ΦΒΚ Alpha Association Events

The Alpha Association’s annual meeting and lunch will be Saturday, October 9, 2021, at the Denver Athletic Club, 1325 Glenarm Place, Denver, Colorado, 80204 (http://www.denverathleticclub.cc). A short business meeting to review the past year and to elect officers for the coming year will begin at 11:30 a.m.

The lunch will feature an Italian buffet (mixed green salad, meatballs and Italian sausage, penne pasta with marinara sauce, tortellini with Alfredo sauce, vegetable medley, and tiramisu for dessert), and the cost will be $35.00 per person. As always, guests are welcome!

If you plan to attend, please return the reservation form with a check for your lunch to the address on the form, or pay online through PayPal (treasurer@pbkcolorado.org). Reservations must be received by Monday, October 4, 2021. If you make a reservation but cannot attend, please email board@pbkcolorado.org. We may not be able to refund the lunch cost because we are guaranteeing the number of guests.

After lunch our speaker will be Bobby LeFebre, Colorado’s eighth and current poet laureate. Governor Polis appointed Bobby in July 2019 to a four-year term, saying that he “embodies the spirit of a ‘Colorado for All,’ where everyone is included, no matter their background.” Bobby is a two-time Grand Slam Champion, a National Poetry Slam Finalist, an Individual World Poetry Slam Finalist, and a two-time TEDx speaker. He attended North High School, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and the University of Denver. His 2019 play Northside had 30 sold-out performances at Su Teatro.

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Alpha members and their guests met at Observatory Park in Denver for a post-COVID celebration.

On April 8, Alpha member Ben Palen led a virtual demonstration about gar­den­ing — how to start seens in containers and small spaces, vegetatbles and flowers that do well in our area, caring for plants once they are established, and basics of companion plantings. YouTube videolink: https://youtu.be/tjhDEKzzYMc

Alpha Association members and their guests enjoyed a virtual happy hour, with members providing ingredients for cocktails and mocktails, which were then paired with appetizers.

Zoom discussion of the movie Late Night, starring Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling.

The annual meeting was held via Zoom on October 17, 2020. Debbie Scheer, an emcee, benefit auctioneer, and humor strategist, spoke about “How to Strengthen Your Humor Muscle without Pulling a Hammy.” Debbie effortlessly uses humor as a way to break through the discomfort that prevents us from talking about the things that we NEED to be talking about. Her motto is, if we can laugh about it, then we can surely talk about it, regardless of what the ‘it’ is.

The Alpha Association hosted a Key Connections event for newer Phi Beta Kappa members in the Denver area. This year was a Zoom panel discussion on September 24, 2020, that dealt with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic — the new world of work, financial well-being, and personal coping skills, followed by a trivia contest. Click here for the PowerPoint slides or a list of resources. A private video of the discussion is available on YouTube.

The 2020 annual banquet was postponed due to health concerns about the Covid-19.

The DU Gamma Chapter co-sponsored a lecture entitled, Two-Mile Time Machines: Ice Cores and Abrupt Climate Change, by Dr. Richard Alley, a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar and the Evan Pugh University Professor of Geosciences at Penn State.