fred Wilson first ran the program and Lee Dresser took over when Fred could no longer do it. For the last several years I have been assisting Lee and he now has handed the reins over to me. Fred Marsh is my cohort. Today Fred and I presented the program to the Club. Here are a few tidbits. Two important facts of flag protocol are that the flag should be displayed with the star field to the left of the observer and when displayed adjacent to a stage the flag should be on the audience’s left. On June 14, 1777, Congress approved the first flag design. The resolution specified that the flag would have 7 red stripes and 6 white stripes with a field of 13 white stars on a blue field. The arrangement of the stars was not specified. Although the Betsy Ross flag is believed by many to be the first official flag, the predominant evidence is that a flag with horizontal rows of 3, 2, 3, 2 and 3 stars designed by Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a Congressman, was the official first flag. The journals of the Continental Congress support this (although Congress refused to pay his bill). All subsequent flag designs have been selected by the President and approved by Congress on July 4th. The stars on the flag represent the states in the order they ratified the Constitution or joined the Union starting with Delaware in the upper left corner and going horizontally across to Hawaii at the bottom right. A curious factoid is that the flag did not always have only 13 stripes. After Vermont, 1791, and Kentucky, 1792 were admitted, a new flag was approved in 1795 with two additional stripes. This is the flag that flew over Fort McHenry in the war of 1812 and the Ft McHenry flag hangs in the Smithsonian Institute. It is THE Star Spangled Banner in the poem written by Francis Scott Key, the poem that became the National Anthem in 1931 set to an old English tune. When five more states were admitted in 1818 the flag reverted to 13 stripes. California is the 31st star. Including the original 13 star flag, we have had 27 different flags as states were added and, in fact, there are two 51 star designs on the shelf. Each student receives a small flag and a pamphlet about the flag.
