Fossey Fund Luncheon 2011

Sage and I were once again invited to New York this year for the annual Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund’s luncheon. As in past years, the luncheon coincided with our anniversary, so we headed to the Big Apple for 24 hours of gorillas, music, dancing, and eating.

In the past we drove down to New York, but this year I decided we should take the train. The cost turns out to be pretty much the same as driving, especially when adding in the expense of parking in the city, and since two days before the trip I had driven back and forth from New Jersey for the day, I wanted to get out of the car if I could. We got an early Amtrak train from the Rt. 128 station that’s only about 20 minutes from our house, and as the sun was coming up we were riding the rails to New York. We grabbed seats in the “Quiet Car” by happenstance, and since we both spent much of the time reading, it was nice to have some peace and quiet. The only eventful part of the trip was the man in the seat behind us who started talking on his cell phone about an hour before we reached Manhattan. The conductor came by and told him to stop, but he kept doing it. When the conductor came by the 2nd time, he said, “I’m not going to ask you again to put your phone away.” He never said what would happen if the guy didn’t, and I was really hoping to find out, but the rider left his seat to talk in the dining car.

We arrived in New York right around 11 am. We were both hungry, and we weren’t sure if we could check in to the hotel yet, so we tried to find a café, pub, or other eating establishment for an early lunch. This being a Sunday, it appeared that most places stayed closed until Noon, causing Sage to remark, “I thought this was the city that never sleeps!” Apparently they sleep in on Sundays. We did find a bar that looked halfway appealing, but the food was pretty mediocre and the walls were covered in Yankee and Ranger memorabilia. Next time we’ll make better choices. After lunch we grabbed a cab and headed over to the Roosevelt Hotel. We stayed there last year, and since it’s right around the corner from the Yale Club, where the luncheon would be the next day, it makes for a very convenient location. Unfortunately they were booked the night before and didn’t have a room ready for us yet, but strangely the woman said, “I see you’re celebrating an anniversary.” I hadn’t mentioned that when we booked, but somehow they knew – very strange! Since we had tickets to see Wicked at 3 pm, and Sage wanted to change before the show, we decided to hang out in the lobby for a bit and hope our room wouldn’t take long. Sure enough our room became available quicker than they thought, and we were able to check in, clean up and change. And we also got a corner room! It wasn’t huge, but was bigger than most NYC hotel rooms, and we had a nice view of Madison Ave. out our window.

Around 2 pm we headed over to the Gershwin Theater to see Wicked. When we talked about seeing a show, the only one on my list was “The Book of Mormon”, but that has been sold out for months and months. We talked about doing the half-price ticket booth again, but last year we ended up seeing a stinker, and decided on buying tickets for Wicked ahead of time. I’ve heard good things about it, and Sage always wanted to see it, so that’s what we ended up doing. The Gershwin Theater is a newer theater on Broadway, and you could tell immediately. The seats were comfortable, the lobby areas were large, and the sight lines were very good. As for the show…well, I thought it was good, not great. I thought the songs, except for a couple, were really forgettable, and the story dragged a lot. But the costumes and lighting were great, the production and sets were amazing, and it had a few laughs and jokes that kept my eyes open.

After the show we decided to step out onto the town! Well, really we just wanted dinner. Sage has always wanted to have a meal in Little Italy, so before we left we did some research on Yelp and Trip Advisor and found a place on Mulberry St. called Benito’s 1. It sounded like a little hole in the wall with good food, which is just what we wanted. After the show, with all the other Sunday matinees just getting over, grabbing a cab wasn’t in the cards, so we hopped on the #4 subway downtown. We jumped off at Spring St. and then walked the 6 blocks or so down to the restaurant. The first thing I was surprised at was how touristy Little Italy is. It was packed with people, most of them tourists, and had tons of cheap souvenir shops and stands all along the roads. I guess my idea of Little Italy being more like “the movies” was short-sighted, but I was a little disappointed. We found Benito’s with no problem, and sat down in the small (only 10 tables or so) restaurant. We had a great meal, with some cheap Chianti, Spaghetti Carbonara, and Penne in Vodka Sauce. We also were lucky to have an owner who prowled around the small place, singing old standards and yelling at his waiters. Overall it was a great experience.

After the meal I thought it would be nice to walk around the neighborhood a bit. Almost immediately down Mulberry St. we were swamped with hordes of people, many of them waiting for tables outside the more popular restaurants, but they all seemed a lot more cheesy, with waiters standing outside trying to lure people in with promises of fine food. I couldn’t believe Benito’s was half empty! But alas, the people want the pizzazz and risotto with a side of pasta instead of quality food. The multitudes of people were beginning to drive me crazy, so we decided to grab a cab and head back to the hotel. It was a long day, so we decided against going out for more drinks, and we went to bed early.

In the morning, after a great night’s sleep, we went out to a corner café for coffee and pastries, and then read and relaxed in the room. (Yes, we really know how to live it up when going to the big city.) We checked out, checked our bags, and walked the 2 minutes to the Yale Club where we met up with Clare Richardson, the CEO of the Fossey Fund, who was accompanying an elderly woman up the stairs towards the elevator. Clare somehow remembered us, and said, “Wonderful -- friendly faces! These two will help you get up to the luncheon”, and she handed off the woman to us. We had no idea who she was but we assumed she was going to the same place we were, and we managed to safely see her to the luncheon. We arrived early but the place was already buzzing. We spoke with Lauren and Judy, a couple of staff members of the Fossey Fund from Atlanta that we’ve met before. Judy was the one we wanted to stay close to, as she was in charge of making sure everyone got their photos taken with Sigourney whenever she arrived. (Last year we somehow missed out on that, and Sage said we were going to be first in line no matter whose toes we stepped on!) But before Sigourney arrived we spoke with a couple members of the Fossey Fund board, Jackie Ogden and Janice Stow. Jackie works at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and has worked with Disney and the Fossey Fund for years in funding the GRACE center, a location in the DRC that is set up for orphan Grauer gorillas.

Before long we noticed Sigourney had arrived, and moments later Sage was grasping at my arm to get our photos. As we have in years past we both felt at a loss for words when meeting her, and we simply shook her hands, said hello, smiled for the camera and left…not noticing that there wasn’t anyone else waiting for a photo with her! We’re such dopes…we could have easily spent more time chatting, getting photos on our iPhone, etc. We’ll never learn.

After our photos we noticed Felix Ndagijimana standing off to the side speaking to a couple of people. Readers of this blog will remember Felix from our Rwanda travels, as he is the Deputy Director of the Karisoke Research Center, and he gave us a 2 hour tour of the offices and their Bisate location when we were there in December. We decided to butt in on his conversation to thank him again for his generosity and hospitality in our travels. You could tell Felix felt a little overwhelmed on his trip to the US and New York City, but it was great talking with him. We were finally able to rectify a mistake we made back in December, when we forgot to get a photo taken with Felix in Rwanda. He was more than happy to oblige us this time.

Doug, Felix and Sage

We also spoke with a couple other members of the Board, Charlie Henn and Terry Harps, as well as Terry’s wife. During our talk we found out that Terry and his wife went to see Wicked the day before at the same exact show as we did! It’s a small world sometimes.

It seemed that the luncheon was smaller in years past, and speaking with Judy again she told us it was, and that (unfortunately) was due to their late notice of the exact date. Judy told us that we would be sitting at a table with Juan Carlos Bonilla, who we met last year and who lives year-round in Kigali, Rwanda. We were hoping that 2 of the more famous members of the Board of Trustees would be at the luncheon: Christian Bale and Andy Serkis. Alas, neither made it, so we were simply “stuck” with Sigourney.

When it was time to sit down we found our table, but before we sat down Dr. Tara, who we’ve met several times in the past (and was the one from the Fossey Fund’s offices in Atlanta who let us feed the gorillas at Zoo Atlanta a few years back) came up to say hi. We were disappointed that we weren’t at her table, as she always has the best stories to tell, and we wish we had more time to talk with her, especially about our travels to Rwanda. Once we settled down at our table we reintroduced ourselves to Juan Carlos, who is great as he always has a smile on his face and is very charming. Also at our table were: Jesper from Sweden, who runs a men’s skin-care company (Recipe for Men products) that is doing a gorilla lip balm product whose proceeds will be donated back to the Fossey Fund; and a few other board members. We chatted with Juan Carlos about our trip and drinking banana beer; to Jesper about his products; and to this woman from San Diego about how she travels a lot and how we would LOVE trekking in Bhutan. Mind you, she said this to us after about 5 minutes and somehow “just knew” that we would love doing that. Yeah…that’s probably # 200 on the list of things we want to do.

After lunch, Clare, Felix, Tara and Juan Carlos, along with Sigourney moderating, gave a round-table discussion about their efforts in Rwanda and the DRC, and outlined where the money was going, and how the donations help the conservation efforts. It was all well and good, but the best news was a casual aside that Clare mentioned when she said “Thanks to an anonymous donor, the Fossey Fund is fully funded for the next 5 years.” I assume that means that basic operations are funded and the bills can be paid, but one thing they can never be sure of is how much they’ll need for field operations. For example, up to 5 years ago Karisoke had 3 study groups that they followed and researched. Now, due to group splits and new groups being formed, they now have 9 study groups to follow. Each one needs to have trackers who follow each group every day; anti-poaching patrols in the areas that they frequent, looking for snares set by poachers; and researchers to study the dynamics of each group and to keep an eye on their health and safety. Any more splits and they’ll need more money and more personnel to keep the gorillas safe. But at least the basic operations seem to be on firm ground -- great news in this economy.

Sigourney always holds the people's attention

After the luncheon we didn’t spend much time talking as we had a 4 pm train to catch. We said our goodbyes, picked up a goody bag, and walked back to The Roosevelt where Sage changed into more comfortable clothes. We hailed a cab to Penn Station and hung out for our train platform to be announced. As always at Penn Station, when the platform is announced there’s a huge rush of people all trying to cram their way onto a tiny escalator that goes down to the platform. Once there we jumped on a car, and many of the seats were already taken, seemingly from people coming from Washington or points south of NYC. While looking for 2 seats together we somehow got stuck on a car where we were pinned between a woman and her son with a wheelchair (she needed to plug in his chair and she couldn’t find an outlet on the train that worked) and a group of people behind us clogging up the aisles. With nowhere to go, we ended up taking 2 seats across the aisle from each other, but unfortunately Sage had to sit facing another person. But the Acela trip was smooth and fast, and we made it back to our car off of Rt. 128 by 7:30 pm. It certainly was a hectic and quick 1 ½ days in New York, but well worth it to see our gorilla friends. Until next year!