WDCSA Newsletter – February 2020

This month’s newsletter is available for download in PDF format.

Events Calendar

  • February 1 – WDCSA Lunar New Year Dim Sum
  • February 9 – Washington, DC Book Club Discussion
  • February 22 – Ivy/Seven Sisters Winter Indoor Round-Robin Mixed Doubles Tennis Party
  • February 24 – Ivy/ Seven Sisters Chess Social
  • March 9 – Baltimore Book Club Discussion
  • March 20 – Boomers to Busters Tenth Anniversary Celebration

Upcoming Events

WDCSA Lunar New Year Dim Sum

Saturday, February 1, 11am
Da Hong Pao
1409 14th St NW, Washington, DC

Join WDCSA in celebrating the Chinese Lunar New Year (2020 is the Year of the Rat) with dim sum! 

Dim sum are small bite-sized portions of food served in small steamer baskets or on a small plate. Think of it as Chinese brunch. This is a common way to eat with friends and family, typically on a weekend morning. 

Space is limited to the first 20 people. Please plan to bring $20 to cover the cost of food. 

RSVP here: https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/events/details?event_id=31720

Ivy/Seven Sisters Winter Indoor Round-Robin Mixed Doubles Tennis Party

Saturday, February 22, 6:50-11:50 pm
YMCA Arlington Tennis Center
3400 North 13th St, Arlington, Va

The Harvard Club of Washington DC invites Stanford alumni to join the Ivy schools plus the Seven Sisters for one of its most popular events. The Winter Indoor Mixed Doubles Tennis Party is an enjoyable way to socialize, meet potential partners, and network with alumni members and their guests.

Admission for players with advance registration is $30.  Door admission for players is $35 and is payable by cash only.  Admission is $10 for non-players.  Register at http://hcdc.clubs.harvard.edu/article.html?aid=1907 by February 21st to receive the advance registration rates.  Refund requests must be received by 3pm on February 21st.

For any questions, please contact Kuni Matsuda (Harvard), 240-294-5736 (w), 703-622-7999 (m), Stardust@smart.net or
David Federbush (Yale), 301-657-4691; federbus@erols.com.

Ivy/ Seven Sisters Chess Social

Monday, February 24, 6:45-9:30 pm
Sandbox DC
3251 Prospect St. NW, Washington, DC

Join IVY/Seven Sisters alumni for a chess social for players of all levels and ages.

Advanced registration for player / observer: $10 per by credit card; Door admission for player and observer: $15 cash only.

Soft drinks and light appetizers are included in the registration fee. There is free parking on-site at underground garage.

All payments must be received by February 23rd to qualify for the advanced registration price. Requests for refunds must be received by February 23rd.

There will be chess sets available at the event, but guests are encouraged to bring their own sets; please email the organizers if you plan to do so.

To send credit card registration and payment, visit: http://hcdc.clubs.harvard.edu/article.html?aid=1911.

Contact Kuni Matsuda, Stardust@smart.net, 240-294-5736 (w), or Bob Kolodney, BobkoLive@gmail.com for more information.

Boomers to Busters Tenth Anniversary Celebration

Friday, March 20, 6-8 pm
The Mansion
2020 O Street NW, Washington, DC

Ten years ago BtoB started with a “wing and a prayer.”  We had our kick-off at the Mansion in March 2010 and kept our fingers crossed.  Ten years later we are a thriving group and have held numerous successful events. We are going back to where it all started!  Come celebrate the year 2020 at the Mansion at 2020 O Street, which National Geographic called “one of DC’s hidden gems.”  Passed hors d’oeuvres and cash bar

Early Bird registration is $40 (limited number); Regular Registration is $50 until March 15th; after that Late Registration is $60 until March 18th.  Walk-ins (if available) are $75. To register click here.
 
The Mansion at 2020 O Street is two blocks from the Dupont Circle Metro, south exit.  Street parking is tight but there are commercial lots nearby. For more information about the Mansion: https://www.omansion.com

For more information about BtoB:  https://dc.uchicagoalumni.org/boomerstobusters

If you have questions, contact boomerstobusters@gmail.com.

Stanford In the News

  • Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, currently the Denning Professor in Global Business at the Graduate School of Business and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on public policy at the Hoover Institution, and a former Stanford provost, will be Hoover’s next director, Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne announced. Rice will assume her post as the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution on Sept. 1. She will succeed Thomas Gilligan, who has served as director for five years and announced his departure in 2019.

WDCSA Event Spotlight: Stanford Men’s Volleyball Tournament

On January 10th and 11th, the Stanford Men’s Volleyball team was in town for an AVCA (American Volleyball Coaches Association) tournament.  The tournament was held on George Mason University’s campus. On Friday evening, January 10th, the team played NJIT (New Jersey Institute of Technology) and on Saturday afternoon, January 11th, the team played George Mason. WDCSA members and the athletes’ families (some coming as far as Los Angeles and Canada) were in the bleachers cheering on the team.  Congrats to the Stanford men’s volleyball team for winning both games!  Thanks to Chris Shinkman and Bill Pegram for organizing the event.

WDCSA Event Spotlight: WDCSA & GSB New Year Social

On Wednesday, January 15th, WDCSA and the GSB co-hosted a New Year Social and Networking event at Mission Navy Yard. More than 40 alumni and guests mixed, mingled and made new connections. Alumni came from the startup, technology, legal, investment, consulting, government, and non-profit sectors. Mark your calendars for next year’s event.

Please reach out to Stephanie Tan at stephanie.tan@stanfordalumni.org or Patricia Arty patriciaarty@alumni.stanford.edu if you would like to help organize next year’s event.

WDCSA Book Club Corner

Washington DC Book Club Discussion

Sunday, February 9, 5-7:45 pm
Bethesda, Md

The book group will discuss The Seven Sisters: A Novel by Margaret Drabble.

The Seven Sisters presents readers with an idiosyncratic female heroine. Candida Wilton is a woman recently betrayed, rejected, and alienated from her three grown daughters.  After her divorce, she moves from a beautiful Georgian house in Suffolk to a two-room walk-up flat in central London, learns to use a computer (“this modern laptop machine”), swims at the gym, visits a convicted prisoner, and buys her first lottery ticket.

This is a novel about starting over, late in life. Candida makes new friends—widowed, divorced, never married, women straddled between generations—when she takes an evening class on Virgil’s Aeneid. Soon Candida receives a surprise inheritance that allows her to take a trip, tracing the path of Aeneas from Carthage to Italy, along with an old school friend named Julia, three of her Virgil classmates Sally, Ana, and Cynthia, their former teacher Ida Jerrold, and a beautiful, Ethiopian-Italian bus driver named Valeria. Together they compose the eponymous Seven Sisters. (In Greek mythology, the Pleiades were seven sisters: Maia, Electra, Alcyone, Taygete, Asterope, Celaeno and Merope.) 

The Seven Sisters argues for the beauty and relevance of myth and literature, even in the contemporary life of a middle-aged woman far away in time and sensibility from Aeneas and Dido. The women’s Aeneid expedition is the highlight of the book: magical, poetic, bright, expansive.

For more information, contact Suzanne Harris at szharris56@gmail.com.

Baltimore Book Club Discussion

Monday, March 9, 7:30 pm
The Hull Street Blues Cafe, 1122 Hull St, Baltimore, MD

Our March selection is Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving by Mo Rocca, an Emmy winning writer.  This book, the current Amazon #1 best seller in References and Collections of Biographies, complements the author’s Podcast with the same name, now in its third season.  These are the insightful obituaries of people, things, events, places, etc. that did not get the spotlight they deserved.

The May selection is Kitchens of the Great Midwest: A Novel by J. Ryan Stradal.

Questions/RSVP: Helene Myers, Ph.D., P’14, at cedarhouse@comcast.net.