Our May Meeting Will Also Be Online

Dear Writer Friends,

The world is still stranger than it was just a few months ago, and even though the Carl-Schurz-Haus library is once again open for limited business, we still can’t hang out there as a group, cute little masks or no. So let’s get together again online.

Let’s meet at the normal time: 12 May 2020 at 19:00.

The rules have not changed.

We will once again use Jitsi, which works best on Google’s Chrome browser. If you would like to join us, please send me an email before 15:00 on 12 May 2020. Only people who have sent me an email will receive an invitation to the digital meeting space! Then, sometime before the meeting starts, I will send you a link with information on how to join the meeting.

I will not publish the link here or on facebook, and hopefully that will minimize any intrusion from (naked) outsiders.

Please be in touch. And be safe. And stay healthy. And find joy in the day-to-day. And keep writing. And recycle text and other things when you can.

Our Next Meeting?

Dear Writer Friends,

Let’s have our next meeting online, shall we? Let’s get together in a digital space and spend time looking at each others’ digital faces. Let’s spend some time writing and talking about writing and talking about writing now that maybe we all have a little more time to write. Let’s do this thing that everybody else is doing and meet in the digital ether.

Let’s meet at the normal time: 14 April 2020 at 19:00.

There will, however, be rules.

My plan is to use the service Jitsi. Here is some information about it. Something else you should know about it, is that it works best on Google’s Chrome browser. If you would like to join us, please send me an email before 14:00 on 14 April 2020. Only people who have sent me an email will receive an invitation to the digital meeting space! Then, sometime before the meeting starts, I will send you a link with information on how to join the meeting.

I will not publish the link here or on facebook, and hopefully that will minimize any intrusion from (naked) outsiders.

Please be in touch. And be safe. And stay healthy. And find joy in the day-to-day. And keep writing.

What happened at our meeting last night

Please have a look at the previous post to see what was planned for our meeting last night.

This, then, is what happened last night:

  • a tool of plumbers

  • a painting of toenails

  • a twitter of bagpipes

  • a bark of gardeners

  • a bag of Liptons

  • a stampede of earthquakes

  • a display of actors

  • a roll of eyes

  • an annoyance of musicals

  • a living of books

  • an embrace of octopuses

  • a drunk-tank of corkscrews

  • a swarm of teenagers

  • a sword of worries

  • a baptism of rivers

  • a courtesy of Canadians

  • a Jurassic of rhinoceroses

  • an octave of octopuses

  • a happiness of clowns

  • a demo of books

  • a sortilage of plants

  • a procrastination of podcasts

  • a circus of wannabes

  • a pool of conversations

  • an etymology of desks

  • a trail of vagabonds

  • an ink of factories

  • an Austen of lovers

  • an order of waitresses

  • a parade of shoes

  • a vitrine of priests

  • an Ahab of whales

  • a shrug of shoulders

  • a droop of grapes

  • a billowing of ghosts

  • a countryrunner of horses

  • a sneeze of toddlers

  • an abandonment of rough drafts

  • a gang of magpies

  • a speed date of volcanoes

  • a love song of cell phones

  • a mobile of planets

  • a babble of Germans

  • a rainbow of activists

  • a gossiping crowd of kettles

  • a swat team of coats

  • a stack of shelves

  • a rope of giraffes

  • an exhaustion of cars

  • a family of roots

  • a gaggle of students

  • a circle of rooms

Our next regular meeting: 10.03.2020

Dear Friends and writers and friendly writers,

Our next regular meeting will take place on Tuesday, 10 March 2020 at 19:00 in the Carl-Schurz-Haus Library (as usual!). We very much look forward to welcoming you and spending some time writing and talking about writing with you.

Because James Lipton, host of the long-running interview series Inside the Actor’s Studio and author of the important and impressive book An Exaltation of Larks, died yesterday (02 March 2020), I would like to spend some time talking about his book and collective nouns in general.

What are collective nouns? I’m glad you asked! Here are some of my favorites:

  • a pride of lions
  • a parliament of owls
  • a gaggle of geese (on the ground)
  • a skein of geese (in the air)
  • a trip of hippies
  • an unkindness of ravens

Meeting on 14 January 2020

Oh, my friends! What should we discuss at our next meeting, which will take place on Tuesday, 14 January 2020, at 7:00 p.m. in the Carl-Schurz-Haus library?

I have been having trouble reading lately: starting but not finishing books, not knowing what to read next, horrors of that nature. Perhaps we could talk about reading.

I have been thinking about the number of different lives I’ve led in this life so far. I made a list and came up with 14 distinct lives. Maybe it’s more. Maybe it’s less. It is a question of where you draw the line. Perhaps we could talk about the magnitude of transitions.

Furthermore, the world is coming to an end, and it seems, more and more, as though there is little any of us can do about it. Perhaps we could spend some time comforting one another.

I look forward to seeing you soon.