The spring DMA golf outing will be at Oak Hills Golf Club. 24 tee times have been reserved starting at 8:30. Let Bob McGroarty or Peter Carnes know if you’d like to play.
Category: Activities (Page 9 of 32)
Activities are gatherings that occur on a regular schedule, usually weekly, to enjoy a specific pastime.
Kiera Parrott, Director of the Darien Library will join us to talk about Darien’s policy for adding and removing books and other materials to the collection, also known as a “Collection Development Policy.”
We are postponing to the fall revisiting our discussion on alternative points of view on Global warming, Some told us we missed points of view. When we return in the fall John Wolcott will give an alternative point of view for us to discuss.
Then, if we have time, we are going to wrap up the year by discussing what the headlines are on May 12th. What’s on your mind? What is being discussed around the dinner table or golf course or wandering or hikes or bridge table, bowling alley, or the Pickleball court?
Some subjects have been suggested below.
Book Banning
These are books school systems don’t want you to read and why
Public Libraries Face Escalating Book Challenges
Book Ban Efforts Expand Across the United States
Banned Books Display in Maryland disturbs parents
In Some States “Don’t Say Gay Bills Have Been Around for a While
“Unparalleled in intensity-1,500 book bans in US School
Global Warming
Unsettled? What Climate Science Tells Us, What it doesn’t.
Net-Zero America: Potential Pathways, Infrastructure, and Impacts
Psychological Strategies for the Long Haul of Climate Action I Opinion Newsweek
With what we know when we meet, what is your view of Darien”s purchase of Great Island?
On Monday, April 11, 2022, commencing at 9:00 am, Doug Campbell will host a virtual meeting of the Money Matters group when attendees will be joined by Eric Monies and Brandon Vaughan to discuss the topic of cryptocurrency and “NFTs” (non-fungible tokens that are part of the Ethereum blockchain).
HIKING MIANUS RIVER GORGE PRESERVE
167 MIANUS RIVER ROAD
BEDFORD, NY
MONDAY APRIL 18, 2022
10:00 AM
This hike should take us 2.5 to 2.75 hours. NO DOGS ALLOWED.
No lunch after due to the Monday date when many restaurants are closed.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If Monday turns out to be a rainy day the hike will be postponed. If in doubt, please contact one of us below.
DIRECTIONS: Google maps or Waze both recognize “Mianus River Gorge Preserve, Bedford”. The Preserve is off of Long Ridge Road.
Do not confuse with a similar named place in Stamford.
CONTACTS: Dave McCollum or Bob Plunkett
Hike recap:
Twelve hikers spent a delightful 2.75 hours traversing over four miles of trails at Mianus River Gorge Preserve today. We started out with thirteen but one very wise DMA’er realized that his knee was acting up near the start and retired for the day. A good plan for him as the trail climbs steeply in spots to over 400 feet above the river. The halfway point is back down at the reservoir that the river feeds before it is distributed into the water systems of Greenwich, Rye and Port Chester. The return trip follows a mostly different path through terrain very unlike that directly along the gorge. This area has almost open fields and many stone walls, a result of the farming that took place well over a century ago.
This hike is one of the more spectacular venues we visit with its river views and water features along the way. Some glacier certainly distributed a million rocks around the preserve! Alas, no wildlife seen again. Thanks to Marilyn Parker for her consistently fine photography, and great hiking!
On Thursday morning, March 31, the Happy Wanderers will travel up the coast to New Haven. The group will assemble in the parking area to the rear of the DCA building at 8:15 am for an 8:30 am departure. Members, wives and guests will carpool to Pepe’s Pizza parking lot at 157 Wooster Street in New Haven whence we will be begin our walk, exploring the sites on the New Haven Green, the Yale campus and other architectural features of the historic Elm City. Following the walk of about 3 miles, the group will return to Pepe’s for lunch and then head back to Darien for a 4 pm arrival, well in advance of the DMA musical event of the evening. You are welcome to join us in this first spring wandering! Please contact David Mace or Joe Spain if you have questions.
On Thursday morning, March 31, the Happy Wanderers will travel to up the coast to New Haven. The group will assemble in the DCA parking lot at 8:15 am for an 8:30 am departure. Members, wives and guests will carpool to Pepe’s Pizza parking lot at 157 Wooster Street in New Haven whence we will be begin our walk, exploring the sites on the New Haven Green, the Yale campus and other architectural features of the historic Elm City. Following the walk of about 3 miles, the group will return to Pepe’s for lunch and then head back to Darien for a 4 pm arrival, well in advance of the DMA musical event of the evening. You are welcome to join us in this first spring wandering!
Please contact David Mace or Joe Spain if you have questions.
Kirkus Reviews: A glowing biography of the famously cautious yet effective chancellor of Germany.
Marton, A Hungarian-born American foreign correspondent, clearly admires Angela Merkel (b. 1954), who has served as chancellor since 2005 and was hailed in a 2020 Pew Research poll as “the world’s most trusted leader, regardless of gender.” The author marvels especially at Merkel’s early years in East Germany, where her pastor father joined the call to serve the socialist East by moving his family from Hamburg to the rural hamlet of Templin, in the heart of the Soviet-occupied Democratic Republic of Germany. Indoctrinated in school, sealed off from the West by border walls in 1961, and spied on by her neighbors for the state security police, Merkel toed the line and kept a low profile while excelling at physics, first in Leipzig and then in East Berlin. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, she embraced a new profession: politics. When the East German DA party merged with the West German CDU, she became the mentee of the powerful Helmut Kohl. Working her way steadily up the ranks, Merkel ultimately assumed leadership of her party after Kohl left office. Unglamorous by choice, workmanlike to a fault, and used to sidestepping male egos, Merkel proved herself to be a deft civil servant and leader, especially in opening Germany’s borders to refugees in 2015 despite the backlash. “Her political rise,” writes Marton, “would be fueled by self-control, strategic thinking, and, when necessary, passive aggression.” Merkel’s determination to bolster Europe’s cohesion with French president Emmanuel Macron’s help and to strengthen ties between Europe and the U.S., despite opposition and/or apathy from the Trump administration, form her lasting legacy. Though the text is somewhat short on criticism, Marton clearly knows her subject and writes smoothly, pulling back the curtain on an enigmatic, significant world figure.
A human portrait more than a political one that amply captures the essence of a moral, determined leader.
Thank you all for including me in such learned conversation! It shows your knowledge and your affinity to my Heimat (word is explained in the book), and I am truly moved!Of course, for me, the greatest chancellor will always be West Germany’s first one, shown below on his birthday, turning 80 and receiving a poem recited by my older brother, Alex (to Adenauer’s right). We lived in Rhoendorf on Rhein at the time, a stone throw from the chancellor’s house, and Alex had been selected by his teacher. With your keen sense of observation, you will also have no problem finding yours truly in the crowd (in case my appearance has changed since then: Always a little forward, I am showing my face next to my brother). Bonn lies on the other side of the Rhein from the small town of Rhoendorf over a bridge, and was picked because it was so obviously a temporary solution until re-unification and the return of the government to Berlin. That this arrangement was also quite convenient for Adenauer, is a mere “coincidence”.
Again, thank you all for your interest in Germany and your friendship to one of her sons.
Bert
On April 22nd, Jim Phillips will lead a Current Affairs discussion of the Electoral College. Its history and whether it is still relevant today. There are numerous arguments to change the system, but no one has come up with a better alternative; and if they did, it would be extremely difficult to receive enough votes to amend the Constitution. This should be a lively discussion given how it affected the 2016 Presidential election and others before that.
Articles
2 videos:
1) 10 minutes
2) A debate on whether the Electoral College has outlived its usefulness; Watch only if you have time. 1:35
Conor Horrigan – Building a Brewery and Building a Community in Stamford
Time: Mar 14, 2022 09:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Conor Horrigan has built the successful Stamford-based Half Full Brewery, a thriving co-working space called Third Place, and even helped launched a beer hall by the outdoor rink at Mill River Park. Hear how he has created a great community and connected so many businesses and entrepreneurs.
OHM Dynamics is a fitness, sports performance, and movement health company that has developed a line of strength and cardio training equipment based on proprietary resistance technology. Unlike conventional exercise modalities, which define the force a user is required to produce in order to engage in exercise, OHM is able to accommodate the highly-variable capabilities of each individual user through complex, functional movement patterns in real time. The result is a dramatically improved and differentiated exercise or rehab experience that is safer, more effective/efficient, and more natural, functional, and motivating.
OHM’s user-directed properties also allow for the collection of highly accurate force, power, and range-of-motion data, positioning it as a next generation hardware and digital health technology with application to the broadest spectrum of users; from elite athletes to weekend warriors to the elderly, injured or infirm.
- Our website (www.ohm.fit)WWW.OHM.FIT and Instagram account (@ohmdynamics) provide the best overview of our tech, though it’s difficult to convey the equipment’s natural, responsive “feel” via text or video. Please note the quality of movement and breadth of “athletes” using it.
- Coaches’ Commentary featuring Bill Parisi, founder of the Parisi Speed School chain, Brijesh Patel, head strength coach at Quinnipiac U, and Aaron Wellman, former NY Giants head strength coach –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E3AFq_Tmy0
- Attached article, “The Business of Movement Health”. This is the opportunity/TAM we ultimately see for OHM… much broader than the “fitness” category.
An up-close account of the otherworldly trajectory of tech magnate Elon Musk.
Ars Technica editor Berger opens with a telling scene set in South Texas in late September 2019, when Musk visited a factory building a rocket that one day will be bound for Mars. Sending that ship—and people—to the red planet is of a parcel with Musk’s pioneering work in “remaking the global aerospace industry,” which includes privatizing efforts that had long belonged to government agencies such as NASA—which, though funded to the tune of some $25 billion per year, still “remains several giant leaps away from sending a few astronauts to Mars.” Getting the SpaceX rocket safely to distant Mars “may not work,” Musk confessed before adding, “But it probably will.” By Berger’s swiftly moving account, it will, not just because Musk is an endlessly driven, intensely focused sort who could use a little more fun in life—at one point, Musk ruefully allows that “it wouldn’t have hurt to have just one cocktail on the damn beach” of a distant Pacific atoll used in test flights—but also because Musk is surrounded by brilliant scientists recruited from academia and industry who are thoroughly invested in the project’s success. “They want that golden ticket for the world’s greatest thrill ride,” Berger writes, evoking another obsessed genius, Willie Wonka. Musk now leads not just SpaceX, but also the Tesla electric automobile company as well as a neural technology company and a firm devoted to digging new transportation tunnels below overcrowded cities. Even so, he remains closely attentive to matters that aviation engineers have often overlooked, such as recycling rocket stages: “If an airline discarded a 747 jet after every transcontinental flight,” writes the author, “passengers would have to pay $1 million for a ticket.”
Readers interested in business and entrepreneurship, as well as outer space, will find Berger’s book irresistible.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Bob Plunkett
Twelve hikers along with two dogs walked the trails of Waveny Park in New Canaan this morning. It was a great way to get outdoors and celebrate the first full day of spring. We enjoyed our conversations, the mild weather, and abundant sunshine.
