Cucamonga Lions 'Sip for Sight' dinner raises money for community ... - Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
16.01.09
RANCHO CUCAMONGA -- The third annual "Sip for Sight" fundraiser of the Cucamonga District Host Lions Club will have an impact long after all the wine has been tasted and the dinners finished.
The annual event, planned March 14, is a key fundraiser for the Lions Club's many community activities, assisting those with vision and hearing problems as well as local charities.
The event will be at 6 p.m. at Antonino's Ristorante Italiano, 8045 Vineyard Ave. Tickets are $75.
The annual wine-tasting dinner will also have a silent auction.
The principal sponsor is the Rancho Cucamonga Optometric Center, but additional sponsors or donors for the silent auction are being sought.
Funds raised from this event and others goes to such agencies as the Foothill Family Shelter, the Rancho Cucamonga Public Library, area scholarships, the Lions Student Speaker Contest, the GAP Food Bank, and Santa Claus Inc.
Regionally, Lions Clubs distributed $10,000 to victims of the November wildfires in
Source: Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, CA
Uncle Don
Recently, in the midst of one of the worst winters of my life, I found myself desperately seeking some refuge from what seemed like an unending assault upon my happiness and good senses.
Then it hit me- I was in Riverside, California, and Uncle Don lived just an hour and forty-five minutes or so south of me. And Uncle Don? That guy was a walking party.
Don was my mother's oldest brother, and had been a truck driver for as long as I can remember. Every so often, his trucking route would take him through our neck of the woods in New England, and few things shocked the house with excitement like a surprise visit from Uncle Don! He did things that, as a kid, we found to be exciting and rebellious, like telling slightly-off-color stories, and drinking COFFEE! Black, no less! (Keep in mind, I'm from a family of staunch Mormons.)
As I grew older, though, and went through some of life's more egregious crapstorms, I came to understand Uncle Don on a far deeper and more personal level than I had as a child. I was divorced, he was divorced. I had had my time away from the church, and so had he. We were kindred spirits in a way.
But this understanding was from a distance, still. I mean, I rarely ever saw him. A lunch every so often in Salt Lake City, when he was up visiting his sisters, or maybe a family reunion or a funeral, but other than that, he was a name mentioned anecdotally when I talked to Mom.
Well, I was going to change that a little. I gave Don a call and told him I wanted to come down for a visit, and he was ecstatic about the idea. We spent a good ten minutes on the phone as he told he how to get there. I thought about cutting him off and telling him I could find it on my phone's GPS, but even giving directions, every other sentence was interrupted with a joke and a chuckle of laughter, so I let him go on, writing it all down as he went, the old fashioned way.
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