RECAP: Cornell's annual Thanksgiving dinner for the people of Decatur Place continues to run smoothly and please our friends at this assisted living housing complex.  This year we had an especially enthusiastic and delightful volunteer - little Lawrence Hardy, a 5 or 6 year old Decatur resident.  Lawrence helped carry in food and equipment and just plain blew us away with his million dollar smile and great attitude.  In all, we fed about 200 folks with Turkey, Ham, and all the fixings.  Desserts of bread pudding, pumpkin and apple pies, and candy pleased all.  Alumns from the Hotel Society and Cornell Club, numbering close to 25 again this year, capped off the day with a sit down dinner for themselves at Decatur and then a few cocktails at John Ziegler's '62 Jackson's Hole.

RECAP: We wish you were there!  For the first time in over 5 years, a Cornell President visited Colorado to address alumni and it was probably worth the wait.  Hunter Rawlings, joined by his wife Elizabeth and Cornell's Vice President of Alumni Affairs and Development, Inge Reichenbach, made extraordinary efforts to mingle about during the pre-dinner cocktail reception and meet as many alumni as possible.  The 120 plus in attendance had plenty to talk about and that suited President Rawlings' talkative nature very well.

Mushroom ravioli and red snapper with appropriately selected wines were quite enjoyable in the classic college rooom at the stately University Club.  Cornell's seal was prominently displayed in the center of one of the elegant windows and Cornell banners draped around the dining room in red and white splendor.

During his address, President Rawlings described the many initiatives introduced at Cornell since his tenure began in 1994.  Among the highlights he touched on:

• Programs to bring faculty and students closer together - every year President Rawlings even assigns himself freshmen to advise.
• A new Academic Initiatives Fund is bringing in the top young faculty to Cornell.
• The Genomics Institute at Cornell - a national gene data research center
• Huge scholarship campaign underway to attract and retain the best and brightest students
• Big student housing remodeling projects for North and West campuses
• And of course, Big Red Football's renewed success thanks in part to its Colorado QB, Ricky Rahne.

If you missed this one, get ready for our Spring faculty speaker event.  It promises to be another excellent evening.

RECAP: Another strong turnout for Zinck's introduced many Colorado newcomers to our area alumns.  Once again we had the big back room at Jackson's all to ourselves and were attentively catered to all evening by a Bond girl named Britt.  Good food, good conversation, and a little reminiscing about Cornell made our October evening sail by very quickly.  In all, we had about 40 alumns in Denver toast old Theodore Zinck's bar until about 10 PM with our Cornell faithful around the globe.  Come on out next year and get in the spirit!

RECAP: Just over 30 Cornellians and friends toured "Impressionism: Paintings Collected by European Museums", at the Denver Art Museum on this Saturday afternoon. While the weather was fabulous outside, nobody was complaining about spending a little time indoors to absorb the wonderful works from the likes of Monet, Gauguin, Degas, Pissaro and of course, Van Gogh. In fact, most of us wished we had a little more time to ponder the emotions coming through the paintings while we were catching a glimpse of European life in the 19th century. Overall the exhibit is well worth one's time to go see. If you missed our event and you're thinking of going on your own, Click here to go to the museum site for more info on the exhibit.

After the exhibit, a small group of us walked down the street to Racine's Restaurant and shared our thoughts on the Impressionist art and an excellent lunch. Racine's is at 8th & Bannock and highly recommended for a casual weekend brunch.

RECAP: The Cornell and MIT Alumni Clubs of Colorado helped Metro Denver's Habitat of Humanity build multiple homes in Lakewood, Colorado.  20 volunteers, 10 from each Club, landscaped, leveled lots, installed siding, and put up dry wall.  While temperatures ran high as the day went on, spirits climbed as well, forging new friendships along with new homes.  We look forward to continued success at next year's event.

RECAP: Unfortunately, due to an accident involving the Parks Ranger who was to supervise this event, we had to cancel it.  We will be trying again next Summer.

RECAP: The Hotel Society, as you would expect, threw another great party, this one in Wash Park, complete with games and lots of food and drink.  Just another good excuse to get out and enjoy a warm sunny day in Denver with Cornell alumns.  Great fun for kids and adults alike, this annual summer picnic by the Hotel Society provides a really nice opportunity for us to meet each others' families, as well as to start the kids thinking that Cornell is in their future.

RECAP: Members of the Alumni Clubs from Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and Brown, joined Cornell in a fun 5K Run/Walk for the Clean Air Challenge.  In all, about 20 runners and walkers ran, raced, and walked around City Park during a nice warm sunny day.  After the race fellow ivy leaguers shared a picnic and collected awards for the fastest runner (won by Bob Cottrel of Yale), Club with Most Participants (Cornell), Oldest Running Shoes, Farthest Traveled, and a few other categories.  All the alumns were happy to meet other local Ivys and agreed we should make this an annual event, with the hope that it will get bigger and better each year.  Watch for it next Spring.

RECAP: Our 5th annual Dude Ranch Weekend, by many accounts, was the best yet.  Over 50 alumns and their guests occupied the entire ranch in the unspoiled and breathtaking beauty outside of Deckers Colorado.  While some rain and snow mixed in with beautiful Colorado sunshine offered more challenging conditions for recreation, the crazy weather actually heightened the riding, fishing, and hiking adventures for most.  For others, just escaping the city life curled up next to a warm fire was more than enough enjoyment.  Check out photos.

RECAP:  March's social soiree, fast becoming an annual winetasting event, brought 54 Cornellians and friends together at the posh Denver Athletic Club (DAC) to sample fine wines and great appetisers.  Cornellians sampled delectable french wines from the Alsace region along with some Chilean and California wines.  Hubert Trimbauch of Trimbauch Winery in Alsace flew in and presented an inciteful look at the Alsace region, its grapes, and the varietals known to that area in northeastern France.  Also on hand, Gail Plemmons from Brown Foreman Wines, distributors of Fetzer and Michael Picard wines, educated the group on their wines characteristics.  The DAC's hors d'oeuvres spread was excellent as always and plentiful.  An event not to be missed next year! 

RECAP: We had a tremendous turnout of 67 alumns and friends at, appropriately, the luxurious Adams Mark Hotel, for Robert Frank's entertaining lecture on the excessive exhuberance and consequential pitfalls of overboard spending.  Prof. Frank's slides and straightforward monologue stimulated the audience's zesty appetite for such luxury goods as Ferrarri 450s and Porsche 911s, not to mention the $2.7 Million Phillipe Patel watch.  Numerous presented statistical data and psychology surveys drove home his theme that people are no happier beyond a certain level of luxury spending, rather society as a whole continues to perpetuate the "keeping up with the Jones'" mentality into ever escalating spending which results in less money to spend in ways that really make them happy. 

Probably our best turnout for a faculty presentation yet!  As a note, Business Week came out with a full page article on Prof. Frank's book Luxury Fever, the week of his Colorado visit.