Please save Thursday November 9 for our annual meeting. The ballot for Board members is attached. If you are not interested in joining the Board but would like to volunteer on a specific project, please let us know.
Ellen Hoff
President, for the COMARA Board
Denis Curtin, Irv Dostis, Ron Garlow, Jack Hannon, Ellen Hoff, Bob Kinzie, Tom Kirkendall, Walt McKee, Peter Weiss
COMARA will hold its Annual Meeting at Chef Geoff's Restaurant in D.C., commencing at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 9, 2006.
SAVE THIS DATE! PLAN ON COMING!
Heavy hors d'oeuvres will be served. Cash bar.
The restaurant is about a block from the Metro red line Metro Center Station/13th Street exit. It has been highly recommended by several COMARA members and has very good food. There is a public parking garage next door.
View the
Chef Geoff web site.
View the Map and directions
A review of
Chef Geoff by Open Table.
Three Board seats will be up for election this fall. An online ballot will soon be available on the web site. If you do not wish to vote online, a mail-in ballot is attached.
Please return it to Comara, PO Box 34594, Bethesda, MD 20827, by October 16.
If you are not interested in joining the Board but would like to volunteer on a specific project, PLEASE let us know. Help in updating mail/email addresses would be terrific.
Robert Brown's gallery in Washington D.C. specializes in contemporary prints, drawings, paintings, sculpture, and photography; rare Chinese advertising posters from 1912 to 1935; and Chinese antiquities. More information at: http://www.robertbrowngallery.com
Mike Hulley received an award from Ed Martin on behalf of the Comsat Legacy Foundation for Mike's enormous efforts in preserving the Comsat legacy, such as scanning in photos and the Comsat Technical Review for display on the Legacy web site.
Bob Kinzie is flunking retirement, as his backup generator business is growing rapidly. Always was an electrifying person
.Andrea Maleter joins Comsat grads Ellen Hoff, Tim Logue and Maury Mechanick who have also successfully completed a term running an SSPI chapter. She recently testified before the New Mexico legislature about plans for a space port in New Mexico.
Joe Pelton has a new book coming out on Space Exploration and Astronaut Safety, critiquing NASA safety programs over last 40 years, and published by the AIAA. Joe also is the new president and Executive Director of the GLEN Foundation. The Global Legal Information Network provides electronic access in 11 languages to the legal systems of 46 countries, the UN and OAS. It is hosted by the Library of Congress. Dr. Burt Edelson had designed the initial framework for a satellite network to interconnect countries; this is one of his many legacies.
Help Establish A College Fund For Your Grandchildren [what do you mean you're too young for grandchildren?]
A few months ago I suggested that those of you who have surplus resources might want to help your grandchildren establish an IRA at an early age (like, 16 - 18), and perhaps "match" their summer earnings etc., in whole or in part, to deposit in the new account. There is another way you could be of considerable assistance to your grandchildren and their parents, by setting aside funds for their college education. Nearly all states now offer a tax-advantaged college savings plan called a "529" plan, which refers to the section of the Internal Revenue Code making this possible. You can establish such an account for a grandchild, make periodic contributions to the fund, and the funds will accumulate tax-free and be available when the grandchild is ready for college. You can invest in savings plans of any state; ours is in the Utah plan, for example. (If you want to talk about it, I'll tell you why.) Further, other family members can contribute to the plan you have set up. But only one person can "hold" the account. Some plans are "just" savings plans. You put money aside, it hopefully appreciates substantially in value, and the grandchild can use it at any accredited school to pay for tuition, room and board, books, etc. The funds are not subjected to federal taxes upon withdrawal, and about half of the plans are free of state taxes as well.
Some plans are prepaid plans. (For example, Virginia has one, although it is currently closed to new investment.) These set a specific amount that you must contribute over a fixed period of years, such as five years, and they guarantee full tuition and fees at in-state public colleges and universities when the grandchild begins college, no matter how much those costs have increased.
There are some "outs" allowing recovery of the money, at some modest penalty, if, for example, the grandchild decides he or she doesn't want to go to college. Or the withdrawals can be deferred for a few years if the grandchild is not quite ready for college at age 18 or so. You can get more information on these college savings accounts by searching under "529 Plans" on the Internet, checking with firms like Fidelity, T.Rowe Price and Vanguard, and asking the reference librarian at your local library. There are articles being written about this all the time. Check out, for example, Jane Bryant Quinn's piece on p.35 of the Aug. 14, 2006 issue of Newsweek.
Jack Hannon
Leslie Borden, Washington Post, 2-Sep-2006
Died Monday, August 28, 2006, from an inoperable brain tumor.
Ms. Borden will be interred in the family plot of her husband, Robert N. Veeder, in Woods Hole, MA on Saturday, September 23, 2006 at 11 a.m.
Al Mark, Washington Post, 18-Aug-2006
Died Tuesday, August 15, 2006 at Mt. Vernon Hospital in Alexandria, VA.
Funeral services will be held October 3 at 9 a.m. at Fort Myer Chapel with interment to follow at Arlington National Cemetery.
Ed Wright, Email from Lauren Wright Brown.
Died August 15th after experiencing breathing difficulties.
Funeral services were held August 21, 2006 in Portsmouth, NH
Paul Weeks, Washington Post 9-Jun-2006 (Currently off-line)
Funeral services were held Monday, Aug. 28, at Arlington National Cemetary.
If you haven't had a chance to send in membership dues for 2006, they are $10. Please mail your check to COMARA at PO Box 34594, Bethesda, MD 20827.
And we would welcome any news for the next newsletter.
We have been experiencing some problems with the server operated by our web hosting company. The problem is a failure to reliably provide a connection to the online database used for sign in and several other features. The hosting company is aware of the problem, but is taking a very long time to resolve the problem. As an interim solution, the entire web site was copied to the webmaster's web site. The initial page will take you to this mirror site after a 10 second delay. When the problem with the comara.org server is corrected, we'll attempt to restore all records to the normal server.