
Go out to a local restaurant and you may find that, while the restaurant is busy with orders and people coming in, they are taking out those orders (or getting them delivered by one of the many delivery services), to eat at home, usually in solitude. This is what author Derek Thompson calls the “antisocial century,” when more people are choosing isolation over hanging out with others.
The way that Americans spend their leisure time has dramatically evolved in the last 70 years. Post-World War II, consumers were introduced to television which had a profound impact upon how we spent our down time and whom we spent it with. As the 21st century dawned and telephone technology merged with computers and the internet, our leisure time habits evolved again. Researcher and author Mark Dunkleman of Brown University reveals that “over the last several decades, technology has empowered us to invest much more time and attention in our most and least intimate relationships. Parents can text their children throughout the day, and FaceTime with them while they travel. To that end, while only 13% of baby boomers kept in more than daily touch with their parents during young adulthood, nearly a third of Americans in their early 20s now report communicating with their mother or father at least once a day.”
Enter the Breakfast Club. Twelve men meet every Friday morning at the Country Dream restaurant in the Edenville hamlet of Warwick and discuss all the things that are often forbidden to be shared at the dinner table. And they count on each other to not talk about them when they are not present, except in the best of terms. They have adopted the challenge to find ways to reanimate neighborly ties, without relying upon technology as the catalyst for communication. Eighty percent of what we express to one another is done nonverbally, through body language and facial expressions. They know the power of neighborly conversation and sharing knowledge in a face-to-face setting.
Spontaneously formed decades ago, they are steadfast friends who mourn the losses of previous members who have either moved away or, regretfully, who may have died in recent years. Musicologist Russ Layne was once a member but left the group when he moved to Massachusetts. Architect and construction manager Jerry Rubenstahl, a kayak aficionado who often navigated Canadian waters and who devoted years to the cleanup of the Wawayanda Creek, was also instrumental in the design of the award-winning St. Stephen’s church in Warwick, was once a member until his death. Lawyer and polymath Simon Haysom, a South African native, helped establish the East Arm Rowing Club in Greenwood Lake and played on a squash court in his barn, would challenge each of the members with esoteric wisdom from many of the books he read about physics and the nature of the universe until his recent and sudden death. Lively and heated conversations over politics, religion, history, geography, healthcare, math, physics, agriculture, technology, land restoration, law, water quality, the electric grid, music, the arts, vacations, relatives, climate change, children, and cosmology are fair game.
Ralph DiBart, a prominent urban planner, is a member, and retired Prof. Andy McLaughlin and an officer in the former Warwick Conservancy was a member before he moved away. What each of the members has in common, however, is a devotion to community activism, with each one often a founder of a well-known community organization. One member, Bob McGrath is a professor of psychology and published author who has lectured at Oxford University in the UK; another, Richard Hull, professor of African civilization and retired town historian, once enjoyed a brief modeling career with Martha Stewart, in which they did magazine commercials for a popular brand of cigarettes to fund graduate education; another retired management consultant, Geoff Howard, spent time in the Peace Corps in Africa; Keith Stewart, a noted organic garlic farmer in the region who hails from New Zealand, was a pioneer in bringing Hudson Valley produce to the Union Square Farmers Market; Prof. Bill Makofske helped to launch the Sustainable Warwick program; Peter Hall is a local journalist and digital marketing professional with many years’ experience in the wine industry; Peter Groenendaal, who was once a horse farm owner and later real estate developer, was active in the PDR initiative during the 1990s; Fred Buell, a retired college professor, is an acclaimed poet and photographer; Desi Smyth is a retired NYPD detective and founder of a leading surveillance technology firm, who often regales the group with fascinating stories about his time on the force.
Locally, the breakfast club had its origin at the former New Milford Grange and Post Office which had been converted to a deli and place for breakfast. Eventually the group moved to the Edenville Country Dream restaurant because of its charm and reputation for good, homemade food.