General
Feel life is passing you by? Activities with fellow Mensans will turn this around. Think coffees, martinis, movies, dinners, quizzes, anything that ravels up the tired sleeve of care. Suggest it, we’re game. We’re informal, unstructured, and intellectually stimulating. Want a change? Here’s where to come. Mensa Calgary is a community where members interact, network, support each other, and have fun. For further info, contact Patricia at kathleen4057@yahoo.ca ["There’s no pleasure on earth that’s worth sacrificing for the sake of an extra five years in the geriatric ward of the Sunset Old People’s Home." (John Mortimore)]
MensaTest
Watch this page for the October Mensa test date. Or email/phone Vicki Herd at vherd@shaw.ca, (403) 243-6144. Testing should take just over an hour and is user-friendly.
The testing fee is $90. This covers the cost of writing 2 tests, receiving feedback on eligibility for Mensa membership, plus the first year’s membership fee if you qualify. You write 2 tests so you have 2 chances to qualify for Mensa. Full time students pay only $70.
A pictorial test is available if your mother tongue is not English and you do not want your test scores to be disadvantaged by language.
You need to score in the top 2% of the population in one of the two tests to qualify.
Please contact Vicki Herd if you have questions about Mensa or the testing, and let Vicki know if you want to write the tests so she can plan resources and give detailed directions to the testing site, likely at meeting Room 2, Basement, W R Castell Central Library, 616 Macleod Trail SE, Calgary.
MensaGenerationX
Viva the under-30s! Poker and games night on October 18, y’all. Mellow and easy time. BYOB. Contact Leslie for time and place, RSVP by Oct 16: august_83@hotmail.com
CoffeeFests
Diverting discussion at 7pm, Kaffa Coffee and Salsa House in Marda Loop. Address: 2138 - 33Ave SW. October 1, 8 and 30. No subject too hot, no view too contentious, no humour too sublime. Confirm with Patricia at kathleen4057@yahoo.ca or not, as you like. Look for the Harry Potter book on the table.
DinnerNight
Our October feast of reason and flow of soul is Tuesday, October 21st, at 7:00pm. The place: one of the best locations for affordable fine dining in Calgary - the Highwood Dining Room at SAIT. RSVP to Patricia (almostp@shaw.ca). Reference the link below for a full review of the restaurant.
http://www.opentable.com/rest_profile.aspx?rid=19825&restref=19825
BookClub
Patricia will host the October Book Club on Friday, October 17th, 2008. The time, 7pm. Address and more particulars at almostp@shaw.ca. The selection is most appropriately The Great Depression, 1929-1939, by Pierre Burton (1990).
Here is a review.
Nobody could tell exactly when it began and nobody could predict when it would end. At the outset, they didn’t even call it a depression. At worse it was a recession, a brief slump, a "correction" in the market, a glitch in the rising curve of prosperity. Only when the full import of those heartbreaking years sank in did it become the Great Depression - Great because there had been no other remotely like it and (please God!) there would never be anything like it again.
In retrospect, we see it as a whole - as a neat decade tucked in between the Roaring Twenties and the Second World War, perhaps the most significant ten years in our history, a watershed era that scarred and transformed the nation. But it hasn’t been easy for later generations to comprehend its devastating impact. The Depression lies just over the hill of memory: after all, anyone who reached voting age in 1929 is over eighty today. There are not very many left who can remember what it was like to live on water for an entire day, as the Templeton family did in the Parkdale district of Toronto in 1932, or how it felt to own only a single dress - made of flour sacks - as Etha Munro did in the family farmhouse on the drought-ravaged Saskatchewan prairie in 1934.
The statistics of those times are appalling. At the nadir of the Depression, half the wage earners in Canada were on some sort of relief. One Canadian in five was a public dependent. Forty percent of those in the workforce had no skills; the average yearly income was less than five hundred dollars at a time when the poverty line for a family of four was estimated at more than twice that amount.
This army of the deprived were treated shabbily by a government that used words like "fiscal responsibility" and "a sound dollar" as excuses to ignore human despair. Balancing the budget was more important than feeding the hungry. The bogey of the deficit was enlisted to tighten the purse strings.
R.B. Bennett, who presided over the five worst years of the Depression, said he was determined to preserve the nation’s credit "at whatever sacrifice." But the burden of that sacrifice did not fall on the shoulders of Bennett or his equally parsimonious opponent, Mackenzie King. It fell on those who, in spite of the politicians’ assurances to the contrary, were starving and naked - on the little girl in Montreal who fainted one day in school because, as her teacher discovered, it wasn’t her turn for breakfast that morning; on another little girl in Alberta who could go to school only on those days when it was her turn to wear "the dress"; or the Ottawa landlord who collapsed in the street from hunger because none of his tenants had been able to pay their rent; on the New Brunswick father who awoke one cold winter night in a house without fuel to check on his three-month-old baby, only to find her frozen to death.
Over 1.5 million Canadians were on relief, one in five was a public dependant, and 70,000 young men travelled like hoboes. Ordinary citizens were rioting in the streets, but their demonstrations met with indifference, and dissidents were jailed. Canada emerged from the Great Depression a different nation.
The most searing decade in Canada’s history began with the stock market crash of 1929 and ended with the Second World War. With formidable story-telling powers, Berton reconstructs its engrossing events vividly: the Regina Riot, the Great Birth Control Trial, the black blizzards of the dust bowl and the rise of Social Credit. The extraordinary cast of characters includes Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who praised Hitler and Mussolini but thought Winston Churchill "one of the most dangerous men I have ever known"; Maurice Duplessis, who padlocked the homes of private citizens for their political opinions; and Tim Buck, the Communist leader who narrowly escaped murder in Kingston Penitentiary.
In this #1 best-selling book, Berton proves that Canada’s political leaders failed to take the bold steps necessary to deal with the mass unemployment, drought and despair. A child of the era, he writes passionately of people starving in the midst of plenty.
http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385658430
http://www.bookfinder.us/review-0385658435-title-The_Great_Depression-author-Pierre_Berton.html
SecondTuesdays(of the Month)
October 14th is our casual get-together at Vicki Herd’s home, 2469 Sorrel Mews SW (a couple of blocks south of 33 Ave, east of Crowchild Tr), 7:30pm. BYOB if you wish. Contact Vicki (vherd@shaw.ca / 243-6144) or Patricia (almostp@shaw.ca / 212-1461) for additional info. RSVP isn’t necessary.
OtherUpComings
Saturday, October 4th
An exciting Drumheller excursion. Here’s the itinerary. Please rsvp to almostp@shaw.ca or jjpugh@shaw.ca.
Dep. Langevin School (Bridgeland) parking lot at 8am, travel to Torrington.
Arr. Torrington and tour Gopher Hole Museum, not to be missed.
Arr. Royal Tyrrell Museum. Tour the world class exhibits and Midland Provincial Park.
Arr. Drumheller and visit attractions such as the giant T-Rex, fossil shop, Rosedale Suspension Bridge, Atlas Coal Mine, Hoodoos, Dorothy ghost town.
Arr. Wayne and enjoy the fabulous bbq steak dinner at the Last Chance Saloon, mmmmmm!
Arr. back at Langevin School around 9:30pm
For more detail, also see http://www.roadtripamerica.com/places/gopher.htm
http://photocamel.com/forum/hdr-photography/51134-grain-elevator-dorothy-ab.html
Sunday, October 26th is Mensa Calgary’s AGM. All members welcome. 2 to 3pm. For the address, call (403) 212-1461. Order of Business: election of officers (Local Secretary, Secretary/Treasurer, Events Coordinator, Directors at Large), Financial Report, Activity Report.
Refreshments will be served at the conclusion of the AGM.
Nominations for Board positions should be emailed to Peter Walker, Elections Officer, at peterwalker@shaw.ca by Wednesday, October 22, 2008. Nominations will also be accepted from the floor at the AGM. Come one, come all.
For other and general event queries, email Vicki Herd (vherd@shaw.ca).
