By Martin “Marty” Postic Jr., past governor of District 5750 and a member of the Rotary Club of OKC Sunrise, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA

In our contentious society, I see friends who are members of Rotary use The Four-Way Test to support opposing political and social arguments and to criticize the thoughts, statements, and actions of others. I see members with completely opposing viewpoints use the same Four-Way Test to both support their argument and demean others. Rotarians and others are using all forms of social media to share their opinions about perceived violations of The Four-Way Test, causing others to pile on additional comments and insults, all with little thought to how this affects our public image.

Which leads me to this basic premise:

The Four-Way Test is a mirror, not a window

Rotary members should not use The Four-Way Test to look at others but rather to look at themselves in considering the ramifications of a thought, statement, or action. It should not be a window through which we look to judge others. It is a mirror at which we look to judge ourselves.

Now through February 29, the Homestead High School Interact club partnering with the WE club are collecting new and gently used books for children and adults.

The books will be donated to organizations supporting literacy or other family services such as the Milwaukee Literacy Services and the Adult Literacy Center of Ozaukee County.

Please bring donations to the weekly Rotary meetings. Interact and WE club members would like to thank Rotarians for donating books for this great cause.

Lucia Francis

Editor's Note: This is the fifth annual appearance of What It’s Like, a proven favorite with readers inside and outside Rotary. - The Rotarian

Mike Stafford - Rotary Club of Freeport, Bahamas

We knew that a storm was coming and that it was a bad one, so we were preparing. I run a small shipyard, and we stood down because the winds got to be too much for us to deal with pulling boats and ships out. We’d been through storms before, so we had all our supplies, our batteries. The only thing we had to buy was gasoline for the generators. My wife put up all the shutters.

I knew that we had to evacuate our main house the minute I heard gurgling in the toilets. I looked out a small hurricane window that we don’t shutter and saw water was all the way up to our back deck, which is about 160 feet from the seawall of the canal we live on and 22 feet above sea level. I said to my wife, “Honey, we’ve got to bug out.” That took a little while because we had to stuff our two cats in duffel bags, and cats don’t like getting stuffed in duffel bags with 180-mile-an-hour winds howling outside.

We went to a cottage on our property that’s about 150 feet higher than the house. We were in bed listening to the wind howling. It was about 3 in the morning, and we were holding hands, not sleeping. I was freaking out because you could hear the tornadoes whizzing around. My wife said, “Honey, I know that after this is done, you’re going to go to the water plant because you always do that and you always want to help people. Don’t worry, I understand, because you’re a Rotarian.”

Jeff Rumage, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

After years of planning, the "gateway promenade" designed to welcome visitors to the Mequon-Thiensville Town Center District is expected to begin construction May 4.

Mequon and Thiensville officials have been talking about a gateway structure since 2002, when the two communities began planning a joint downtown area called the Mequon-Thiensville Town Center District. The district includes the Mequon Town Center, Spur 16, Foxtown and downtown Thiensville.

The gateway structure at the northeast corner of Cedarburg and Mequon roads is meant to serve as an entrance point to the Town Center District. Construction is expected to be completed by October.

The semicircular gateway structure, measuring 17 feet tall at its highest point, would feature wooden slats around the perimeter, as well as logos for Mequon and Thiensville.

Inside the semicircular structure will be a concrete path, along with concrete seating areas where visitors can look out onto the Milwaukee River. A crushed granite path will lead visitors from the gateway feature to the Rotary Riverwalk.

Revised designs

The gateway feature has been scaled down since it was initially presented to Mequon and Thiensville officials in 2018. The original design featured a full circular boardwalk extending closer to the river. It also featured a stairway to a second-story observation deck.

The lowest construction bid for the original design came in at about $865,000 in January 2019. Three months later, Mequon city officials rebid the project without the second-story observation deck. The design revision did not change the construction costs, however, so the common council rejected the second batch of bids.

Editor's Note: This is the fifth annual appearance of What It’s Like, a proven favorite with readers inside and outside Rotary. - The Rotarian

Ted Morris - Rotary Club of Clearwater, Florida

We awoke that Sunday — 12 June 2016 — to news that there had been a shooting at a local nightclub. As we headed for church, we saw helicopters hovering over downtown Orlando. By the time we arrived, we learned there were 50 dead, including the shooter.

My wife, Pamala, and I were stationed in Orlando with the Salvation Army. We had an emergency canteen — a food truck — that could serve 1,000 meals a day. We offered to help the first responders, and city and county officials accepted almost immediately.

The canteen was stocked and a crew assembled by noon. After a short prayer, we rolled out to the site of the shooting, where police had cordoned off several square blocks. We were waved through, and we parked about a block from the Pulse nightclub. We set up tables and began serving food.

As the temperature soared, I delivered bottles of ice-cold water to the police in their squad cars. As I passed the front of the club, I saw tiny, numbered plastic tents, which I understood marked the locations of bullet casings. I had realized cognitively what had happened, but seeing those little tents helped me see the enormity of the situation. These were people having a good time, and suddenly all hell broke loose. I saw the result of blatant evil and realized, in a gut-wrenching way, the fragility and preciousness of life.