Dear Dunworkin Members,

If you know of any members that may be ill or having other difficulties, please notify John Adams at John9048@Gmail.com.

Updated November 30, 2024

The club meets on the 2nd and 4th Fridays of the month at the Upper Montclair Presbyterian Church located at 53 Norwood Avenue, Upper Montclair. There is informal Socializing beginning at 10:30 followed by a presentation from an invited speaker at 11:00. The topics vary from meeting to meeting. Attendees pay for lunch prior to the presentation. Lunch and additional informal socializing begin at noon.

THE NEXT DUNWORKIN MEETING IS IN JANUARY 2025

12/13/24 Holiday Lunch

01/26/24 Wiley Hausam, new Director of Arts and Cultural Programming with Peak Performances at Montclair State. He is a former protege of Hal Prince (of Evita fame) and George C. Wolfe at the Public Theater in New York. His topic will be about his life in theater and his role as a seasoned cultural arts programmer at NYU’s Skirball Center, the Bing Concert Hall at Stanford University, and more recently at the North Carolina School of the Arts.Over the course of his career Wiley has worked with such artists as Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Jon Batiste,  Dianne Reeves, Lang Lang, Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, the Emerson String Quartet, Itzhak Perlman,  Laurie Anderson, the Kronos Quartet, etc.He will also give us a preview of the upcoming 2024 season at Montclair State. 

02/09/24 Dr. Khemani Gibson, graduate lecturer at Brooklyn College.  He received his doctorate in history from New York University and has held lecturer positions at NYU, Columbia, and currently Brooklyn College. He is a community organizer and historian from Orange, NJ who specializes in researching and teaching about the African Diaspora, Caribbean migration, and racial justice in New Jersey. He uses his training as a historian to illuminate the ways inequalities of the past continue to affect Black and brown communities and to help community organizers and leaders build a more just society.

Dr. Gibson’s lecture, “Unmaking the Panama Canal,” will explore the history of the Black West Indian workers who built the Panama Canal. With the opening of the canal on August 15, 1914, the United States not only produced a technological marvel that forever altered world geography, but it also launched the nation’s status as a rising world power. Eager to escape the constraints and stagnancy of late nineteenth and early twentieth century British colonialism, British West Indians viewed the Panama Canal as a land of opportunity to self-determine and create lives for themselves, their families, and communities. It is in this migration that we gain greater insight into the creation of not only the Panama Canal and how it foreshadowed the rise of the US over the coming century, but also of how Black identities are constantly formed and transformed in the search for full freedom.

02/23/24 Anjuli Ramos-Busot, State Director for the New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club, and both a long-standing environmental scientist and activist. Anjuli earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico before getting her M.S. in Environmental Chemistry and Air Pollution Science and Technology from Rutgers University. With previous experience at the NJ Department of Environmental Protection as both a climate change researcher and air quality specialist, Anjuli has in-depth knowledge of how the climate crisis impacts residents right here in New Jersey. In her time at the NJ Chapter, Anjuli has served for several years as the Air Quality Issues Coordinator, and as Chapter Director has led and mobilized hundreds of volunteers to stand for offshore wind and clean energy, fights to shut down the expansion of natural gas power plants, and marked the end of coal in New Jersey forever at the closure of the Logan and Chambers facilities.

03/08/24 Tracey Nguyễn Mang, arrived in America at the age of three as part of the Vietnamese refugee exodus. In 2018, inspired by her family’s refugee story, she founded Vietnamese Boat People (www.vietnameseboatpeople.org) to preserve stories from the community and to empower others in exploring their family histories and personal narratives. She is working now to transform traditional oral histories into accessible storytelling formats. Over the years, Vietnamese Boat People has received grant funding from a variety of prestigious institutions. Their podcast received recognition, including the 2020 Silver ‘Best Mission Driven’ award from the Asian Podcast Network.  Additionally, it was a finalist for the 2023 Community Heritage Heroes award from The Asian American Foundation. Their work has been featured in Forbes.org, NPR, and incorporated into university critical refugee studies. Presently, the work is being archived at New York University’s Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives and The Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU. 

03/22/24 Cynthia Kitay, Director of Development for the Montclair Literary Festival, which runs this year from April 27 to May 4, 2024. Cynthia will provide a preview of the program and describe how it is all put together. Revenue from the festival benefits Succeed2gether, a not-for-profit organization providing free one-on-one tutoring to children from low-income families in Montclair and the surrounding area.

Ms. Kitay has both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in sociology, as well as a law degree that led to a 20-year career as Senior Counsel in the Enforcement Division of the New York Stock Exchange. Prior to her legal career, Cynthia worked in the music business in band management and as a writer for a music trade paper.

04/12/24 Charles Bagli, has written about  the intersection of “politics AND real estate” in NYC for over 30 years, starting with the NY Observer, and then the NY Times. Drawing upon contact with all the NY power centers, his subjects include the battle to build a $2 billion stadium for the Jets on the West Side, rebuilding the World Trade Center, corruption in the construction industry and with tax assessors, sale of the Stuyvesant Town Peter Cooper Village, and rejuvenation of Times Square. These projects were covered by a host of publications in addition to the Times.

His topic for our meeting will cover the trial of Robert Durst, heir apparent to a vast NY real estate empire. He wrote a total of more than80 stories for the Times about the suspicions surrounding Robert Durst, heir to a vast real estate empire, over 23 years. Bagli describes Durst’s case as “a unique tale of power, money, and crime” covering a period of 23 years, and involved his living in Los Angeles, the site of the trial, for five months. Interest in the case has not diminished, and HBO will begin airing The Jinx (The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst) Part 2 April 21.

He moved reluctantly to Montclair, but it had been the home of his wife Ellie, and he has grown to appreciate the unique economic and ethnic character and has never moved from the home they purchased in 1988. As evidence of interests far beyond journalism, he has run the NYC marathon twice, coached a girls softball team for 12 years, and with his wife raised two daughters.

04/26/24 Spring Lunch

05/10/24 Rev. Greg Horn’s topic topic is “From Liberia to Kenya, to Brazil: A New Vision for a Church’s International Engagement.”

Rev. Gregory. Horn has been pastor and head of staff at the Presbyterian Church of Upper Montclair since early 2009. Greg is a graduate of Stanford University and Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, where he was recognized for his preaching and promise of future excellence in parish ministry.

Since 1991 he has led four Presbyterian congregations through periods of sustained renewal, vitality, and growth–including churches in Belleville, NJ; Englewood, NJ; Denver, Colorado; and Cranford, New Jersey. In the early-2000s, Greg served as Director of Operations for a New York City agency employing recently incarcerated felons and housed homeless persons living with HIV/AIDS. Since 2005, he has also served on staff at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City and lecturing at Union Theological Seminary on Reformed theology and worship. Before becoming a minister, Greg worked as a software designer at Microsoft, a case clerk at a corporate law firm, a housepainter, a “grunt” for a local utility, and other interesting jobs.

Greg’s approach is in compelling worship, valuing diverse voices and relationships, and serving others while working for social justice. He is dedicated to the vision of an inclusive community orientation where everyone is welcomed.

Greg is married to Sarah Touborg-Horn, Vice President, and Editor at W.W. Norton Publishing in New York City. They are the parents of a college student, Will, and high schooler, Maggie. He can be reached at  greghorn@pcum.org.

07/12/24 Summer Lunch

09/13/24 Rick Wright leads Birds and Art tours in Europe and the Americas for Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, ventbird.com. A widely published author and sought-after lecturer, Rick studied French, German, Philosophy, and Life Sciences at the University of Nebraska. After a detour to Harvard Law School, he took the Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University, then spent a dozen years as an academic, holding successive appointments as Assistant Professor of German at the University of Illinois, Reader in Art and Archaeology at Princeton University, and Associate Professor of German at Fordham University. His publications include two books on the Latin animal literature of the late Middle Ages, two field guides to bird identification, and the Peterson Reference Guide to American Sparrows. He is also the co-author, with Sanford Sorkin, of Watching Birds in Montclair and of Feeding Birds in Northern New Jersey. A member of the Montclair Bird Club’s executive board, Rick lives in Bloomfield with his wife, the medievalist Alison Beringer; their little girl, Avril; and the world’s jet-blackest lab, Quetzal. 

The topic will be: Birds Where We Want Them 

09/27/24 Anne Mernin, Executive Director of Toni’s Kitchen, will describe the history and range of activities devoted to assisting those with basic needs.

Toni’s Kitchen was started in 1982 by parishioners at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Montclair with the simple mission to “serve our neighbors in need.” Following the lead of a soup kitchen in nearby Paterson, people arriving for a hot meal were treated as guests and served restaurant style. The parishioners felt that this approach offered more dignity and respect than the traditional “stand in line” soup kitchen model. And thus, it continued and grew for the next 37 years. Adopting a community partner model, meals were served at St. Lukes and foodstuffs were quietly embedded in approximately 60 community organizations serving the hungry and homeless, largely in Montclair. Toni’s Kitchen provides approximately 240,000 meals annually.

Then came 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Virtually overnight those 60 organizations that had been the channel for food distribution to the community were shut down by the Governor’s order. The supply chain wasn’t merely broken, it ceased to exist. At the same time demand increased as jobs were lost, people were quarantined, people were dying. Undaunted, Toni’s Kitchen, and indeed the entire parish, led by John Mennell, pastor, and Anne Mernin, Executive Director, were determined to pick up the slack.

Come and hear how what started as a modest somewhat traditional soup kitchen, challenged to its core by the pandemic, has grown to serving more than two million meals (yes, 2,000,000) annually supported by a mere half-dozen employees and over 2,000 volunteers. As one donor expressed it, “This is a case study for the Harvard Business Review.”

Anne Mernin has committed herself, and Toni’s Kitchen, to overcome food insecurity in the communities it serves within the next 3-5 years. Come and hear how.

Anne came to Toni’s Kitchen as its executive director in 2010, following a rich history in management at Coopers & Lybrand, Société Générale and as co-founder and co-director of Montclair Bounce. Anne grew up in Montclair, graduated from Montclair High, University of Virginia, and NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, has three brilliant children and is an avid hiker.

10/11/24 Joe Granger, Executive Director of MESH, or Montclair Emergency Services for Hope. The organization provides basic and essential services to Montclair’s homeless adults and families through partnerships with local churches and synagogues. Joe has only been ED since March of this year, but has made impactful changes, broadening the laundry services, implementing a job acquisition program, and increasing the Shop operations from 2-3 days per week to 6. His prior experience was with Hillsong Church in Montclair, as board member and volunteer, and before that 20 years of sales and business management with a number of enterprises.

He will familiarize us with their services, the number of people they serve, as well as discussing the nature of the challenges those people and families face. Most of us have had genuine success with rewarding careers, and often never had the chance to learn of others, often with equal potential skill sets, who have not been as fortunate. Life circumstances, sometimes random, can contribute to a gap which can be sizable.

10/25/24 Lieutenant Tyrone Williams, who has served with the Montclair police force since 1999. A native of Los Angeles, he graduated from Los Angeles public schools, and later with a degree in Criminal Justice from Caldwell, NJ, College, and from Seton Hall with an MA in Human Resources Administration.  He served our country for eight years in the U.S. Army, as a combat veteran in the Gulf War.

His experience in Montclair has put him in touch with many functions of the police force, including Patrol, School Resources and Community Police, Juvenile and Narcotics Detective, and Community Service and has often been supervisor in those roles.  Beyond those involvements his community activities include coaching in the Police Athletic League, the Board of the Montclair YMCA, and the Salvation Army. Few residents have a broader array of activities throughout Montclair.

 He will discuss the Montclair Police Department Community Service Unit.

11/08/24 Giovanni Restrepo wiil be our speaker on November 8. He is the Chief Operations Officer of the United Way of Northern NJ.  One of his goals has been advancing the mission of the ALICE operation (Assets Limited, Constrained Income, Employed).

He has had 27 years of non-profit leadership and a commitment to improving the lives of underserved communities, as evidenced by leading the Boys & Girls Club of Paterson and Passaic, and prior to that managing Vision to Learn, which improved vision care and other tools for academic success for children throughout NJ. He draws upon a Bachelor’s Degree in Recreation Management from Kean University, and a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Rutgers.

We heard several years ago about the ALICE program, but the Covid disruptions have introduced new challenges for millions of US citizens.  About 37 million US citizens live at poverty level, which is already a challenge, but recent studies have indicated that about 1/2 of all households have cash reserves of less than $500, which means living paycheck to paycheck, and it is that group which draws the attention of the ALICE program.  Mr. Restrepo will discuss the breadth of those activities, which now include nearly all states, the progress they have made, and challenges they still face.

12/13/24 Holiday Lunch

LINK TO 2022-3 SPEAKERS AND EVENTS IS BELOW

Prior Year’s Speakers and Events