With training wheels firmly in place President-Elect Eric took the Club ...April 24, 2014

New Canaan Rotary Club Bulletin                                        April 24, 2014

 

With training wheels firmly in place President-Elect Eric took the Club out for his initial test drive.  Filling both the initiator and blessing roles with aplomb, he had us in the chow line in record time.  Had a consultant been in our midst, she would have labeled Fred redundant and recommended a reduced management head count.

 

There were no Visiting Rotarians or guests.  Multi-hatted Rob, filling one more role than Eric, reminded the membership to assemble this Saturday morning at 9:00 in the Saxe parking lot to Clean Our Mile.  He will provide coffee, doughnuts [a muffin for Amy] and bags.  Bring your own gloves.  Wearing his lesbian [for those who think I meant thespian, don't judge until you see the show] hat, he reported that the Gridiron show for the ladies had been well received by the 120 attendees last night and that the Friday evening show is sold out and will commence with cocktails at 6:00, dinner at 7:00 and show at 8:00.  Finally, he invited all to come shop on  Saturday at the Boy Scouts tag sale, featuring his 1972 Mercedes Benz, in the St. A's gym starting at 9:00 AM.  Exhausted, he sat.

 

Ben, Fred and John Bemis will  represent us at the District Assembly and Conference in Mystic on May 2, 3 and 4.  Brock reported that because the Stamford Club is MIA he is considering the Viet Nam strategy of declaring victory and going home.  He and his advisors will decide in the near future whether or not to cancel and will let us know.  If you are planning to play PLEASE e-mail Brock TODAY [btsaxe@tombrockcorp.com] and confirm.

 

At that point the waiters entered the room bearing a birthday cake with an 8 and a 0 on it as the audience broke into a rousing version of Happy Birthday to Skip.  Mike Hobbs reported that, even with assurances that Fire Marshall Fred would be absent, he could not prevail on Thierry to put 80 candles on the cake.  A milestone not to be taken lightly.

 

Keith has delivered dictionaries to NCCS, West is scheduled for Monday at 9:30 AM and South on Tuesday at 2:00 PM.  Monsignor Engel will take care of the roadblock at St. A's and Keith will keep trying with East.  Elves would be welcome.

 

Sergeant Scott had a profitable day collecting special fines from Ed Nordgaard in memoriam of the University of Minnesota's futile effort in the NCAA Hockey Championship; John Burns for his safe return from a Viking cruise to Budapest; John Bemis for ten days in sunny Italy; Chris Nyalis for a successful speech on Rotary to students at Manhattanville; Tom Cronin for a couple of days at the Masters; Rob for his eldest child having attained teenagerdom; Leo in honor of Skip; and finally, Sandy who is recovering at an astonishing rate from her total knee replacement.

 

 

 

 

Program Chair Ken then introduced New Canaan native, graduate of Center, Saxe and NCHS [Class of 1993] NewCanaanite.com founder, reporter, webmaster, CEO, director of ad sales, editor and culture carrier Michael Dinan.  He followed the traditional education to employment route from Penn to Oxford [philosophy major] to bar tender before moving on to stops at Deloitte, the Greenwich Time and The Patch, from whence he started his new Internet news venture.  He explained the vagaries and difficulties involved in spawning a startup in a new field;  few established rules or metrics, subject to gaming and character assassination.  He features New Canaan content with an emphasis on quality-of-life issues and strives to make his site fun, interactive and immediate.  He will not publish comments without a complete name for attribution, thereby correcting the most negative element of the little-mourned Patch.  His presentation was educational and entertaining and introduced at least some of us to a lively new source of daily local news.

 

Ben Bradlee