Planned Events
Saturday Brunch
Fraser Smith on His New Book
The Daily Miracle: A Memoir of Newspapering
The backdrop to this memoir is the death of newspapers across the country, leaving news deserts -- places with no easy access to good or even shoddy papers. Worse, some papers soldier on unable to meet the lowest demands of anything called a newspaper. "Ghost" papers have the trappings -- the proud names, etc,-- but little capacity to do the work our founders knew we would need to sustain a democracy.
The book includes stories about my life as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist at The Sun. As for many of my colleagues, newspapering was a calling. I realized at some point that I had always wanted to represent my townspeople. I literally saw myself in that role. I started a month or so before Kennedy was assassinated -- fitting, I suppose for a career demarcated by assassinations and wars of many kinds: for civil rights, women's rights and the needs of the poor. So, my book is part social and political history, part obituary and part "appreciation."
Sam Hopkins will host
Wednesday Dinner
The Breakthrough Plan for the Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute
Fred Bronstein will describe this “Breakthrough Plan.”
In June, 2014, Dean Bronstein began his appointment as the first dean of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. And in July, 2019, he was renewed for a second five-year term.
Since his arrival at Peabody, Dean Bronstein has established Peabody’s five-year
Breakthrough Plan
to focus the Institute on big strategic goals and financial sustainability for the future.
Dean Bronstein is also an accomplished pianist, dedicated music educator, and successful chief executive of American symphony orchestras.
Wednesday Dinner
Perceiving Light: A Brief History of Our Understanding of Light, Leading to the Invention of the Laser
By Joe Ganem
Light is a fascinating, subtle, and profound phenomenon that many of the greatest minds in history have struggled to understand. This struggle has resulted in some of humanity’s greatest intellectual and technological achievements. The talk will take a brief historical tour, provide an explanation of the invention and operation of the laser, and feature some demonstrations.
Joe Ganem is a club member and Professor of Physics at Loyola University Maryland. He is an author on numerous scientific papers in the fields of optical materials, lasers, and magnetic resonance. Joe speaks and writes frequently on science and education issues, and has been a contributor of articles on these topics to the
Baltimore Sun
newspaper. For its 2017 “Best of Baltimore” awards,
Baltimore
magazine named him one the “Best Baltimoreans” in its people in the media section for the category “Best Defense of Science.”
Saturday Brunch
Susan Pfeiffer on Who Owns the Bones?
A Story about Repatriation
Discoveries of ancient human skeletons can be informative, but also disruptive. Museums and universities hold collections, the results of past excavations. Susan Pfeiffer will talk about her part in helping with the re-burial of over 1700 ancestral skeletons by First Nations (Indian) descendants in Canada. The story provides a framework for discussing “truth and reconciliation” between the first peoples of the Americas and the in-comers who now greatly outnumber them.
Dr. Pfeiffer is an anthropologist with a specialty in learning about the distant past through the analysis of human skeletons. Her research has taken her to museums and archaeological digs in Canada, Kenya and South Africa. Think of the TV series Bones, but focusing on the long-dead. She will talk about what can be learned from human remains when their “final resting place” is disturbed. Her focus will be repatriation - the transfer of responsibility to the descendants – in an international context.
Susan Pfeiffer is Professor Emeritus at University of Toronto. Since her move to Baltimore with her husband Eaton Lattman in 2017, she has also been a research associate at the Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology at George Washington University. And she has also taught at the University of Cape Town, Department of Archaeology, and retains an affiliation there.
Wednesday Dinner
Martin Clarke on Prosecution of Mayor Pugh
Unites States v. Catherine Pugh: How the Sale of Children's Books Resulted in the Conviction of Baltimore's Mayor.
Federal prosecutor Martin Clarke will chronicle the investigation and prosecution of former Mayor Pugh for the fraudulent sale of Healthy Holly children's books and related criminal offenses. Before joining the United States Attorney's Office, Martin Clarke was an Assistant State's Attorney for Baltimore City for ten years. For the past twenty years, he has prosecuted a wide range of federal cases and served as Chief of the Fraud and Public Section and Senior Litigation Counsel.
Tim Wolf will host
