Lasse Syversen is Past President of our club and Paul Harris Fellow.  Lasse has 50 years of experience from the shipping and IT industry and currently chairman of Flagship Trade Net. Being born in Norway he is board member of many Trans-Atlantic organizations actively working to strengthen the relationship between the United States and the Nordic countries. For many years he has written monthly articles about the culture and business to our neighbors cross the ocean.

This week he will talk about The Nordic Council; The neighboring countries in the north recognized the value of cooperation in 1952 and agreed to meet on a regular basis to see how they could work together. “Nordisk Råd” is the official body for formal inter-parliamentary Nordic cooperation among the Nordic countries. The council has eighty-seven representatives from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, as well as from the autonomous areas of the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland. 

This year, Dave will celebrate the 70th anniversary of his graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1954.

Dace joined Rotary in 1962 and The North Bethesda club in 1982. There are many stories to tell, including those of many years at IBM.

North Bethesda Rotary Club’s own Nick Martinez, our recent past President, is a financial adviser in the Bethesda branch of Edward Jones. Nick will speak to us about the recent volatility in the world’s financial markets and how to respond constructively to these developments, with some special tips for managing your finances at the end of the calendar year.

Here’s an excerpt from Nick’s writeup on the Edward Jones website: “Whether you’re planning for retirement, saving for college for children or grandchildren, or just trying to protect the financial future of the ones you care for the most, we can work together to develop specific strategies to help you achieve you goals.”

On December 8, we’ll have our Annual Meeting, which will feature the nominations of officers and directors for the coming year.

In November, Club President John Waterston named a Nominating Committee (Lasse Syversen, Kevin Flynn, and Steve Vaccarezza) to come up with nominees to fill a number of upcoming vacancies in the Club Board and to prepare a slate of officers and directors to take office in the 2024-2025 Rotary Year beginning in July 2024. Lasse serves as Chairman and has prepared the Nominating Committee Report.

Following the Club bylaws, the club will be voting on the nominations at the meeting on December 9, a week after publication of the nominations in this newsletter. The Committee also suggests to ask for nominations from the floor at the Annual Meeting for all open positions.

Thanks to Lasse and his committee for their heroic efforts in putting the slate together!

An impressive burst of creativity gave rise to a vigorous conservative intellectual movement in the United States after the Second World War. Yet, according to Club Member Claes Ryn, author of a new book on the subject, the great potential of the movement was not realized because of major flaws. The movement became preoccupied with politics to the neglect of academia, history, philosophy, religion, morality, the arts, and entertainment. In the 1980s when Ronald Reagan won major political victories the movement celebrated “the triumph” of conservatism, but this reaction confirmed a superficial understanding of what most fundamentally shapes society.  Mixing new and previously published writing, Claes’ book bristles with provocative ideas. It sets forth its own strongly argued view of how to understand and address the situation.