Category: Speaker Announcements (Page 41 of 45)

Stuart Gibson, who previously spoke to the DMA about his work for UNESCO salvaging cultural treasures in war-torn Iraq and restoring destroyed museums will give us an update. In addition, he will include commentary on the current political situation.

Stuart will be speaking about the magnificent archaeological sites of Karakalpakstan region of Uzbekistan – sites dating from 3rd century BC to 4th century AD – and the ecological issues pertaining to their restoration.

Uzbekistan is home to the famous Silk Road cities of Khiva, Samarkand, and Bukhara.  He will also discuss the Aral Sea which is also located in Karakalpakstan. The Aral Sea was one of the largest inland salt water lakes in the world until the 1980s when the Soviets diverted the water from the two rivers feeding the sea to the surrounding areas to irrigate the cotton fields. Today the Aral Sea is 10 percent of its original size and in ecological crisis.

In addition, he will include commentary on the current political situation.

Arranged by Martin Skala

Ken Coe of Darien volunteers extensively with the Nature Conservancy in Africa. He will speak on the topic of the ivory trade and its implications to native peoples, as well as to the wild animals.

David in Afghanistan

David Fitzpatrick is beginning his 13th year as a Senior Executive Producer for CNN. He currently serves as an investigative producer, whose work appears principally on CNN’s flagship broadcast, the Anderson Cooper show, airing nightly at 8 p.m. He’s spent much of that time working with CNN Correspondent Drew Griffin exposing fraudulent charities. He joined CNN days after the 9-11 attack in September 2001 and for years worked as an anchor producer for CNN’s Aaron Brown, who anchored what was at the time CNN’s mainstay prime time newscast, “NewsNight With Aaron Brown.”

Prior to joining CNN, he spent 25 years at CBS News in a variety of positions, including working for three years as a producer for 60 Minutes in the mid-1990s. He traveled the world for CBS News, including being based for three years in London. Among the significant stories he covered were the hostage crisis in Iran, the rise of Polish Solidarity, the Falklands War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the revolt and uprising at Tien An Men Square and countless other world events.

At CNN, he’s been involved in most of the major stories covered by the network, including most recently the explosions at the Boston Marathon and the capture and arrest of the two men deemed responsible. This year alone, he’s traveled to Egypt, South Africa and the Dominican Republic to produce stories for the Anderson Cooper broadcast.

David has lived in Darien since 1985 and is married to Adria Bates.

David will speak about “How To Watch TV News”. Just imagine… You’re sitting in your living room or den and watching television news. Either the nightly newscasts on the Big Three over-the-air networks or drawn to a cable news network. And your blood begins to boil a little bit. “How can they say that,? ” you’ll ask the person next to you. Or, perhaps: “This is all liberal clap-trap (substitute a favorite expression) and I’m not going to watch these guys any more.”

There is both and art a science to watching television news, especially on cable. In the prime time evening hours, the most popular channel, Fox News, rarely DOES any news. They TALK about it of course and it’s a brilliant business model. If you watch CNN, you might complain about a “liberal bias” but is there? For sure there is on MSNBC. But you do you actually know there’s a bias on CNN?

David will take you through the signals, both direct and subtle.

Arranged by Alex Garnett

CEO Bill Piper will be speaking about Waveny Care Network’s non-profit continuum of healthcare services as well as Waveny’s strategic plan and vision for the future.

Waveny Care Center offers comprehensive healthcare services to older adults and others affected by illness or injury. Waveny encourages and assists individuals to live with dignity and as independently as circumstances permit. It has earned its enviable reputation for excellence thanks to its patient-oriented philosophy and superior staff.

Conceived and planned out of concern for the quality of life for its neighbors, the Care Center was built entirely with contributions from the New Canaan community. It is incorporated as a not-for-profit charitable organization and is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors.

Admission to the Care Center’s facilities or programs is by physician referral and the approval of the Admissions Committee. Admission is open to anyone 16 years of age or older. While New Canaan residents are accorded first consideration, applicants from any geographic location are encouraged to apply and are admitted in the order of applications received.

Christopher Perry, Tri-State Director of Ronald McDonald Children Charities, will talk about the vision and mission of the organization and the impact it has had.

Mission
The mission of Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC) is to create, find and support programs that directly improve the health and well being of children. Guiding us in our mission are our core values:

• Focusing on the critical needs of children.
• Celebrating the diversity of the programs we offer and the staff, volunteers and donors who make them possible.
• Staying true to our heritage of 38 years of responsible stewardship.
• Operating with accountability and transparency.

Vision
We believe that when you change a child’s life, you change a family’s, which can change a community, and ultimately the world.

We strive to be part of that change and part of the solution in improving the lives of children and their families by providing programs that strengthen families during their most difficult or challenging times.

We extend our reach and impact by leveraging our 39 years of experience and strong relationships with local communities and people in the field to continually establish Chapters across the globe.

We continually work to improve and expand our core programs, while also developing new services to address the unique needs of the communities we serve.

We don’t do it alone. We rely on our Chapters to identify needs and carry out our mission on the ground. We rely on our strong relationships with the medical community to provide access to health care. We rely on strategic alliances with organizations that have the knowledge and infrastructure to extend our reach. We rely on you – our donors, volunteers, staff and friends.

Website: http://www.rmhc.com/who-we-are/mission-and-vision/
DMA Contact: Tom Lom

Robert J. Begiebing is the author of thirty articles and stories, a play, and six books, including an historical New England trilogy of novels spanning 1648-1850. His final novel in the trilogy, Rebecca Wentworth’s Distraction (UPNE, 2003), won the Langum Prize for historical fiction in 2003. The first novel in the trilogy, The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin (Algonquin, 1991, 1996), was chosen as a Main Selection for the Mystery and Literary Guild Book Clubs, has been optioned for a film, and is now available from the University Press of New England in a new 20th anniversary e-book and hard copy edition.

His novels, including a third book in the trilogy The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton (UPNE 1999, 2001), have been widely and favorably reviewed in The New York Times, The Times of London, The Los Angeles Times, Publisher’s Weekly, Yankee Magazine, and Library Journal among many other national and regional periodicals. He is also the author of two critical books on twentieth-century fiction, and an historical anthology of nature writing in English since the 18th century.

His fiction writing has been supported by grants from the Lila-Wallace Foundation and the New Hampshire Council for the Arts. In 2007, Governor John Lynch appointed Begiebing to the Council for the Arts. In 2009 he served as one of the inaugural faculty members at the Norman Mailer Writers’ Colony. He has been a finalist judge for the Langum Prize in historical fiction twice (2009-2010), and a member of the board of trustees for the New Hampshire Writers’ Project. He currently serves on the board of the Norman Mailer Society and on the editorial board of The Mailer Review.

He is Founding Director of the Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction at Southern New Hampsire University, where he has won three awards for excellence in teaching and is currently Professor of English, Emeritus.

Begiebing’s biographical novel about the great British landscape painter J.M.W. Turner. The Turner Erotica, explores the mysterious relationship between Turner’s secret life and work, and his public life and work, a mystery that Begiebing believes has yet to be fully explored or adequately explained.

Upon his death in 1851 at the age of seventy-six, Turner left a massive legacy of paintings and sketch studies to the National Gallery in London. Critic John Ruskin and Gallery Keeper Ralph Wornum, charged with sorting and cataloging that legacy, were shocked to discover a considerable body of erotica and other materials suggesting a secret life about which they and Turner’s colleagues had little knowledge. Documentary evidence suggests that to protect Turner’s reputation, Ruskin and Wornum burned most of the erotic materials.

Begiebing’s talk and slide show will consider Turner’s life and work, as a context for readers to better understand the novel, and to better appreciate Turner’s influence on American writers and artists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Arranged by Alex Garnett

Francis Thomas “Fay” Vincent, Jr. (born May 29, 1938) is a former entertainment lawyer and sports executive who served as the eighth Commissioner of Major League Baseball from September 13, 1989 to September 7, 1992.

After graduating from law school, Vincent was a partner in the law firm of Caplin & Drysdale. He also served as Associate Director of the Division of Corporation Finance of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Vincent was the chairman of Columbia Pictures and the vice chairman of Coca-Cola beginning in March 1982. In April 1986, he was promoted to the position of Executive Vice President of the Coca-Cola Company, which placed him in charge over all of the company’s entertainment activities.

Arranged by Jeff Freeman

David Walker, former Comptroller General in Washington D.C. will talk about the state of the Nation’s and Connecticut’s finances. According to Walker, the Government is too big as it is 24% of the economy, moving toward 37%.

Only 37% of spending is controlled by Congress, and 63% is fixed. There has been no budget for three years, so that there cannot be an allocation of resources. We must somehow control the spending, and 97% of those polled agree. The demographics show that the number of Social Security recipients is moving toward the same number of payees.

Program: 1) grow the economy, 2) reduce the amount of debt as a % of the economy, 3) The social effort made manageable, 4) Plan has to be politically feasible; opposition party must help.

The biggest holder of our debt is not China, but the Federal Reserve. We need extraordinary leadership from the President. He must go to the American public to pass legislation with bipartisan support.

We need redistricting to change the makeup of Congress reflect reality. Term limits would help, and House terms should be four years with half the House elected every two years.

Mark Albertson, historical research editor at Army Aviation magazine and a member of the United States Naval Institute as well as being a member of the Navy League will return to speak to us about America, Europe and the War of 1812 . It is not merely another rendition of the conflict itself; rather, it delves into the status of the fledgling Republic at the outset of the 19th century.  For this is the beginning of the American Empire, Manifest Destiny.  And the talk explores this theme with such developments as the Louisiana Purchase; the decline of France and Spain as New World colonial powers; the War of 1812 as a backwater to the main event in Europe, the Napoleonic Wars; and, the long-slow thaw in Anglo-American relations that eventually resulted in the two powers becoming allies on April 6, 1917.

Greg Van Antwerp will talk about his passionate second “career”. For the past 35 years Greg has been digging for historical treasure through every estate, garage and tag sale he could find. He will be sharing some of his discoveries and search techniques with us.

In 2009, Greg began blogging about his discoveries by creating the Confessions of an Urban Archeologist. There he presents hundreds of posts with photos, videos, and stories documenting the “best of” what he has discovered in his journeys. He also writes a weekly column for Patch titled “The Urban Archeologist” that is published in an average of 15 Patch towns each week.  Greg’s professional life has been spent working in community television for over 20 years.

During his treasure hunts Greg is known to travel with his favorite companion/assistant –  his daughter by his side. 

Former Connecticut Congressman Robert Steele will discuss the background to his novel, “The Curse: Big-Time Gambling’s Seduction of a Small New England Town” (Levellers Press, Amherst, MA). The story is set against the casino gambling explosion that hit Connecticut during the 1990s, when two Indian tribes built the world’s two biggest casinos in the southeastern corner of the state, resulting in what has been termed “a gambling Chernobyl.” Steele represented eastern Connecticut in Congress before the arrival of the casinos (Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun) and subsequently lived on the edge of the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation, giving him a keen appreciation of the political maneuvering that brought the casinos into being and a firsthand view of their impact.

WNPR/Connecticut Public Radio’s John Dankosky calls the novel “fascinating” and Connecticut author Martin Shapiro has described it as “compelling and timely…an epic story of history, money and politics that will make you wonder where America is headed.” The book comes at a time when Connecticut’s casinos face the prospect of heavy new competition from New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, and there is growing political pressure to legalize Internet gambling.

.Jayme Stevenson, Darien First Selectman, will speak on the “State of the Town”.

Jayme has lived in Darien twenty years and has been an active volunteer in variety of different organizations. She will talk about the problems facing Darien that include land use (including affordable housing), flood mitigation, senior center relocation/renovation, tax burden, continued downtown redevelopment, town swimming pool and more.