Friday, October 31, 2025 at North Beach Restaurant: Honorable Massimo Carnelos, Consul General of Italy

The new Consul General for Italy, Hon. Massimo Carnelos, will be our featured speaker this Friday, October 31. https://informaconnect.com/bioeurope-spring/speakers/massimo-carnelos/ He’ll be introduced by Seminarian Dan Riley.    

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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

IN MEMORIAM: Veteran seminarian Themis Michos passed away on October 14. Born in Marion, Indiana. Themis was awarded a B.A. by Harvard College in 1954 and an LL.B by Yale University in 1960. He studied at the University of Athens, Greece. He was married to Elizabeth Dare Taylor Michos for 64 years. They have three children and two grandchildren. Something of a literateur, Themis caried on a friendship with Alice B. Toklas over the years. He donated his modest collection of Gertrude Steiniana to the Houghton Library at Harvard. Themis was stationed in Germany during 1956-57 as an enlisted man in the U.S. Army. In 1966 he joined the legal staff of Teledyne, Inc., a pioneering advanced technology conglomerate. He was Chief Counsel before leaving Teledyne for private practice in 1976 specializing in international, intellectual property, corporate and securities law. Themis was elected to the Woodside Town Council where he served as mayor. He joined the Family Club in 1982 and wrote and acted in plays and musicals and was a noted art collector. He’d describe his politics as conservative. Themis was a Vestryman at Christ Church (Episcopal) in Portola Valley, where his ashes are to be interred and a Trustee of Grace Cathedral in the early 2000’s.

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UPCOMING SEMINARS:

Da’Mayor, Willie Lewis Brown, Jr., will be Sac Sem’s guest on Friday, November 7. Chair Greg Ryken will have the honor of introducing “the man who needs no introduction.” Speakers Chair Mike Fitzgerald arranged this program which will be very well attended. Don’t miss out. Please reserve your place now. 

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

Representative Ro Khanna (D-Santa Clara County) was scheduled to be Sac Sem’s guest on Friday, November 21. That date is vacated. A new date hasn’t been set.

Our new 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 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. 

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.

Our first speaker of the new year will be 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 23. 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 book        manuscript, with Paul Pierson, “Madison Upside Down: The Rise of Nationalized Polarization and the Crisis of the American Constitutional Order.”

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 OTHER THOUGHTS: “So the (Trump White House gold-plated) ballroom is a sign, not just of Trump’s personal vulgarity, but of the collapse of small-r republican norms. Trump is turning the people’s house into a palace fit for a despot partly because that’s his taste, but also to show everyone that he can. L’etat, c’est moi.” Paul Krugman