I have also served as Editor and Publisher of my Rotary Club's weekly bulletin for four years, winning awards in the process. Several editorials that I wrote a few years ago have been reprinted in several languages and in the weekly bulletins of several hundred Rotary Clubs, as well as ROTI. Here is another of the more popular ones.

Alphabet Soup

Rotary is replete with acronyms. There are RI, RITE, RYLA, PDG, PETs, REACT, WCS, TRF, PHSM, and many more, too many to mention. I ran across an acronym the other day that I wish Rotary would adopt, or at least some members should adopt: PMA.

PMA, Positive Mental Attitude is an essential ingredient in the makeup of a Rotarian, as opposed to a member of a Rotary club. Just as becoming a District Governor doesn’t bestow infallibility on the RI officer, neither does becoming a member of a Rotary club make the member a Rotarian.

To go one step further, becoming an officer or director of a Rotary club doesn’t make one a Rotarian, rather, it requires a healthy dose of caring, sprinkled freely with the 4-Way Test at frequent intervals.

A third perspective would be physics related. History has shown that the best Rotarians are proactive, not reactive. In economic terms, Rotarians have applied the principle of Zero-Based Budgeting.

But, enough of the jargon, clichés, acronyms and alphabet soup. Read your history. look at how Paul Harris envisioned it. Rotarians try to live up to that ideal.