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Hike Aug 13, 2026
Huntington State Park in Redding

August 6, 2026 /

On Thursday, August 13th, the Hale and Hardy will head out to Huntington State Park in Redding. This expansive, one-thousand-acre park showcases ponds, fields and densely wooded pathways. We will be traversing a 2.3 mile section that offers an excellent sampling of this varied terrain. 

 Woof. Woof. Dogs on leash are welcome and most of the ones you will encounter are wet from splashing about in the ponds.

Happily, there is ample parking on-site at our entrance on Sunset Hill Road in Redding, so feel free to go directly. For those wishing to carpool, we will meet at the DCA lot at 9:30AM and sort ourselves. When parking for our outings, please remember to use the back portion of the lot.

 Per usual, spouses and significant others are welcome. Post-hike, we will enjoy a repast at The Olde Blue Bird Inn at 363 Black Rock Turnpike in Easton, just north of the Merritt Parkway.

And most importantly when you see him, please give a hearty welcome to Peter Smith, a new frontier guide for our treks!

 Alec Wiggin 

Peter Smith  p

Golf Aug 20, 2026, Country Club of Darien

August 3, 2026 /

We are more than halfway through golf season and our next golf outing is August 20th at the Country Club of Darien 9-10 AM. We have 20 DMA members signed up however, we have room for 24. Please let me know as soon as possible if you would like to join us.

 

The price is $212 for golf and lunch. The club will accept checks only and should be made out to CCD upon arrival August on 20th. There will be a final email with tee times shortly.

 

If you would like to sign up, please respond to my email.

 

Best, Steve Tru

Book Club Jan 13, 2027
Culpability by Bruce Holsinger

August 2, 2026 /

November 11, 2026:  pick up Culpability by Bruce Holsinger (fiction), for your January 2027 discussion. Pub date of the book: July 8, 2025/380 pp.

Set at a summer rental on the Chesapeake Bay, a riveting family drama about moral responsibility in the age of artificial intelligence, from the bestselling author of the “wise and addictive” (New York Times) The Gifted School.

When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret that implicates them in the accident.

During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident—suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI.

Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative.

Book Club Dec 9, 2026
The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the remarkable American Life of a 109-year old Man, by David Von Drehle

August 2, 2026 /

October 14, 2026:  pick up The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the remarkable American Life of a 109-year old Man, by David Von Drehle, for your December discussion.  Pub date of the book: January 1, 2023/205pp.

(suggested by Chip Schroeder) 

Goodreads Choice Award

Nominee for Readers’ Favorite History & Biography (2023)

One of our nation’s most prominent writers finds the truth about how to live a long and happy life in the centenarian next door.

When a veteran Washington journalist moved to Kansas, he met a new neighbor who was more than a century old. Little did he know that he was beginning a long friendship—and a profound lesson in the meaning of life. Charlie White was no ordinary neighbor. Born before radio, Charlie lived long enough to use a smartphone. When a shocking tragedy interrupted his idyllic boyhood, Charlie mastered survival strategies that reflect thousands of years of human wisdom. Thus armored, Charlie’s sense of adventure carried him on an epic journey across the continent, and later found him swinging across bandstands of the Jazz Age, racing aboard ambulances through Depression-era gangster wars, improvising techniques for early open-heart surgery, and cruising the Amazon as a guest of Peru’s president.

David Von Drehle came to understand that Charlie’s resilience and willingness to grow made this remarkable neighbor a master in the art of thriving through times of dramatic change. As a gift to his children, he set out to tell Charlie’s secrets. The Book of Charlie is a gospel of grit—the inspiring story of one man’s journey through a century of upheaval. The history that unfolds through Charlie’s story reminds you that the United States has always been a divided nation, a questing nation, an inventive nation—a nation of Charlies in the rollercoaster pursuit of a good and meaningful life.

 

Book Club Nov 11, 2026
London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth, by Patrick Radden Keefe

August 2, 2026 /

September 9, 2026:  pick up London Falling:  A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth, by Patrick Radden Keefe, for your November discussion.  Pub date of the book: April 2026/384 pp.

A spellbinding account of a family devastated by the sudden death of their nineteen-year-old son, only to discover that he had created a secret life which drew him into the dangerous criminal underworld that lies beneath London’s glittering surface

In the early morning of November 29th, 2019, surveillance cameras at the headquarters of MI6, Britain’s spy agency, captured video of a young man pacing back and forth on a high balcony of Riverwalk, a luxury tower on the bank of the river Thames. At 2:24 AM he jumped into the river.

In a quiet London neighborhood several miles away, Rachelle Brettler was worried about her son. Zac had told her that he had gone to stay with a friend, but then he did not come home. Days later, a police car pulled up and two officers relayed the dreadful news: her son was dead.

In their unbearable grief, Rachelle and her husband, Matthew, struggled to understand what had happened to Zac. He had his troubles, but in no way seemed suicidal. As they would soon discover, however, there was a lot they did not know about their son. Only after his death did they learn that he had adopted a fictitious alter-ego: Zac Ismailov, son of a Russian oligarch and heir to a great fortune. Under this guise, Zac had become entangled with a slippery London businessman named Akbar Shamji, and a murderous gangster known as “Indian Dave.” As the Brettlers set about investigating their son’s death, they were pulled into a different and more dangerous London than the one they’d always known, and came to believe that something much more nefarious than a suicide had claimed Zac’s life. But to their immense frustration, Scotland Yard seemed unable—or unwilling—to bring the perpetrators to justice.

In a bravura feat of reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe chronicles the Brettlers’ quest, peeling back layers of mystery and exposing the seedy truths behind the glamorous London of posh mansions and private nightclubs, a city in which everything is for sale, and aspirational fantasies are underwritten by dirty money and corruption. London Falling is a mesmerizing investigation of an inexplicable death and a powerful narrative driven by suspense and staggering revelations. But it is also an intimate and deeply poignant inquiry into the nature of parental love and the challenges of being a parent today, a portrait of a family trying to solve the riddle not just of how their son died, but of who he really was in life.

Book Club Oct 14, 2026
Breath of the Gods: The History and Future of the Wind, by Simon Winchester

August 2, 2026 /

August 3, 2026: pick up Breath of the Gods: The History and Future of the Wind, by Simon Winchester for your October discussion.  Pub date of the book:  November 18, 2025/416 pp.

New York Times bestselling author Simon Winchester returns with a thought-provoking history of the wind, written in his edifying and entertaining style.

What is going on with our atmosphere? The headlines are filled with news of devastating hurricanes, murderous tornadoes, and cataclysmic fires affecting large swaths of America. Gale force advisories are issued on a regular basis by the National Weather Service.

In 2023, a report was released by atmospheric scientists at the University of Northern Illinois, warning that winds—the force at the center of all these dangerous natural events—are expected to steadily increase in the years ahead, strengthening in power, speed, and frequency.

While this prediction worried the insurance industry, governmental leaders, scientists, and conscientious citizens, one particular segment of society received it with unbridled enthusiasm. To the energy industry, rising wind strength and speeds as an unalloyed boon for humankind—a vital source of clean and “safe” power.

Between these two poles—wind as a malevolent force, and wind as savior of our planet—lies a world of fascination, history, literature, science, poetry, and engineering which Simon Winchester explores with the curiosity and vigor that are the hallmarks of his bestselling works. In The Breath of the Gods, he explains how wind plays a part in our everyday lives, from airplane or car travel to the “natural disasters” that are becoming more frequent and regular.

The Breath of the Gods is an urgently-needed portrait across time of that unseen force—unseen but not unfelt—that respects no national borders and no vessel or structure in its path. Wind, the movement of the air, is seen by so many as a heavenly creation and generally a thing of essential goodness. But when it flexes its invisible muscles, all should take care and be very afraid.

 

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