Last week’s breakfast speaker was Dr. Jackson Janes, President of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at the Johns Hopkins University who spoke to us about the development of the Euro Dollar in Europe which is the current trading base for 300 million people in seventeen countries in Europe.

The Euro began as a trading base on January 1, 1999. To date, Germany has maintained the most stable economy of all members. It is hoped that Germany’s Prime Minister, Angela Merkel, will remain as the Euro Head in Brussels (her German re-election taking place in September, 2013). The growing pains of the Euro will continue to abound. Hopefully, they will all focus on developing a strong trading group across the Atlantic Ocean.

The Euro is the currency of 17 European Union countries: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.

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Bruce Fowler’s program last week drew on his early career as a marine biologist, and his life-long interest in photography and scuba diving. He showed underwater photographs that he and his son took in areas around the earth including Sharm el Sheikh-Egypt, Miyako Island in the Ryuku island group—East China Sea, Truk Atoll-Micronesia, Hawaii and Grand Cayman island and Nassau, and the Bahamas in the Caribbean Sea.

The photographs were spectacular, especially the pictures of marine life— nocturnal moray eels with their sense of smell, lion fish, blue spotted fish,rays with their 500 volts of electricity, butterfly fish, Angel fish, Star fish, and on and on.

Bruce observed that “We are living on a space ship that is mostly covered with water and upon which we are ultimately dependent. It is my hope that all will enjoy the underwater photographic art as we circle the globe in 30 minutes.”

Rotarian Guido Adelfio of the Metro Bethesda club was last week’s breakfast speaker and used his time to present a Power Point presentation on cancer and more specifically on Prostate cancer—the #1 most frequent male cancer, and the #2 cancer for mortality. Lung cancer is #2 for frequency and #1 for mortality.

What causes cancer? Nobody really knows. What is Prostate cancer? Adenocarcinoma is a type of cancer that begins in spongy tissues such as prostate or breast tissue and spreads throughout the human body—a very serious disease and common in the U.S., with about 250,000 cases annually, and 30,000 deaths. Guido (a man in his 60’s) was diagnosed with the disease 2 or 3 years ago, and is currently in the process of bringing it to proper attention in the Rotary ranks.

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