Category: All Posts (Page 12 of 19)

The critical year in John Sanden’s personal history was 1969 — the year he decided to leave the Midwest and a long career in Christian art, and try his hand at New York City and the world of portrait painting. Within months of arriving in New York, he was appointed to the teaching faculty of the Art Students League, had become affiliated with the city’s principal portrait brokerage, Portraits, Incorporated, and had established a nationwide portrait clientele of the famous, wealthy and influential.

Sanden thereupon launched into an ambitious teaching career. He founded The Portrait Institute in 1974 and began touring the nation, teaching his ideas and techniques to thousands, who came out to hear him in classes as large as seven hundred at a time. Those who could not come in person studied through one of the national correspondence instructional programs, which he created. In 1979, Sanden launched the National Portrait Seminar, which grew to be the largest art seminar program in America. An annual lecture series at the Art Students League was presented to standing-room-only audiences there for twenty-three years.

John Sanden is the author of four books on portraiture: Painting the Head in Oil (Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 1976); Successful Portrait Painting (Watson-Guptill, 1981); Portraits From Life (North Light Books, Cincinnati, 1999); and The Portraits of John Howard Sanden (Madison Square Press, New York, 2001). With all of these demands on his time, he has managed to complete more than five hundred portraits of prominent figures in American public, professional and business life. His client list reads like a Who’s Who of American education and industry.

Profile, the magazine of the American Portrait Society, said, in a 1984 feature article written by the Society’s president, “John Howard Sanden may well be the best known name in contemporary American portraiture.” Popular columnist Pete Hamill, writing in the New York Post, August 15, 1991, said “John Howard Sanden is the closest we have in America to fit the old role of court painter.”

On May 29, 1994, the American Society of Portrait Artists presented their first John Singer Sargent Medal for Lifetime Achievement to Sanden. On September 30 of that same year, Houghton College awarded him the Doctor of Fine Arts degree.

Arranged by Bob Smith

This Songsters’ performance marks the end of the year for the DMA. They are a bunch of stout-hearted senior men who enjoy performing a selection of Barbershop Harmony, Broadway, and Spiritual songs.

Concert will start at 11 am.

Arranged by Bob Smith.

José A. Rasco, Chief Investment Strategist at HSBC Private Bank Americas, speaks about issues confronting his organization.

Rasco has served the financial community for over 25 years. He is a member of the HSBC Global Investment Committee, and a member with voting rights on the Investment Strategy Committee.

Prior to joining HSBC, he was a senior investment strategist at Merrill Lynch, working directly with the chief investment strategist, as well as the global economic and strategy teams, to create investment and asset allocation strategies. In addition to conducting extensive research on global thematic investing, and socially responsible products and portfolio strategies, Rasco has advised on the investment of billions of dollars in funds and structured products across the entertainment, media, technology, healthcare, commodities, manufacturing and defense sectors.

Arranged by Bob Smith.

Richard N. Pierson, Jr., MD is a Professor of Clinical Medicine, Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Pierson is a graduate of Princeton, and Columbia Medical College. He has been a Clinical Professor at Columbia for the last 45 years. He has served as President of the New York County Medical Society, was a member of the House of Delegates of the AMA, and has been on the Board of Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

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Bryan will talk about Connecticut’s clean energy goals and how the Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority plays a role in financing them. As the country’s first green bank, CEFIA is attracting national attention as it provides a model for leveraging public funds to drive private investment in clean energy. By moving away from grants and subsidies and towards financing, CEFIA is earning returns for Connecticut ratepayers and creating public-private partnerships that leverage our funds at a 10 to 1 ratio to deploy clean energy at scale.

Bryan was named president of the Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority* (CEFIA) in 2011. As the nation’s first state-level clean energy finance authority – or “green bank” – Bryan oversees efforts to attract and deploy capital to finance the clean energy goals for Connecticut.

Prior to rejoining CEFIA in 2011, Bryan was program director for the Yale Center for Business and the Environment. At Yale, Bryan led efforts to develop a leading global program responsible for preparing environmental leaders for business and society. He also served as co-editor of Carbon Finance: Environmental Market Solutions to Climate Change and Carbon Finance II: Investing in Forests for Climate Protection, publications that present the opinions and experiences of leading practitioners in finance, global carbon markets, and the business of climate change.

Bryan also co-founded Earth Markets, a Connecticut company that helps to accelerate the deployment of clean energy technology in homes and businesses. Earth Markets led the Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge, a DOE-supported initiative through the Better Buildings Program. Previously he was director of energy market initiatives at CEFIA, where he created the Connecticut Clean Energy Communities Program and served as the climate change coordinator for the Governor’s Steering Committee on Climate Change.

Additionally, Bryan served as chairman of the Connecticut Green Building Council, and as a board member of SmartPower, the Clean Energy Finance Center, The Climate Group and the Connecticut Hedge Fund Association. He currently serves as Vice Chair of the Clean Energy States Alliance and Co-Chair of the Finance Working Group for the State Energy Efficiency Action Network – an EPA and DOE initiative.

Early in his career, Bryan was a Peace Corps Volunteer specializing in NGO capacity building and environmental education in the Republic of Kazakhstan. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in political economy of natural resources from U.C. Berkeley, masters degrees in public administration and business administration from New York University, and a Master of Environmental Management degree from Yale University.

Arranged by Martin Skala

John P. Fitzgibbons, M.D., M.A.C.P. is a Professor of Clinical Medicine at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is a Senior Advisor on Graduate Medical Education at the Stamford Hospital. He will talk about Presidential Health — Maladies, Myths, and Mistakes. This subject combines both medicine and history, and engages Dr. Fitzgibbons’s long-term interest in the subject of presidential health.

Dr. Fitzgibbons was born in Boston, MA and grew up in Syracuse, NY. He graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 1960 and went on to medical school at the State University of New York, Upstate Medical Center.  He did his first two years of postgraduate training in medicine at Boston City Hospital. He then spent two years in the US Public Health Service in the Department of Epidemiology at the Mayo Clinic. From there he moved to San Francisco where he did two more years of medicine training at the University of California at San Francisco. He returned to Boston to do a clinical and research fellowship in Nephrology at Tufts, New England Medical Center.  In 1973 he went to Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts to run the medical student program, in 1977 he became the Chief of the Nephrology.

In 1988 Dr. Fitzgibbons was appointed Chair of the Department of Medicine at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a position he held until June 2008.  He was a Professor of Medicine at Penn State University School of Medicine and held the Leonard Parker Pool Chair of Medicine.

He is a former President of the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine (APDIM) and was also the Co-Chair of the Alliance of Academic Internal Medicine.

He was the Governor of the Eastern Pennsylvania Chapter of the American College of Physicians and President of the Pennsylvania Chapters.  In 2008 he received a Mastership in the American College of Physicians (MACP).

From 2006 to 2012 he has been a member of the Accreditation Council in Graduate Medical Education’s Residency Review Committee (RRC) for Internal Medicine and in 2010 became a member of the Executive Committee.  In April 2014 he received the Daley Founders Award from the Alliance of Academic Internal Medicine in recognition of his national accomplishments in medical education. He is presently a Senior Advisor in the Department of Medicine at the Stamford Hospital and a Professor of Clinical Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Arranged Bob Smith

Jennifer Herring, president and chief executive officer of The Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk for more than 10 years, longer than any CEO in the Aquarium’s 25-year history. She will talk about history and plans for the Aquarium. Herring has announced plans to retire from her position in 2014 but will continue to serve in her present role, leading the Aquarium through a new animal-touch exhibit experience to be announced in January, the institution’s primary gala fund-raiser for education in April and the launch of a new boat – the only research vessel in the world with hybrid-electric propulsion – in June.

Herring joined The Maritime Aquarium in fall 2004. She retires from a career spanning 35 years and fulfilling her passions for arts, culture, outdoor adventure, travel, birding, wildlife and environmental conservation.

Starting as an opera singer in San Francisco, she found her talent for fund-raising, leading major development efforts for the New York Public Library and the New York City Opera. She honed her administrative abilities at the Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the New York Aquarium and Bronx Zoo, among others.

Despite challenging economic times, Herring and her team accomplished an $18 million campaign of capital and exhibit improvements and established the Aquarium’s first endowment. She introduced new strategic planning processes and a master plan. New permanent exhibits added during her administration include “Frogs,” “Go Fish” and a complete renovation of the facility including the very popular touch-a-shark experience.

Herring deepened the Aquarium’s educational programs with Whole School Partnerships, now numbering seven, which incorporate Aquarium programming in the schools’ curricula and show evidence of closing the achievement gap for thousands of students. She oversaw creation of TeMPEST, an after-school program for teens in Norwalk, and the Long Island Sound Biodiversity Index, which leverages citizen-scientist and school student trips on the Aquarium’s research vessel Oceanic. That data collection will continue on the Aquarium’s new hybrid-electric boat starting this summer.

Arranged by Bob Smith

Dr. Sylvanie Wallington, Harvard Educated Astronomer, will speak about Dark Matter. Over the last 80 years astronomers have observed that the motion of some stars in galaxies and other celestial behavior cannot be explained without there being much more total mass in the universe than we detect from observations. Things don’t “add up” unless there is some mysterious “dark matter” that cannot be directly observed since it neither emits nor absorbs light. And this “missing mass” is not insignificant: it makes up about 85% of all the mass in the universe! As such, it plays a crucial role in our understanding of the structure and evolution of the universe. Dr. Wallington presents the evidence for this dark matter in simple layman’s terms. We follow the scientific trail that led to our understanding of dark matter in the universe by examining how astronomers gather light from celestial objects, how they use that light to understand the motions of stars and galaxies, and how they calculate the gravity needed to explain those motions. Step by step, we build the case for this mysterious substance, whose existence is widely accepted by the scientific community. Dr. Wallington is a graduate of Princeton University, and has a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard, where she specialized in the theoretical modeling of gravitational lenses. After a number of years of teaching she left the field and currently works as a web designer and programmer. She has lived in Old Greenwich with her husband and two children for more than a decade, during which time she has given a number of astronomy talks in the public schools. Arranged by Bob Smith

Myanmar, formally called Burma, is a country in southeast Asia bordered by Bangladesh and India to the west, by China to the north, and by Laos and Thailand to the east. The country has been under military control since a coup in 1962, but is starting to implement democratic changes and emerge from isolation. It was visited by President Obama in November of 2012 in recognition of the changes that have taken place. Because it was cut off from the rest of the world for many decades the country has been able to preserve its culture better than many other countries.


During this trip Bill visited Yangon (formerly Rangoon), Mandalay, Began, and the region around Inle Lake. The program is divided into three sections: an introduction; a presentation on Buddhism, practiced by an estimated 89% of the population; and a section on the people of Myanmar who were friendly and very accepting of tourists. This multimedia, storytelling program contains about 250 still images and video clips. These are blended with music, live narration, and locally recorded sounds to bring a visit to this wonderful country to life.

Bill is well qualified to present lectures and programs on photography. He is a retired PhD analytical chemist and spectroscopist who worked for 34 years helping to design spectroscopic instrumentation for the chemical laboratory. His work included the design of the software user interfaces for a number of products. At the same time he pursued photography as a serious hobby. This combination of experience in science, spectroscopy, computers, and photography allows Bill to understand the technical aspects of photographic equipment plus the associated computer software, and relate them to the needs of the photographer.

Bill’s interest in photography began in high school, but really started to develop after he finished graduate school, moved to Connecticut, and joined his first camera club in 1969. He first joined PSA in 1970 and began entering exhibitions soon after. He now has 5 stars in four divisions of PSA (Projected Image, Photo Travel, Photojournalism, and Nature). He also has ten galaxies in the Color Class of the Projected Image Division and three galaxies in the Photo Travel Division. He has also earned numerous awards in local competitions. He has received the distinction of Master from PSA (MPSA); the distinction of Artiste from the Federation Internationale de L’art Photographique (AFIAP); and has been awarded the honor of Master Member by the New England Camera Club Council (MNEC). He has also received four Bronze Stars for contributions to the PSA Journal.

Bill is a member of the Photographic Society of America, the New Haven Camera Club, and the Connecticut Association of Photographers. He is on the Executive Board of the New England Camera Club Council. He is a frequent lecturer for camera clubs and other organizations on travel and photography, and is a frequent judge.

Bill shifted his picture taking from film to digital following a trip to Kenya in 2000 where he shot his last photographs on film. In the last few years he has been pursuing a hybrid approach to his photography where stills, video clips, and sound files are combined to create essays and travel presentations with more production values than is possible using only still photographs. Bill likes to combine photography with travel to interesting places.

Arranged by Andre Gilbert

Hanifa Washington studied Communication Theory, and Russian and Soviet Studies at Beloit College in Wisconsin. Her studies pushed her to be critical of mass media, to examine the motives of human communication on varying platforms, as well as exuberantly explore the evolution of anthropologic linguistics in varying human societies.

She is steeped in digital media creation and studied Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed at length- a form of popular theatre that empowers communities to problem solve constructively. Hanifa studied Russian for 7 years and traveled to Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1996. She graduated with her BA in 2001 and went on to work heavily as a youth development specialist in the experiential learning sector. She was a co-founder the first worker owned cooperative in Portland, Maine and has a reverence for sustainable, organic food sovereignty.

Hanifa served as the cook and educator on the Amistad throughout a ten-month tour of the Caribbean. She was part of the Amistad’s historic arrival in Cuba and completed the schooner’s homecoming to Mystic, Connecticut. During this high-profile public diplomacy initiative with the direct involvement of the United Nations, US State Department, and the Cuban government, Hanifa fulfilled her professional work duties with efficiency and skill, but she did so while bolstering crew morale at critical moments, and she did so while always reminding the crew of the greater purpose of the voyage they had undertaken.

Even during the most difficult moments – and there were many — she never lost her spirit of optimism, and she embraced with wonderment the extraordinary events unfolding — from conducting the Haitian student sail programs (after the devastating earthquake) to participating in formal receptions with the leaders of Cuba and the US diplomatic core. And every so often, she’d agree to perform music for the crew, for the students and a few times at public events.

She went on to sail over 250 days at sea, also working with the South Carolina Maritime Foundation and Ocean Classroom Foundation. Hanifa returned to Amistad in a coordinating role January 2011, and helped to create the vision and curriculum for the Amistad’s DR based programming, and new Connecticut based summer programming. This past winter she coordinated Amistad’s first winter programs from the Amistad Center of Santo Domingo.

Arranged by Bob Smith.

J. Michael Lennon, the official biographer of Norman Mailer, knew Mailer for thirty-five years, and in writing this biography, he has had the cooperation of Mailer’s late widow, Norris Church, his ex-wives, and all of his children, as well as his sister, Barbara. He also had access to Mailer’s vast, unpublished correspondence and papers, and he interviewed dozens of people who knew Mailer. Norman Mailer: A Double Life gives us the man in full, a remarkable and unique figure in the context of his times.

Norman Mailer was one of the giants of American letters and one of the most celebrated public figures of his time. He was a novelist, journalist, biographer, and filmmaker; a provocateur and passionate observer of his times; and a husband, father, and serial philanderer.

Perhaps nothing characterized Mailer more than his unbounded ambition. He wanted not merely to be the greatest writer of his generation, but a writer great enough to be compared to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. As Michael Lennon describes, he even had presidential ambitions, although he settled for running for mayor of New York City. He championed personal freedom and civil liberties, calling himself a “left conservative,” and yet he was Enemy #1 of the Women’s Movement. He was as pugnacious in real life as in print, engaging in famous feuds and fights. Although he considered himself first and foremost a novelist, his greatest literary contribution may have been in journalism, where he used his novelistic gifts in tandem with self-revelation to explore the American psyche. In that regard, the subtitle of his Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning Armies of the Night is telling: “History as a Novel, the Novel as History.” He would return to certain subjects obsessively: John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, sex, technology, and the intricate relationship of fame and identity. Michael Lennon’s definitive biography captures Mailer in all his sharp complexities and shows us how he self-consciously invented and reinvented himself throughout his lifetime.

Arranged by Alex Garnett.