Two online “community conversations” for parents, together titled “Current State of Affairs: Institutional Racism & Real Talk,” and sponsored by Darien organizations, will take place next week. Each one for parents of children in different age groups. Each conversation will be hosted on Zoom from 6 to 7:30 p.m. ‚ on June 23, 2020 for parents with children ages birth to 10 and on June 24 for parents of children ages 11 and up. — an announcement from the YWCA of Darien-Norwalk
Rashad Randolph will be a guest speaker, along with Lynn S. Sullivan, M.S. Ed., MA of Diversity Benchmark Consulting. The event is hosted by YWCA Darien/Norwalk in partnership with A Better Chance Darien and Council of Darien School parents.
Everyone’s invited to join hosts First Selectman Jayme Stevenson and state Rep. Terrie Wood for a morning cup of coffee and a conversation about the state budget, and how proposals in the new state legislative session would impact Darien. Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, recently announced his proposed budget for the 2020 legislative session, which includes initiatives that have people talking. Tolls, transportation, health, education, and other issues are being debated in Hartford and require our attention and response. The discussion takes place from 9 to 10:30 a.m., Saturday, Feb. 29 at the McGuane (pronounced “Mik-gwan”) field house behind the Noroton Heights Fire Department on Noroton Avenue.
Warren Tuttle, a Darien resident who marketed many of the kitchen products you’ve seen on shelves marked “As Seen on TV,” will speak Wednesday morning to the Darien Men’s Association about “Open Innovation.” Warren’s talk at the DMA’s meeting begins at about 10:45 a.m., Wednesday, Feb. 12 at the Darien Community Association, 274 Middlesex Road, Darien. Here’s the DMA announcement:
For those familiar with Smart Spin, the television direct response mega-hit kitchenware product [and if you’re not familiar with the name, check out the picture in this article], Warren Tuttle was the person behind the scenes helping to orchestrate its overnight success. Teaming with a Boston based inventor, Tuttle selected an explosive path to market.
Susan Thornton of the Yale Law School will deliver the final lecture of this year’s Darien Community Association 2020 Academic Lecture Series on Global Issues, ”China’s Global Reach,” at 8 p.m., Monday, Feb. 3. She will speak about “China – U.S. Relations.” Before the lecture guests are cordially invited to a wine reception starting at 7:30 p.m.
Currently Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale, Thornton also serves as Senior Fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center. In 2018 she retired from the State Department after a 28-year diplomatic career focused primarily on East and Central Asia. In leadership roles in Washington, she has worked on China and Korea policy, including stabilizing relations with Taiwan, the U.S.-China Cyber Agreement and the Paris Climate Accord.
The fourth speaker in the Darien Community Association Academic Lecture Series on Thursday, Jan. 30 will be Neysun Manhboubi, whose topic will be “China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Paving the Way to a New Global Order?”
— an announcement from the Darien Community Association
As a Research Scholar for Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania, his primary interests are in administrative law, contemporary law, and
Chinese law. He hosts the podcast for UPenn CSCC which includes conversations on Chinese politics, economy, law, and society with faculty, visitors and guest speakers. Prior to coming to the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Mahboubi was a trial attorney for the Federal Program Branch of the U.S. Department of Justice, a law clerk for Justice Douglas P. Woodlock of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and taught at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, University of Connecticut School of Law, and at Yale Law School. He has also taught and done research at the Peking University of Law.
Creativity workshops continue on Wednesday, Jan. 22 with a flower arranging workshop at the Darien Community Association. — an announcement from the Darien Community Association
Bring positive energy into your new year! We will be using repurposed wine bottles as vases with lovely white and green flowers. Enjoy making your own arrangement with the guidance of Allie Callan, a Darien resident and experienced floral designer from the New York Botanical Garden certificate program.
Corruption across cultures and over time will be the topic of the third talk in the Darien Community Association’s Winter Global Series, “China’s Global Reach: Challenge and Change Under Xi Jinping.” — an announcement from the Darien Community Association
It will take place at the Darien Community Association at 10 a.m., Friday, Jan. 24. (Please note the change to Friday morning is for this one event only). Yuen Yuen Ang is a political scientist and China specialist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her second book, “China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption,” to be published in May, will be the topic of the Friday, Jan.
Grace Farms Foundation today announced its upcoming public panel, “A Framework for Freedom,” which will discuss the critical role that public-private partnerships play in eradicating modern day slavery. — an announcement from Grace Farms Foundation
Hosted during National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, the event will address the importance of collaboration between organizations and local and federal law enforcement in preventing, investigating, and prosecuting human trafficking crimes. Grace Farms Foundation’s Rod Khattabi, chief accountability officer & Justice Initiative director, and Alina Reynolds, general counsel & senior advisor to the Justice Initiative, will be joined by Lt. Terry Blake of the Norwalk Police Department and Donna Hubbard, a human trafficking survivor. “It is vital that organizations like ours work in tandem with law enforcement agencies to provide the knowledge, resources, and tools necessary to effectively investigate human trafficking,” said Khattabi. “Collaborative efforts that educate the public and simultaneously support both local and global law enforcement strengthen our ability to fight this crime and increase the likelihood that one day we’ll live in a world without it.”
The Foundation’s Justice Initiative works to eradicate the multi-billion-dollar industry of human trafficking and forced labor through training, policy, and advocacy.
Youth today worry about academics, sports, college. When is it too much? The Darien Special Education Parents Advisory Committee and Darien Library invite you to a presentation Jan. 8 on “Social Anxiety & Generalized Anxiety Disorder” by national expert Jerry Bubrick, PhD. — an announcement from Darien SEPAC
The presentation takes place from 12 noon to 1:30 p.m., Wednesday, Jan.
The life of Leonardo Da Vinci is being celebrated around the world on the 500th anniversary of his death in 1519. Columbia University adjust professor, Page Knox, will discuss Da Vinci’s most-known works at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 9 at Darien Library on Thursday. — an announcement from Darien Library
In this hour-long presentation, Page will explore Da Vinci’s unique and creative mind of one of the most renowned geniuses of all time and guide you through the highlights of Paris’ Louvre exhibit, Leonardo at the Louvre. Informed by the major themes of the show, the lecture will place Leonardo’s paintings and drawings in context and explore how his continual investigation of the natural world brought life to his exceptional body of work.
Persian music and poetry will be featured at an evening concert-talk, “Gifts From the Magi: Music and Poetry of the Near East,” by Amir Vahab and Ensemble at 6 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 11 at St. Luke’s Darien. — an announcement from St. Luke’s Parish
Vahab is one of New York’s most celebrated composer/vocalists of Sufi and Near Eastern music.
What is it about Italy? Cultural Superpower yet merely a mountainous Mediterranean peninsula, Italy has exerted an outsized force on the world, Western civilization and the popular imagination over the course of millennia. Carla Gambescia, an author and lecturer on all things Italian, will speak Wednesday, Nov. 6, at the Darien Men’s Association’s morning meeting. — an announcement from the Darien Men’s Association
Explore the special alchemy of Italy and the “cultural DNA” that has made Italy not only so influential, but also so beloved.
Steve Mandel, recent Teach for America board chair, on Wednesday will give a talk discussing the organization’s unique approach to educating children from urban and rural low income communities. Mandel will speak at a meeting of the Darien Men’s Association from about 10:45 a.m. to 12 noon at the Darien Community Association. — an announcement from the Darien Men’s Association
Teach for America
Teach For America is a nonprofit organization whose stated mission is to “enlist, develop, and mobilize as many as possible of our nation’s most promising future leaders to grow and strengthen the movement for educational equity and excellence.”
The organization aims to accomplish this by recruiting and selecting college graduates from top universities around the United States to serve as teachers. The selected members, known as “corps members,” commit to teaching for at least two years in a public or public charter K–12 school in one of the 52 low-income communities that the organization serves. TFA was founded by Wendy Kopp based on her 1989 Princeton University undergraduate thesis.
A Darien Community Association Women’s Luncheon on Nov. 5 will feature a representative from Sotheby’s auction house talking about colored gems— rubies, emeralds and sapphires — their qualities and origins, and how to determine which are the finest. The presentation will be given by Alexander Eblen, a Sotheby’s senior specialist and vice president. Audience participation will be encouraged. Founded in 1744, Sotheby’s is the oldest and largest internationally recognized firm of fine art auctioneers in the world.
All art is in dialogue with other art, says Wall Street Journal art critic Lance Esplund, who continues his lecture series on modern art on Thursday, Oct. 24 at the Darien Community Association. — an announcement from the Darien Community Association
Esplund, author of The Art of Looking: How to Read Modern and Contemporary Art will start his lecture, “Navigating Contemporary Art” at 11 a.m.
“Artists might explore an ancient myth, the experience of a kiss, the disasters of war, unrequited love, or the tensions between two rectangles — but no matter what their subjects, they are all speaking with the same vocabulary and the same elements of art,” Esplund says. What can be the conundrum of contemporary art is deconstructed under the framework that artists, whether working abstractly, representationally or conceptually—are in a constant process of revitalizing and extending the language and vocabulary of art to tell their story, and lived experience in the world. Influenced by their intuitive absorption and direct engagement with the cultural moment in time that they live in, they create new stories for the rest of us to use as bridges to meaning and understanding in the maelstrom of confusion that can surround us.
On Thursday, Oct. 17, Lance Esplund will give a lecture on “Abstraction” at the Darien Community Association (DCA) as part of their DCA Art Lecture Series this fall on “The Art of Looking” based on the author’s recently published book. — an announcement from the Darien Community Association
As the author and educator tells us, “Abstraction is often considered a Modern invention—and certainly, abstraction was reborn in the early twentieth century—and yet abstract art existed alongside representational art in Paleolithic caves.”
In his discussion he contrasts the two ways of making art, both of which are intuitive reflections from artists of the contemporary society that they live in — whether that be ancient Greece and the Renaissance and art that re-creates the look, and three-dimensional space of our world or, during periods of political and domestic tumult, a shift toward artworks that “suppress the outside world’s look and space: {and reflect} our inner unrest and sense of alienation.”
Esplund breaks down the gallery walls to help us understand that the New Now (!) artists at the Venice Biennale share their interpretive explorations of humans living in the year 2019 with the 15th century Italian artist Leonardo, who was the first artist to explore the interiority of a human being — in a face. All lectures will be followed by a luncheon specially designed by Diane Browne Catering. The DCA’s 2019 Art Lecture Series Sponsor is DRBank, formerly Laurel Road Bank.
