Please reserve May 8 on your calendar for the Bon Air Branch End-of-Year Banquet, to be held at 7:00pm at The Boathouse Restaurant on the Lake in Brandermill. The restaurant is located at 4603 Millridge Parkway in Midlothian. For a sample menu use the following link:
http://www.sundaysrestaurant.com/pdfs/Mar07dinrb.pdf
The food is delicious, the prices reasonable, and the view is incredible!
More details to follow in early April.
Sharon Davis, Program VP
sharondavis@cavtel.net
378-8153

Welcome to spring – it’s a beautiful April, and our branch is growing right along with the spring flowers. We are happy to welcome Cheryl Johnson and Virginia Bonner. Look for an introduction to our newest members in the membership section of this newsletter.

And in April we’ll also be Sailing Into the Future at the state AAUW convention in Virginia Beach. The board approved covering the cost of registration for a member attending a state convention for the first time. Susana Hernandez-Kurtulus, our LAF liaison, is organizing our contribution to a basket of goodies in conjunction with the Richmond branch to be raffled for LAF and I’m sure it will yield a sizeable donation for LAF! For those who cannot attend there will be a post convention report in the May newsletter.

And you can also hear that convention report at our end of the year banquet in May. Join us at the banquet May 8 for, in addition to the report, an opportunity to win branch dues for 2007-08 and for the installation of new board officers. In March Pat Mallahan was unanimously elected our new Membership Vice President and Susana Hernandez-Kurtulus was unanimously elected to serve as our new Finance Chair. I want to give a hearty thank you to the board members who will be completing their terms: Maggie King as Finance Chair and Cheryl Kapec as Membership Vice President. Looking forward to seeing everyone at the banquet.

Mary Farrell President

Interested? Contact Sharon Davis by April 13 for details. The tentative dates for this trip are Saturday, May 12 or Saturday, June 2.
Pat Mallahan

Please send your check for $66 payable to Bon Air Area AAUW to:

Maggie King
8208 Ammonett Drive
Richmond VA 23235

Get your branch dues reimbursed … pay by the Banquet on May 8 to participate in the drawing — you just may be the lucky winner!
Maggie King
Finance Chair

Book Group routinely meets on the third Thursday of each month at 7:30 p.m. In April we will discuss a lively, quite readable book that’s been on the best-seller list for many months, Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. We’ll meet on Thursday, April 19, at the home of Kathy Kelley, with Marcia Phillips leading our discussion. Contact Kathy at bookie002@yahoo.com or call 330-5588 to let her know if you will attend. All members and their guests are welcome!

About the book: Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? How much do parents really matter? What kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask, but Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded young scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life – from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing – and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: Freakonomics.

Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives – how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of . . . well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real-estate agents, the myths of campaign finance, the telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher, the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan. What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world – despite a surfeit of obfuscation, complication, and downright deceit – is not impenetrable, is not unknowable. And – if the right questions are asked – is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking. Steven Levitt, through devilishly clever and clear-eyed thinking, shows how to see through all the clutter.

For more information about the Bon Air Book Group’s selections, click here: http://aauwbonairva.org/book selections 2007.html, or go to the Bon Air web site at http://aauwbonairva.org, click on the Interest Groups link on the left column, then click on the link for the 2007 Book Group Selections. You may also contact DeAnn Hubicsak at DeAnn.Hubicsak@dss.virginia.gov or call 233-5352.

Welcome!

Ginny Bonner obtained a B.S. in Home Economics and a Master's in Business at Oklahoma State University, married and moved to Texas where she remained for twenty-five years. She has worked for two of the largest TV stations in the country as producer of consumer and investigative stories. She knits and sews, enjoys playing cards and is very interested in politics.

Cheryl Kapec
Membership VP

Calendar of Events

In lieu of an April program, branch members will be attending the AAUW State Convention. 
Book Group, Gourmet Group, and Board members will meet as usual.
April 20 - 22   AAUW Virginia Convention, Virginia Beach. Plan to car-pool, room-share, and represent the Bon Air Branch at the state convention in Virginia Beach.
May 8   End of Year Celebration, and Installation of Officers