Friday, November 14, 2025 at North Beach Restaurant: Mark Dicamillo, California’s most prominent pollster and a Seminarian

California’s most prominent pollster and a Seminarian Mark Dicamillo, https://igs.berkeley.edu/people/mark-dicamillo is our speaker this Friday, November 14 at 12:15 p.m.

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RSVP TO ATTEND any upcoming seminar. To assist the North Beach Restaurant’s kitchen staff with planning for our Friday lunchtime meetings please notify Dennis Wheatley at dennis@triticum.com NO LATER THAN MID-DAY ON the WEDNESDAY BEFORE EVERY SEMINAR if you plan to attend and indicate if you’ll be bringing a guest. Dennis DOES NOT need to know you are not attending. Valet Parking: If there are less than (10) ten sign-ups, there will be no valet. To Register for Valet Parking contact Chair Greg Ryken at (415) 215-3775 or email him on the Wednesday before seminars at Greg@rykenlaw.com

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The MEMORIAL SERVICE for long-time Seminarian Themis Michos is set for Saturday, December 6 at 2:30 p.m. The venue is Christ Church (Episcopal) in Portola Valley. Address: 815 Portola Road. Themis is a past mayor of Portola Valley, There will be a reception after the service. Carpooling is recommended. "

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IT’S THAT $ TIME OF THE YEAR for the payment of Sac Sem annual dues. Your Board has recommended that dues remain the same as 2025, that is $200 for 2026. Please send a check made out to ‘Sacramento Seminar Inc.’ to our Treasurer, Dennis Wheatley, 72 Heritage Drive, San Rafael, CA 94901. It’s become custom at this time of year to recognize the staff at the North Beach Restaurant, the recommended gratuity is $50, combining the dues and gratuity in one check is fine.

If you would like to transfer the funds by e-banking we suggest using Zelle rather than PayPal, the age-appropriate instructions are:

1)   Determine if your bank is in the Zelle network (most major banks are but not all of the smaller banks).

2)   In your banks on-line interface select ‘transfer funds’ and put in Dennis Wheatley’s email address dennis@triticum.com and this should then bring up ‘Sacramento Seminar’ (we bank with Wells Fargo).

3)   Put in the appropriate sum (see above)

4)   Confirm payment.

We have tested this with Wells Fargo. Your funds really do end up in the Sacramento Seminar account – NOT Dennis’!

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UPCOMING SEMINARS:

Our speaker for Friday, November 21 is Isaac Stone Fish Stone, CEO and founder of Strategy Risks, a business intelligence firm which quantifies corporate exposure to China. They help companies and entities manage and reduce their China risk. The Columbia University grad is the author of America Second (Knopf, 2022), a book about Beijing's influence in the United States. Formerly a Beijing correspondent for Newsweek, Stone Fish spent seven years living in China: Previously he was previously Asia Editor at Foreign Policy Magazine, senior fellow at the Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, an on-air contributor to CBS, a contributing columnist to the Washington Post, and an international affairs analyst on PRI's The World. Mr. Fish will be introduced by Seminarian Sherri Ferris.

There will be no Seminar on Friday, November 28, the day after Thanksgiving a.k.a. Black Friday.

Friday, December 5 will see Assemblymember Chris Rogers as our guest speaker at the North Beach Restaurant. The past Santa Rosa mayor, a Democrat, represents the counties of Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocino, Sonoma, and Trinity in California's Assembly District 2.  https://a02.asmdc.org/biography

SAVE THE (NEW) DATE: Annual Sac Sem Christmas-Hanukkah-Holiday Party is set for Friday, December 12 at the North Beach Restaurant starting at Noon. Details will soon follow. 

This is also the time and place for Sac Sem’s annual meeting and the election for Sac Sem’s chair and its board of directors. Sac Sem is a California non-for-profit corporation. This is official a notice to all current paid membership. Nomination can be made in advance or at the December 12 annual meeting. This will be the final seminar of 2025. The next seminar will be on Friday, January 9, 2026.

Due to Christmas being on Thursday, December 25, there will be no seminar on Friday, December 26, the day after Christmas, St. Stephen’s Day in Ireland most of Europe aka Boxing Day in the UK. Also, there’s no seminar on the day after New Year’s Day, Friday, January 2, 2026.

Our first speaker of the new year is Josh Fryday, Democratic candidate for Lt. Governor https://joshfryday.com/ The date is Friday, January 9, 2026. The time is 12:15 p.m. A past mayor of the City of Novato and chair of the Governor's Office of Service and Community Engagement is a member of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s cabinet. The U.S. Navy veteran will be introduced by Seminarian and past State Assemblymember Dion Aroner.

John Kabateck, California Director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses https://www.nfib.com/california/ is our speaker on Friday, January 16. NFIB’s philosophy is that “Small businesses are not smaller versions of bigger businesses. They often have different difficulties in remaining solvent and policies that lump all business together often do more harm than good.” The Glendale native and USC grad attributes part of his success in working with people to having grown up in a Hollywood family. His mother was musical director for the Ernie Kovacs Show, and his father produced the Criswell Predicts TV program.

U.C. Berkeley Professor Eric Schickler will be our featured speaker on Friday, January 23rd. Professor Schickler is considered one of the foremost Congressional scholars. https://polisci.berkeley.edu/people/person/eric-schickler He’s currently completing a co-authored with Paul Pierson, “Madison Upside Down: The Rise of Nationalized Polarization and the Crisis of the American Constitutional Order.”

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PASSING THE BATON: Sac Sem’s Speakers program during the past few years has been terrific due to the work of Mike Fitzgerald. Thank you, Mike! It’s inevitable that speaker chairs of all community organizations pass on the baton. Starting in mid-January, Sac Sem’s new speakers/program chair is Seminarian Brian Chase. He has big shoes to fill. We’re all looking for another year of first-class programs. A reminder: our speakers/program chair needs members’ assistance. If Seminarians have a personal relationship with a potential Sac Sem speaker. pass on the information to Brian at brian@brianchase.com

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OTHER THOUGHTS: “When women go wrong, men go right after them.” Mae West