THE SENIOR MEN'S CLUB OF NEW CANAAN
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of April 26, 2002
Acting President Ron Seger opened the business meeting at 10:00 on a bright, breezy morning with 152 members present. Total membership is 494, with 6 invitees and 27 waiting. Ken deGroot introduced new members Michael Coady, Peter Panos, and John Calitri.
Membership Concerns: Dick dePatie is home and ambulatory following heart surgery. Horace Crary is recovering satisfactorily from the same.
Activities: Bowling today seeks more participants. Bridge win play for sure, at Lapham. The golf season win open officially at NCCC on May 8th, for $67 per. Trailblazers will be walking the same day. Paddle prospers, but racquetball has temporarily dwindled to two. The 4F's will meet today at Trattoria via Sforza in Norwalk.
Couth: Bob Wosahla and Ron both reported on the Washington trip concluded yesterday. Of particular note were the thoughtful arrangements made for us by Chris Shays, and a 45 minute exclusive briefing for SMC by Press Secretary Ari Fleisher. The Bronx Zoo is on for May 14th,. And June 12th is Goodspeed; the CT jazz festival is July 27th; and in August we ride the Port Jefferson ferry, with revised date of the 15th rather than the 8th. In September we race at Belmont, followed by the theater (Oklahoma) in October, and a visit to West Point in November.
Announcements: Jim D'Acosta seeks volunteers to supervise the building of a whaleboat in a fifth grade classroom in elapsed time of 2 1/2 days. For real! We've done it before. Ron reported that we are oversold for the luncheon on May 3rd at Woodway. 288 is capacity, and he is going to have to put about 17 on a wait list hoping for cancellations. Bill Schulhof, retiring Ombudsman for the state at Waveny Care Center, described the job and sought a candidate to be his replacement. This is challenging but very rewarding work.
Resident Humorist: John Berg told a story about a bus stop and a pair of zippers, the moral being to exercise care and vigilance when unzipping.
Speaker: Bob Jeffries introduced Daryl Hawk, a noted free-lance travel photographer, who, in a series of extraordinary slide images, shared his travels from Alaska to the Antarctic via the Yukon, Newfoundland, the Dakotas, the U.S. Southwest, California, the Everglades, Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, and Argentina and Patagonia. Daryl grew up with the National Geographic and a photographer grandfather, and he heard early on the "little voices" beckoning him to mysteries of the unknown. He travels alone, except for a driver. He prefers wilderness or places off the beaten track, and these out of season. He spends several weeks in each location, so as to absorb the essence of the place and to earn the friendship of the people he will photograph. Each location calls for a few hundred rolls of film; the camera is always at hand, as an extension of his mind and heart and soul. He takes pictures, rather than making posed compositions. His latest venture was two weeks in Chile, after months of study, and he displayed with great enthusiasm some landscapes and people pictures from this trip.
Daryl prefers simple and rugged equipment. He insists that lighting is of paramount importance: it is best at the beginning and end of the day, and he showed some hauntingly beautiful shots to prove it. He is now preparing for a 25 year project moving west from Asia into Europe, and we look forward to seeing the results of this saga as it progresses.
Peter Schurman - Assistant Secretary