Learn your club, one session at a time.

Our club runs on newnanrotary.org. The homepage was redesigned recently — same address, new look — so if you remember it differently, you are not imagining it. Everything below matches the site as it stands today.

The homepage opens with a rotating band of club photos, then three panels answering what most people want to know first: What Is Rotary?, What We Do, and Want To Visit? Keep scrolling and you will pass the community grant cycle, an open invitation to a Wednesday lunch, and the club's latest news.

The menu across the top takes you to the rest — Our Club, Causes & Community, Projects, Calendar, News & Media, and Members. The gold LOGIN button sits at the top right of every page.

Scroll to the bottom of the homepage for The Newnan Club Calendar — upcoming speakers, board meetings, and service projects, week by week. This is the part that answers the question every member asks on a Tuesday night: who's speaking tomorrow? To look further ahead, click Full Calendar in the line just under the heading.

Click Full Calendar on the homepage — or Calendar in the top menu — for the full month view. Every Wednesday program is there at 12:00 pm, along with board meetings, packing days, and the weeks we don't meet. Use the arrows or the month and year menus to look ahead.

This is the best trick on the whole site. The club calendar is a live feed — subscribe to it once, and every meeting, program, and change shows up in the calendar you already use, automatically.

The feed address is at the bottom of the calendar page:

The member side of the site — the roster and your own profile — is behind a login. Click the gold LOGIN button at the top right of any page.

Your username and password come from our Club Secretary, Jason Bedingfield — every member gets one. Can't find yours? Use the Forgot Password button on the login page to reset it by email, or ask Jason at a meeting.

You'll know it worked when your own name appears in the top bar, with a Logout link beside it.

Once you're logged in, open the Members menu and choose Roster. There's the whole club — photo, name, classification, and contact details, visible to members only.

This is how Rotarians find each other between Wednesdays. Need the member who does wealth management, or the one who joined with you last year? It's all right here — which is exactly why your own entry deserves a good photo and current contact info.

Click your name in the roster (or at the top right of any page) to open your profile. This is what fellow members see, so it's worth five minutes: a photo that looks like you, a line or two of bio, and your business info if you'd like members to know what you do.

To make changes, click Update in the small row of links at the top right of your profile:

1. On the Personal tab, check your name, nickname, and bio. Your current photo sits on the right.
2. To change the photo, find Image File just below it and click Choose File.
3. Pick a clear, recent headshot — face filling the frame, no group shots.
4. Click Save at the bottom of the page.

Still on the Update page, the Contacts tab lists the email, phone, and address the club has for you — it's where the ePeptarian, dues statements, and club notices go.

One thing worth knowing: the site itself will tell you that most contact changes should be made at my.rotary.org, Rotary International's member site. Changes you make there sync back to the club website overnight. Use the Contacts tab for quick club-side corrections, and remember to click Save.

We recite the Four-Way Test at every meeting, and most of us could say it without looking at the banner. It's easy to assume Paul Harris wrote it, or Rotary International. It came from a Chicago businessman trying to save a failing company during the Great Depression.

The year was 1932. Herbert J. Taylor, a member of the Rotary Club of Chicago, was asked to take over the Club Aluminum Company, a cookware maker on the verge of bankruptcy. It owed about $400,000 more than it was worth. Taylor took an 80 percent cut in salary to run it and put some of his own money into the company.

He knew cutting expenses wouldn't be enough. The company needed a change in character: one simple ethical standard that everyone could use, from the executives to the sales force to the factory floor. Taylor later described what he was after as a “measuring stick of ethics.”

What he wrote is the test we still use:

Look at what the four have in common. Every one is a question. None of them tells you what to do. Each one asks you to stop and weigh your own decision: Is it true? Is it fair? Will it strengthen relationships? Will it help the people it affects?

That may be why words written for a Chicago cookware company in 1932 still hold up nearly a century later.

Taylor built the test into the company's culture and expected every employee to apply it in their business dealings. Club Aluminum paid off its debt and, over the years that followed, became profitable, paid its stockholders significant dividends, and built substantial value. Taylor credited much of that turnaround to a culture built on truth, fairness, goodwill, and mutual benefit.

The turnaround caught Rotary's attention. Rotary adopted the Four-Way Test in 1943, and Herbert Taylor went on to serve as president of Rotary International in 1954–55. Today Rotarians around the world use the same four questions as an ethical guide.

Taylor wrote the test for real life: for decisions involving money, customers, and employees, when doing the right thing might not be the easiest thing. Somewhere along the way, Kevin wondered, we may have gotten so used to reciting it that we forget we're supposed to use it.