Last week’s breakfast speaker was Mrs. Ritva Koukku-Ronde who reiterated her pleasure at being Finland’s first female ambassador to the U.S. She added that in her country of five million people, promoting women’s participation has been strong since the early 20th Century. In Parliament today, 9 of the 19 members are women. About 175 years ago, Finns and Swedes first came to Delaware. With humor, Ritva told us the Finns showed us how to build “block houses”. More seriously, one Finn signed our Declaration of Independence. Today, the Finns are busy building and maintaining their good relationships in Europe and abroad. They belong to the Eurozone but not to NATO. Their biggest “Together Fields” with other nations are security, water, health and life. They hope to expand their population a bit with higher echelon people such as doctors and scientists.

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Last week’s breakfast speaker was club president Gary Lett who returned to the club after an extended absence. Gary used the occ a s i o n t o t a l k a b ou t “sequestration” of Federal Government funds, and indicated that a reduction as high as 20% has been suggested for Federal Defense- which affects not only government employees but many corporations contributing to the country’s National Defense. One such corporation is Gary’s employer—Northrup Grumman—who develop innovative solutions and remarkable technologies in aerospace and defense. Gary added idly “will I still have a job?”

Gary went on to say that “the scope of Northrup Grumman operations (as well as those of other corporations) is broad enough to adjust to this : changing of gear.” It will be individual employees and small companies who will truly suffer from a significant Defense budget and other cuts.

“We are in a cyber war with the Chinese,” Gary observed, after which there was quite a discussion about Northrup Grumman;s expertise and activities in the Cyber Space Field.