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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Last week’s breakfast speaker was Peruvian Admiral Hector Soldi, Gonzo Accame’s brother in law, who was in our area over the recent holidays. He spoke within the context of his career as a Naval officer. on his life experiences working in the Pacific Ocean, the Amazon basin and the Antarctic Continent.

Among other experiences, Admiral Soldi traveled as an oceanographer with Jacques Cousteau on the Amazon 1982 expedition. He did research on El Nino with the international scientific community trying to understand and ultimately forecast this phenomenon and then a brief history of the Antarctic Continent. Lastly, he told us about the importance of the Pacific Ocean and the activities he is still involved with in this region as Secretary General of the Permanent Commission for the South Pacific.

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Victoria Feldman was a last minute substitute speaker last week and talked about the “Burlington House Cartoon” by Leonardo Da Vinci which is also known as “The Virgin and child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist”.

The painting was created while Leonardo was in Florence, as a guest of the Servite Monastery. The eye-witnesses say that for two days people young and old flocked to see the miraculous drawing as if they were attending a festival. This would date the cartoon to about 1500.

In 1791 it was inventoried as belonging to the Royal Academy in London. Today, it is located in the National Gallery of London. The value of the sketch, also known as the “Leonardo Cartoon”, has been placed by some art experts at more than $35 million. The Cartoon was damaged in July, 1987 by a man (Robert Cambridge) who entered the gallery with a shotgun under his coat.

As a footnote to the above, Victoria is to be thanked for sending Holiday Greeting cards to a number of our former and departed members (Charlie Nash, Frank Lankowski, Ed Miles, Glenn Blong, Tas Tousimis, Don Howard). This is a practice our club should adopt for future years!