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George Blackwell Cammann passes away August 15, 2017

George Blackwell Cammann, son of Katharine Blackwell and Frederic Almy Cammann, died peacefully on Tuesday, August 15th at home.

George was born on January 27, 1926 in New York City. After attending St. Marks School, he served as a Navy corpsman during WWII, and graduated from Cornell University (BMA’50). George spent the majority of his career at Pan American World Airways and a decade at Northwest Airlines. Upon retirement, he volunteered at IESC and Norwalk Hospital.

He actively served in the life of Noroton Presbyterian Church, including singing with his strong tenor voice in the choir in his later years. A member of the Tokeneke Club in Darien for 55 years, George was an enthusiastic competitor in his Sunfish on Long Island Sound or on the tennis courts. Equally at ease on alpine or nordic skis, George was noted for his skilled horsemanship at Elkhorn Ranch South in Arizona and Elkhorn Ranch Montana. His greatest pleasure came with good friends and tight lines fly fishing at Megantic, Potatuck, and on the Gallatin, Madison and Yellowstone Rivers.

George is survived by his wife of 64 years, Nancy Colway Cammann; his daughter Amy Cammann Cholnoky and her husband John of Darien, CT and Big Sky, MT; son Thomas Rhody Cammann and his wife Bonnie of Huntington Beach, CA; grandchildren JB, Kari, and Robbie Cholnoky, and Matthew (Andrea) and Sarah Cammann; and his brother Frederic Gallatin Cammann.

A memorial service will be held on Friday, September 1 at 11am, Noroton Presbyterian Church, Darien, CT. Contributions in George’s memory may be sent to Bennett Cancer Center, Stamford, CT or The Open Door Shelter, Norwalk, CT.
To send flowers or a remembrance gift to the family of George Cammann, please visit our Tribute Store.

October 19, 2017
Current Affairs Discussion:
Clean Disruption

In our first article Tony Seba makes the case that multiple technologies are converging that will massively disrupt the auto industry, use of space, transportation, energy, climate, … – all a big part of how we now live and work.   He calls it “Clean Disruption”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b3ttqYDwF0&feature=youtu.be

Our  discussion will review his model.  Are the assumptions valid?  Is the logic consistent and complete?  What other scenarios are possible?  Timing?  US vs ROW?  Politics and regulation? Business threats and opportunities?

 

McKinsey Studies:

An-integrated-perspective-on-the-future-of-mobility

Battery-storage-The-next-disruptive-technology-in-the-power-sector

The-new-economics-of-energy-storage

SRP_2014_Disruptive_Solar

WEF_Game_Changers_in_the_Energy_System

 

UK and France will ban ICE (internal combustion engine) autos by 2040:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/26/world/europe/uk-diesel-petrol-emissions.html?mcubz=0&_r=0

Forbes: Volvo will stop designing ICE only cars by 2019. (They are not going all electric as some reported.)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2017/07/05/volvo-says-it-will-stop-designing-combustion-engine-only-cars-by-2019/

Forbes: What if everyone installed solar?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/01/16/what-would-the-economic-impact-be-if-everyone-installed-solar-panels/#7d8b38e734cc

When you reduce the number of moving parts in an engine from 2000 to 20, increase the efficiency and useful life of each auto, and eliminate truck drivers, then that is going to result in unemployment on a massive scale in the socio-economic classes that have already suffered from the widening income gap experienced over the past 30 years, and contributed to the election of Trump. Are our politicians capable of recognizing the consequences and bold enough to take action to offset the disappearing jobs? Given our current ineptitude in gaining consensus in Congress and the absence of forward vision from the White House I do not feel confident of the corrective means being devised and applied. Add to that the possible turmoil created by falling demand for oil from the Middle East, and we begin to approach the conditions for a perfect storm. Bryan Hooper.

What should the price be to sell electrons back price to the utility? It can’t be the retail cost of electricity because all the fixed costs remain. Fixed costs include the power station and transmission lines. The variable cost is just the cost of fuel. But for nuclear that variable fuel cost is zero.

So with residential roof top solar, a battery and a maybe back up generator – do you need to be on the power grid at all? If you are off the grid you can’t sell excess power, but do you owe the utility anything? (Note that you pay for sewers whether you are hooked up to them or not.) Do people dropping off lead to a death spiral as fixed costs of a universal power grid are spread over a shrinking customer base?
https://www.brookings.edu/research/rooftop-solar-net-metering-is-a-net-benefit/

Will electric cars break the grid?
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/05/11/will-electric-cars-break-grid/

From Bloomberg Businessweek:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-21/how-electric-cars-can-create-the-biggest-disruption-since-iphone

https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2017/09/18/the-future-of-electric-vehicles-in-the-u-s-part-2-ev-price-oil-cost-fuel-economy-drive-adoption/#56379bd4345c

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/are-electric-cars-cheaper-to-run.htm

Solar shingles: https://www.consumerreports.org/solar-panels/doing-the-math-on-teslas-solar-roof/

Dyson plans to build an electric car (or at least a street legal riding vacuum):

 https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwinton/2017/09/26/dyson-british-vacuum-cleaner-plans-electric-car-assault-with-2-7-billion-plan/#7bd2e0c456a5

From Paul Williams: http://brook.gs/2fAZBmc

On the rapidly emerging technologies to improve electric storage: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2015/09/15/five-emerging-battery-technologies-for-electric-vehicles/

Dan Cooney passes away June 24th 2017

Daniel Russell Cooney, 92, of Darien and Waldoboro, Maine, died on June 24.  Born in Brooklyn on Dec. 12, 1924, he was the son of Mae Bossert and Russell S. Cooney.  He grew up in Plandome, Long Island and in Waldoboro, attended Exeter Academy, and served in the U.S. Army in World War II in the European Theater.  After the war, he entered Yale University and graduated in 1950.  He worked as a securities analyst for Lord Abbett & Co. in New York City, and in 1973, he became portfolio manager of the newly established Lord Abbett Developing Growth Fund, one of the earliest funds to focus specifically on the over-the-counter market. After his retirement in 1987, he served as Trustee of Robertson Stephens Emerging Growth Fund.

Mr. Cooney  married the love of his life, Alice Knotts, on July 9, 1949, in Falmouth, Maine, and they spent 67 devoted years together between Darien and Waldoboro, raising two daughters, many Norwich terriers, and daylilies galore. His devotion to Alice, who predeceased him by nine months, was exemplified by the care he gave her over the last 25 years of her life, when she was suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. He was supported in her care by a team of women who, in turn, watched over and looked after him.  His daughters are grateful for each of them, they said.

He had an infectious smile and a curious nature that endeared him to all.  A long-standing member of the Noroton Yacht Club, he owned sailboats in numerous classes that included Lightnings, Sonars, and Ideal 18s. He shared his wife’s passion for antiques, but his interest had a nautical focus, embracing everything from marine paintings, decoys, scrimshaw, and early rigging and sailmakers tools that he appreciated as much for their history as for their craftsmanship and beauty.  His interests were vast and ever growing, ranging from planting a collection of rhododendrons and rare pines to showing Norwich Terriers and making wine. But most of all, he was a gentleman of the old school in the truest sense.

Mr. Cooney was predeceased by his three siblings, James S. Cooney, Barbara Cooney, and David C. Cooney.  He is survived by his daughters Rebecca T. Cooney, and her husband Tito Pizarro, of New York City, and Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, and her husband George L. K. Frelinghuysen, also of New York City; and two grandsons, Henry O. H.  Frelinghuysen of Stamford,  and Russell S. C. Frelinghuysen of Asheville, North Carolina.

He will have a private family burial in Waldoboro in August.  A memorial service will be held in his honor on Sept. 7 at 11 a.m. at St. Luke’s Parish, 1864 Post Road, Darien.

Memorial, donations in Daniel’s memory may be made to St. Luke’s Parish, 1864 Post Road, Darien, CT 06820, or to Yale University, Development Office, 157 Church Street, New Haven, CT 06510-2100.

Book Club: Killers of the Flower Moon : the Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, October 11, 2017

From New Yorker staff writer David Grann, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Lost City of Z, a twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history         In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.       Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances.       In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes like Al Spencer, the “Phantom Terror,” roamed—many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll climbed to more than twenty-four, the FBI took up the case. It was one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations and the bureau badly bungled the case. In desperation, the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only American Indian agents in the bureau. The agents infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest techniques of detection.  Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.        In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. Based on years of research and startling new evidence, the book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. But more than that, it is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward American Indians that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long. Killers of the Flower Moon is utterly compelling, but also emotionally devastating.

Charlie Rose interviews the author:
https://charlierose.com/videos/30603

Book Club: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, September 13, 2017

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carriedis a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carrieddepicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France’s prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award., A classic, life-changing meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling, with more than two-million copies in print Depicting the men of Alpha Company-Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three-the stories in The Things They Carried opened our eyes to the nature of war in a way we will never forget. It is taught everywhere, from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing, and in the decades since its publication it has never failed to challenge our perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, and courage, longing, and fear., Tim O’Brien’s modern classic that reset our understanding of fiction, nonfiction, and the way they can work together, as well as our understanding of the Vietnam war and its consequences.

 

Side reads:

“Dispatches” by Michael Herr.  According to John Wolcott, who served in Viet Nam, this accurately captures the life of a grunt.  One of the greatest examples of war journalism ever written, Michael Herr’s clearheaded yet unsparing retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, finding clarity in one of the most incomprehensible events in our modern era. A National Book Critics Circle finalist and highly acclaimed upon its publication, Dispatches still retains its resonance as America finds itself amidst another military quagmire.  

 

 

 

“Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad.  Charles Marlow is a steamboat captain on the River Thames near Gravesend England. He and his crew work for an ivory trading company. One day he recounts to his fellow crew the story of his life and how he became a captain for the steam boat company. The focus of his story involves the journey Marlow undertook to the outer reaches of the company’s operations. Here he tells of his wild encounters with Mr. Kurtz, a man with a great reputation for bringing in the most ivory for the company. Kurtz is widely respected by the natives, yet Marlow has some differing opinions as he struggles to understand Kurtz’s way of life, while uncovering secrets about the strange way Kurtz conducts his business.

This book inspired the movie “Apocalypse Now”.

 

 

Golf

Do you enjoy a round of golf with friends? The DMA golf club is open to players of all handicaps. See the posts below for upcoming events.

Happy Wanderers City Island, June 22, 2017

This will be the last wandering of the spring season.

We will carpool to City Island, departing from the Darien Community Association on Thursday, June 22, 2017 at 9:45 a.m.

Please gather in the back parking area near the Green House. We will set up the carpooling there and leave the empty cars in that same area.

Driving directions will be provided for each car. For GPS users, the address of the location where we will park our cars is 150 Rochelle St., Bronx, NY 10464.

City Island is part of New York City but has a small-town atmosphere. Located at the western end of Long Island Sound, the island is about a mile long, with multiple side streets leading off of City Island Avenue, the island’s main street.

Sites along the way are boatyards, scenic overlooks, yacht clubs and many other interesting neighborhoods with restaurants, gift shops and numerous nautical attractions.

Our tour of the island will take about three or four hours, with time for lunch.

The weather is supposed to be sunny, so everybody should slap on the sunblock and bring a hat. After all, it is the start of summer.

For questions, contact Joe Spain

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