The 62nd Street Forum Lectures, Medetings and Events + + + INTRODUCTION How it all started About fall of 2002, my wife Lisa and I attended a musical concert of Michael Dadap at the Philippine Consulate in NYC. We had recently moved in from Los Angeles, CA. In the reception that followed, we saw a familiar face: Dr. Amador Muriel, PhD, our physics professor in the early 60's back in UP, Diliman. We approached him, and sure enough, he remembered us. We were invited to his house, and over coffee, we reminisced about the good old college days. Though we hadn't seen Amador in 40 years, we had heard much about him and actually were in email contact a few years earlier when he was running for the UP presidency, and though we still were based in CA, we helped launch a campaign among our UP friends via the UP email group we had, about 150 strong. In the course of the evening, he mused that some years back, his place was the venue of many a meeting / forum / gathering of various groups, albeit mainly political. This was during the Marcos years. And then he suggested the idea of starting up again a regular meeting group mainly for intellectual growth and camaraderie. This we fully endorsed. Thus was born the 62nd Street Forum, named after his address in midtown Manhattan. We started out by gathering our friends regularly on selected Saturday evenings at his place for social events that included meetings, lectures, but always ending up with pot-luck dinner and drinks. The starting time was at 7:00 PM when free street parking was allowed. I also started a YahooGroups cyber "Loop" of Tri- State (NY, NJ, CN) friends, and this accreted to over a hundred strong, and eventually extended to other out-of-state and -country participants, who joined in the discussions via email. Over a period of 6 years, we had over 36 lectures or meetings spanning all sorts of topics by various speakers, locally and from the Philippines. Towards the latter part of the period, we had more social events, especially when some former member who moved out of the area, happened to come to town. Further below is such a list of events with Roman numeral designations. We tried to keep records of the topics and content by making write-ups of each lecture, listing the attendees, photo ops, and then posting them on the internet. We even started a Newsletter, but it only lasted two issues since email via the Loop was easier. This where Johnny Reyes' special talents came in very handily. As an engineer, he apparently has a photogra- phic memory. But another talent is his writing skills. After a lecture, he'd make a write-up and send it out to the Loop. Many of us often kidded him about hiding a wire or recorder some where, but that didn't seem to be the case. In any event, this book is a compilation of all those lectures that were reported on the Loop, plus many other selected email threads that were pertinent or of interest. One of the Forum members is Jobo Elizes, also a retired engineer who is an accredited sub-contractor to the Amazon Book powerhouse, and it is through him that these books are possible. The 62nd Street Forum's meetings started petering out in 2008 when a good number of us started leaving the tri-state area. The last article in the book gives all the interesting details. But the cyber Loop still continues on, though perhaps not as active as before. When first all complied, the contents made the book too thick. So the publisher decided to break it down into 2 books. This is the first book. Referring to the Table of Contents, this Introduction, List of Lectures, Excerpts, Appendix and Publisher's Message are repeated in the second book. Danny Gil 20 Oct 2016 -ooOoo- LIST OF LECTURES / MEETINGS / EVENTS I 1-Mar-03 Amador Muriel - Retirement II 22-Mar-03 Bert Floretino & Gene Pulmano - Life of Jose Garcia Villa III 5-Apr-03 Johnny Reyes - Refinery Danny Gil - LEED IV 19-Apr-03 Mang Rodriguez - Sculpture V 17-May-03 Norman Madrid - Economics (MORE INSI