Climate and Food

Climate change has certainly been the hot topic at the Club. Just in the past few months, we’ve talked about the Copenhagen summit, weather modification, the greening of the American military and whether your spiritual beliefs coexist with environmentalism. And most recently, the Club featured speakers dedicated to combat climate change by spreading the word on how people can contribute by paying attention to one simple thing: the food we eat.

Dr. Gloria Duffy to Discuss Global Nuclear Summit Today

Commonwealth Club President and CEO Dr. Gloria Duffy will be on several news programs this afternoon and evening sharing her expert opinion on the nuclear summit that concluded today.

Duffy is a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense and special coordinator for cooperative threat reduction. She negotiated agreements with former Soviet republics to dismantle their weapons of mass destruction. She was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service in 1995.

You can hear or watch her on:

• KCBS radio news (74 AM) at 4:30 p.m. (all times Pacific)
• KGO TV News (Channel 7) at 6:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m.
• KTVU TV News (Channel 2) 5:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m., and 10:00 p.m.

Finalists for the 19th California Book Awards

The following books are finalists for the 79th Annual California Book Awards. The winners will be announced April 19th and will be celebrated in an Awards Ceremony on Thursday, June 3, 2010.

The Bold Italic Hangs Out in The Club's Library

Visitors to The Commonwealth Club's main offices in San Francisco often find themselves browsing through the hundreds of books in our library as they wait for a program to start or for their friends to arrive.

Now comes word from the web site The Bold Italic (or should we say, The Bold Italic?) that our library has made the grade -- of some sort. We're still not quite sure what, but we think we're glad to be noticed. It's always a pleasure to find book lovers.

Read more at The Bold Italic's Bookmobile.

Nancy Pelosi Addresses Don't Ask, Don't Tell after Commonwealth Club Press Conference

It's only a short exchange, and the camera work is shaky, but this video and these remarks by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi are being quoted quite a bit on various blogs this week.

Following her program at The Commonwealth Club, in which she and Club president Dr. Gloria Duffy had a wide-ranging conversation on everything from the health-care reform bill to nuclear strategy and from education to cutting the deficit, she held a press conference. At the end of the press conference, she was asked by local gay rights advocate Bill Wilson about the prospects for ending the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy of discrimination in the military (thanks to aka William for the link):

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Explains the Health Care Reform Effort

From Nancy Pelosi 4/6/10

Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, visited The Commonwealth Club of California and was in conversation with Club President/CEO Dr. Gloria Duffy. A crowd of about 450 in the Mark Hopkins Hotel ballroom in San Francisco listened to Pelosi discuss the challenges of getting a health-care reform bill through Congress, upcoming priorities for Congress (including financial sector regulation, immigration reform, the deficit, and more), and the possibilities of bipartisan cooperation in the hyper-polarized nation's capital (she thinks it's possible on an issue-by-issue basis).

Roxana Saberi: Inside -- and Out of -- an Iranian Prison

Writer (and former Miss North Dakota) Roxana Saberi went to Iran to work as a journalist and to study her family's history. Instead, she ended up sentenced to eight years in prison.

How did it happen? What did she see and learn when she was caught up in that country's legal system?

Saberi will discuss her experience later this month when she comes to The Commonwealth Club in Silicon Valley April 21. Come hear what she has to say about Iran's notorious intelligence agency, that country's government and people, and how she fits into it.

More information.

Upcoming Club Speaker Kader Abdolah Serves as Regents Professor This Month

Writer Kader Abdolah already has a record of accomplishment that makes him someone worth our attention. A celebrated author who's been talked up as a potential Nobel Prize candidate, he has translated the Koran to make it more accessible to Western readers and his book The House of the Mosque is a European best-seller. (House and My Father's Notebook are both available in English.)

The Iranian-born Abdolah fled to Holland two decades ago seeking literary and political freedom. Bay Area audiences will be pleased to know that in April he is the Regents Professor in Dutch Studies at U.C. Berkeley.

You can meet Abdolah in person Friday, April 9, when he speaks to The Commonwealth Club of California in a noon program. For more information and to get tickets, visit our web site.

The event is underwritten by The Bernard Osher Foundation, and it is being held in association with the Consulate of the Netherlands.

See Northside San Francisco for More Commonwealth Club

Now you can connect with The Commonwealth Club on a regular basis -- and rest your feet on your desk while you do it.

Our inaugural Common Knowledge column appears in the April 2010 issue of Northside San Francisco, a monthly newspaper distributed -- you've probably already guessed this from the name -- in the city's northside neighborhoods (Paci fic Heights, Presidio Heights, Jordan Park, Laurel Heights, The Marina, Cow Hollow, Telegraph Hill, Nob Hill, Russian Hill, North Beach and Sea Cliff).

Each issue, we will explore topics in the news and of concern to the Bay Area, drawing on some of the many great speakers and timely events at The Commonwealth Club.

So go ahead and pick up a copy of Northside, or read us online!

Calling All Bay Area Cartoonists: Graphic Novel Art Contest

On April 26, The Commonwealth Club's Inforum division is holding a program exploring the popularity of the graphic novel. The Bay Area is ground zero for many graphic artists -- oh, we're all friends here; we can call them cartoonists and comics artists -- so Inforum's offering a chance for you to show off your work by taking part in a "Graphic Novel Art Contest" during the post-program reception.

You'll need to submit your work several days before the program, so go to our web site to get details and submission contact information.

Good luck!