THE SENIOR MEN'S CLUB OF NEW CANAAN
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of June 7, 2002
President Bob Witt opened the meeting with 112 members present. Membership is 500 with 32 on the waiting list.
Announcements: Vance Ward will hold a new member meeting at 8:45 a.m. in the church library before next week's meeting. Coffee and donuts will be served. Those invited to attend have been informed. Joe Sweet announced that there would be two concerts at the Historical Society on Sunday. First is the town band from 1-3 p.m., the second a Hurdy Gurdy band of unusual instruments at 6:30. Rod Keagy advised us to get our ears tuned to Channel 73 to hear Richard Holbrooke speak.
Activities: Tennis is in full swing, so are bridge and racquetball. 4Fs next luncheon site is still a mystery. Golf next outing is 7/15 at the Ridgefield Golf Club. Trailblazers next outing is 6/12 at West Rock Ridge. Take off is at 8:30 a.m from St. Marks'.
Couth: 6/19 is Goodspeed, 7/27 the CT Jazz Festival, 8/15 Port Jefferson Ferry, and 9/19 is Belmont, without War Emblem. October Oklahoma, and November West Point are sold out, and December 4 is a new entry for the month: Newport, Rhode Island to see the mansions decorated for Christmas.
Jester: John Berg told us that Viagra is now coming out in liquid form, bottled by Pepsi. It definitely will not be a soft drink. John also told about a group of young maidens swimming in the all together in an old farmer's pond, inhabited by alligators, or so he said.
Speaker: Vice President Jack Murray introduced Gregg Glasser, a beer expert. Mr. Glasser discussed the history of beer, and the general types of beer now available around the world. The origin of beer goes back five to eight thousand years to the Tigris and Euphrates valley in ancient Mesopotamia. The ancient Egyptians were prolific beer drinkers, as were the Turks. Beer, coming from grain, was mostly a northern European brew since the southerners had grapes and therefore developed wine instead. In today's world beer is broken down into two categories, lager and ale. Most lager today is bastardized, no longer true barley, but a mixture of grains. That helps keep the cost down. The modern beer industry grew dramatically in the mid-nineteenth century with the development of the railroad, and development of glass. The Germans were prominent in that industrial explosion with names such as Anheuser Busch, Schmitz and Pabst, which eventually found their way to the New World. Czechoslovakia was also an important beer center. It was also at this time when Louis Pasteur and other scientists helped give the brewers a better understanding of how to handle yeast, a most important factor in the brewing process. Today there are over 1300 breweries in the U.S., up from 21 in the mid -seventies. Our biggest imported beer is Corona. Mr. Glasser definitely does think beer is a wonderful drink. It must be, for it has the backing of such historical notables as Plato, Kaiser Wilhelm, Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill, and Abraham Lincoln. That's a pretty powerful line up.
Eric Musa, Secretary