Washington Area Lunch - November 9, 2012

Pictures were submitted by Dave Carruth

Twenty-three of the Washington/Annapolis folks got together at the reincarnation of the Army/Navy Country Club (see picture)

As you can see from the interior shots the new club is plush and I must say, compared to the porch where we used to meet, it is dark.  I wish we could have light and plush.  The club was very good to let us have a luncheon for so few people without raising the price, but I suspect they are trying to get their old clientele to come back now that they are again open for business. The food was good and the service excellent; however, the parking situation is still absolutely unacceptable.  I believe the plan is to make a huge parking lot where the old club building is now.

 You will note the low number of attendees at this luncheon.  It is becoming more and more difficult to get the 40 people we nearly always had and sometimes exceeded.  The Club asks that we guarantee 40 (see comment above).  The Annapolis people are less and less motivated to hit the beltway to drive 50 plus miles for lunch and the Washington people feel the same about lunch in Annapolis.  Our May luncheon location, Pirates Cove, is a great favorite for all of us but not every other month.  Anyway, the question naturally arises “do we continue to try to have a luncheon every other month, skipping June, July and August, or should we fall back to just occasional gatherings”?  To facilitate a discussion we updated the local area roster and Warren went through it marking the Washington and Annapolis folks and came to the conclusion that we are almost equally split between Virginia and Maryland.  If you go through that roster and mark those who have said that due to health reasons they will no longer come to luncheons and then limit your expectations to exclude either the Annapolis or Washington people it will be difficult to find 40 people to munch lunch.  After that discussion Warren asked the attendees “should we continue steaming as before?” and the answer was “yes”.  This will be the subject of continuing discussion.

Warren then asked Charlie Mertz, as our new treasurer, to bring us up to speed on the “flower” fund.  Charlie says that money has been coming in since the request appeared in Shipmate and our current balance is $9,129.99.  Please continue donating.  We currently have 337 graduates still alive plus at least 42 non-graduates plus the wives of both which means that our ultimate need could be $76,000.

Charlie Heid reported that the $2M the Class gave to the Academic Department for Information Technology now stands at $1,979,799. 
       
Roger Carlquist told us that he has reunion deposits for 79 people so far.  Nineteen other people have indicated they plan to attend but have not sent in their deposits so check you check book and see if you have mailed a check.

Warren asked Jim Beggs before the luncheon if he would talk to us, his choice of subject.  Jim started by quoting Genesis 1,2,3 and stopped at:  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Jim said that was the beginning and he then did a review of man’s attempts to scientifically back up through Bible. He reviewed early astronomers/cosmologists up through the big bang theory, Einstein and Hubble, the Red Shift, NASA’s involvement with the Cosmic Background Explorer and finally the expanding universe.  Einstein says the universe is finite so it will expand to some limit and then evaporate.

 In response to a comment that some theory says it will “collapse” but Jim says the thinking as of now is that it will evaporate i.e. we started as nothing, we’ll return to nothing. 

I really enjoyed Jim’s talk but wonder, on a Universal scale, how would one tell the difference between collapse and evaporate?

Our next luncheon is now scheduled for Jan 11th.