April is a busy month!

This coming Thursday, April 11, is the Soup Bowl Supper at the American Legion Hall. This is the 23rd year (and counting! that the Boothbay Harbor Rotary Club has partnered with Watershed Center for the Arts to offer a great soup/chowder/chili plus salad and dessert to the community for $15 – and you get to choose and take home the hand-crafted pottery bowl in which you ate dinner! Pretty special. Rotarians: Tory Paxton has the sign-up sheets if you are unclear what you agreed to do, and we look forward to a great evening. The doors open at 5:30, but the cognoscenti come early to get their pick of the bowls. Don’t forget: American Legion Hall this coming Thursday! The Rotary building will be dark.

We’re back in the Rotary building on April 18 for a “regular” meeting, whatever that means, and then on April 25 we will play host to our 61st (or so) Lifetime Service Award evening. Chip Griffin isn’t talking, so all we know is that we will be roasting and toasting a senior citizen who has made a difference in our community over the years. Foster needs extra hands to prepare for the expected crowd; be sure to sign up to help out on what promises to be a wonderful event.

And yes, our Vidalia onion sale is on. Chair Doug Harley says that orders must be in to him by April 26, with deliveries of the onions expected about two weeks later. We’re selling 25-poumd boxes of onions for $27 – get your orders in to Doug!

Last week we induced a new member – Rich Green – who brings our membership (active plus honorary) to 75 and the number of husband/wife combinations in the club to nine. Tom Hagan presented club banners from the three clubs he and Patty Seybold recently visited in Uganda in pursuit of a partner to join us on the Global Grant that Patty is actively working on to support a woman’s educational center in that country.

And Judy deGraw announced that with spring, it’s time to think seriously about donations to The Rotary Foundation, the 501(c)3 that supports Global Grants like the one in Uganda, and local grants like the one that helped pay for the new playground at the elementary school. So bring checks made out to The Rotary Foundation to Judy – or go online (either to www.rotary.org or www.rotary7780.org) , follow the prompts, and give electronically.

Our speaker last Thursday was the Rev. Kenneth Bradsell, a retired minister with the Reformed Church of America who spent two years serving the Protestant Community in Oman before he and his wife, Marcia, retired to Boothbay Harbor. While in Oman, Ken and Marcia became involved in the Al Amana Center, an interfaith organization that works to improve understanding between Muslims and Christians. Last fall, Ken and Marcia led a group of 10 people from the BBH Congregational Church for a week at the Center.

Ken explained that Oman is an extremely peaceful nation, and serves as a “Switzerland” in the Middle East where all Muslims can safely gather. Partly this is because the nation is neither Sunni nor Shia but Obadi, yet another variant of Islam. And partly it is because of the country’s geographic location tucked next to Saudi Arabia and directly across the Persian Gulf from Iran. The country is led by a benevolent dictator. Sultan Qaboos, who has used oil money to modernize the country and provide free education and healthcare to all citizens.

Marty Helman, who participated in the trip to Oman last fall, then talked about some of the common misperceptions that westerners have about Islam and the Middle East, and what she learned while in country. It turns out, for example, that the woman’s floor-length black robe, the abaya, comes beaded or with trim and is a fashion statement. Also, she said, under Islamic law women have always had legal rights to inherit and own property, whereas in the west it has only been in the last century that women had these rights.

Marty said that while in Oman, the group ate on the floor, from a common pot in the middle of the gathering. Omanis eat with their hand – their right hand. Forks are available, but because Marty is left-handed she decided she preferred to eat with her right hand rather than attempt to manipulate a fork. The group was introduced to camel and goat meat, along with chicken and lots and lots of fruits and vegetables.

Almost 40 percent of the population of Oman are foreign workers, primarily from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and the Philippines. These workers cannot become citizens, nor can their children or their children’s children. And the benefits of citizenship – including free healthcare and education – are off limits to them. So Marty said that it was sobering to witness the results of a policy in which immigrants make up a permanent underclass, with no way to gain rights, and the country had all the ills one can expect when young men live long years separated from their families.

Rev. Ken said that 55 percent of the world’s population are members of the Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Now, he said, the work that we need to do is to learn to live together in peace.