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Facebook: Los Alamos Study Group; Twitter: @TrishABQ; Blog: Forget the Rest

November 17, 2015

Bulletin 210: Fundraising soirée this Sunday afternoon in Santa Fe, with guest speakers

Dear friends and colleagues–

This is the season when we must ask you to help support the Study Group financially, if you can. 

Many of you generously help this organization already, through annual or monthly donations.  A few of you work with us as volunteers.  A few generously donate services – some so generously that the concept of “gift” does not arise, because we are family.  Thank you all.  You will hear more from us soon about how we see the issues shaping up, and what we hope to do next year. 

Now, I have to tell you that it is hard to manage and use contact lists.  Some people don’t want a lot of email.  Others want everything!  Some of you are local here in New Mexico, others are elsewhere in the U.S., and some of you live and work abroad.  Some work in government or for contractors, others are pretty radical community organizers.  Some want to be contacted only by email and others only by snail mail.  Facebook is preferred for others.  Most of us are inundated with email and in an ideal world we would prefer phone calls for the really important stuff. 

And so it is that we have invited quite a few of our members to a private fundraising soirée in Santa Fe this coming Sunday – but by no means all of you!  We are doing that now!  We know we have missed some of you – hundreds, probably – but we aren’t sure where you live because all we have is an email!  With a couple of thousand emails and a few thousand physical addresses, keeping track of people is not so simple! 

So at this rather late date I would like to invite all our members and friends to what we hope will be a very interesting late afternoon and evening in a gracious east-side Santa Fe home.  Given the subjects we will discuss, the privacy needs of our host, and the limited capacity of the venue, this will not be a public event. 

A simple but scrumptious dinner will be served.  Because of the narrow streets, professional valet parking will be provided.  That’s Sunday, November 22, 4-7 pm, in Santa Fe.  You must RSVP to be admitted – write Trish or call the office (505-265-1200). 

We can only accommodate about 60 people, so if you want to come it is better to call sooner rather than later.  Again, this is NOT a public event.  You need to write or talk to us in the Study Group office to be admitted.  There is no particular financial expectation – some of our most active members have little or no disposable income and are most welcome to come – but please do bear in mind that this is a fundraiser.

That also means that if some of you know potential donors who might be interested in us, or the evening’s program, please tell them to get in touch with us. 

Our guest speakers at this meeting – who will be with us via Skype – will include:

• Robert Alvarez, one of two new Study Group board members.  Bob is a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and Professorial Lecturer in the Energy, Resources and Environment Program at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.  Bob's knowledge of nuclear technologies, safety, cleanup, and related public policy issues is legendary.  While a Senate staffer, he played a central role in establishing the DOE cleanup program.  While at DOE, he coordinated enactment of legislation providing compensation for sick nuclear workers (the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, EEOICPA).  Most recently he has been working on cutting-edge issues in spent fuel management and investigating the extensive contamination from Manhattan Project residues in certain Midwestern communities. 

Bob will speak and take questions on the future of the nuclear weapons complex.

• Dr. Frank von Hippel, a long-time Study Group mentor and friend.  Frank (bio here) is probably the most distinguished arms control and nonproliferation scientist in the United States.  He has played an important role in every nuclear issue – nuclear weapons, nuclear materials, and nuclear power.  Frank provided courtroom testimony in Albuquerque in our lawsuit against the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF).  Longtime former Study Group president Zia Mian works in the program Frank started.  Greg was a visiting scholar there in 2002.

Frank will talk primarily about pit production – and why it is not needed – and like Bob will take questions. 

• We may have one other very interesting speaker.  We'll see. 

I will also make a few remarks.  Trish, I, and the board members who are local and able to come will answer questions.  The atmosphere will be relaxed and there will be plenty of time to meet new friends and old. 

I am very pleased to announce our other brand new board member (as you may have seen already): Mia Gandenberger, whom some of you will have met in the summer of 2013 when she was a Disarmament Fellow with us.  Mia, one of the world's foremost diplomatic correspondents on disarmament issues, is the Geneva Program Manager for Reaching Critical Will, a project of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the oldest women's peace organization in the world.

On that happy note, good evening and very best wishes to all,

Greg Mello, for the Study Group