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Email Sign-UpMay 4 Member Meeting
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The program chairman, Carolyn Mitchell, introduced the speaker, Dr. Elizabeth Dowling (both pictured left), who is an architectural historian and has several books on the subject to her credit. She taught architecture at Georgia Tech for 37 years, Dr. Dowling gave a slide presentation depicting the very beginning of classic Greek and Roman architecture and how it influenced architecture through the centuries, Classical architecture began to decline in England when it became too expensive to design and build structures, especially after the world wars. Fortunately, during the late 80's a resurgence of interest in the preservation of classical design began to immerge in the U.S. and England by architects like Jon Simpson, Quinlan Terry, Craig Hamilton and even a local Atlanta architect, Norman Askins. Universities began to offer classes on classic design. Prince Charles was instrumental in expressing the need to bring back classicism as opposed to the ultra-modern offerings that have been erected in London in recent years. Dr. Dowling showed us some buildings in London that were built recently in the classic style. The same is going in the United States.
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Thomas McElhinny was featured as the ESU speaker at the February 23, 2017 Member meeting. His presentation was on the history of the French and Indian War in America which was ignited by the actions of a very young George Washington. The confrontation subsequently became a worldwide conflict known in history as the Seven Years War, which Winston Churchill described as "the first world war". England's defeat of the French brought an end to the French Empire in North America. This defeat gave England a clear path to controlling the new world and destroyed the ability of native peoples to resist the expansion of Anglo-American settlements in North America.
On February 19th the Branch held its annual National Shakespeare Competition at the New Shakespeare Playhouse. Branch Competition Chair Pam Sellman orchestred the 18 local high school contestants through their paces as each presented a sonnet and a 20 line monologue from a play of their choice. Each of the contestants was the winner of their school competition.
The turnout for our January meeting was excellent with many guests in attendances. "How Brexit Baffled Britain" was the provocative subject that our speaker, Patrick Allitt, spoke about at our first meeting of the year. He definitely kept our attention as he gave the historical background that had led to the creation of the Common Market/European Union. With two horrific World Wars devastating most of Europe financially and otherwise, something needed to change in the way European countries interacted with each other to prevent future conflicts. Trade was thought to be a way to ease tensions, and a mutually beneficial trade effort was initiated 
