The Webmaster’s Corner

This column is your Webmaster’s attempt to pass on periodic thoughts and news of the Club. While the thoughts I pass on are my own, I will enclose responses and other thoughts or news of the Club that members wish to send my way (chicago.literary.club@gmail.com). As Webmaster, I reserve the right to edit out material that does not pertain to the Club in a constructive manner. I look forward to hearing from you. The material is dated; the newest entries are on top.

February 13, 2009

Two primary thoughts are on my mind as I start this ‘Corner’: the state of the economy and our connection to the outside world. That sounds rather global, but my intention is local.

Our Club is fortunate enough to have an investment reserve accrued over many years by wise and generous forebears. The current state of the financial markets has substantially impaired the value of and income from those investments. The result in the short term is that the Board of Directors is being forced to make some hard decisions about how the Club can best live within its means, such as:

· Special event dinners have, in the past, been subsidized to a degree by our investment income. That is no longer an option. The cost of the dinners must be passed along to those attending, and as a result, the prices of the dinners will likely rise even despite our attempts to control the costs.

· We will need to have accurate reservations for our special dinners, and will no longer be able to cancel reservations after the cut-off date. Payment will need to be made in advance, with the reservation. No reservations will be able to be made after the cut-off date, since our suppliers require accurate counts.

· We have already cut back on the frequency of the postal reminder cards, from weekly to monthly, due to the cost of postage. Each card is 27¢; multiply that by 150 cards changed from weekly to monthly….a simple change can save substantially. If warranted, we may eliminate the postal card altogether and rely on email reminders instead. Several members have already advised that the postal card can be eliminated for them (thank you!); if you would like to do so as well, please just send a reply to any of the weekly emails; if your email is not on file, please let me know.

· We may reduce the publications to one essay per year, our historical average.

· Contributions to outside entities will likely be substantially reduced, or in some cases, eliminated.

· We will work with our administrative service to reduce those costs.

· Your Board is has had one meeting to look at our financial situation, and will have another on March 2. Our Treasurer has performed yeoman work.

That sounds rather sobering, so I am happy to relate the other piece of news, which is the ‘discovery’ and connection to other clubs with similar interests in other cities. Our world is expanding! We had known the literary clubs in Cincinnati, in Indianapolis, and in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. However, this past fall, thanks to our website, two essayists emailed me to inquire about the nature of our club, and about any other clubs of which I might be aware. This quickly developed into a very friendly exchange as these two gentlemen researched and then wrote their respective essays, one from the Indianapolis Literary Club, and one from the Chit Chat Club of San Francisco. They presented their essays respectively on January 19 and February 9 of this year.

One development has been the collection of a group of ‘Affiliated Clubs’. These are all essay clubs, operating in roughly the same format as ours in which the primary focus of the club is on members who write original essays and present them before the club. There are ten in all, and as they agree to be included, all will be listed on our website’s masthead under ‘Affiliated Clubs’. Some of their authors have expressed an interest in having their work posted on our site; the two papers mentioned above are the first such. I urge you to take a look.

None of the clubs has any substantial dining or accommodation service, so I adopted the term ‘Affiliated’ rather than ‘Reciprocal’, which usually implies such services. We do hope to assist each other as time goes along and may have shared programs or other events.

While our club has a substantial membership and is one of the larger of the ten clubs, we should be attentive to what keeps our Club viable and active. Here I defer to the words of one of the authors I noted above, Dr. Marc Cruciger of The Chit Chat Club of San Francisco:

“there are three important concerns that all private clubs must address in order for them to maintain their existence. Those three ingredients are (1) Keeping the goal of the club clear and distinct, (2) Keeping pace with and incorporating changes to the club that occur in society at large be they demographic, cultural or technical, and (3) good governance. All three ingredients are critical for longevity and vigor.

“Perhaps the most critical issue for any club’s viability is member selection. It is most important to choose club members who have a love and respect for what the club is all about. One does not admit non-skiers to a ski club, teetotalers to a wine club and illiterates to a book club. To admit members to an essay club who do not have an abiding love of self-expression through writing and speaking as well as a genuine native intellectual curiosity for ideas is a recipe for an essay club, and especially a small one such as ours, for disaster. All nine of the essay clubs still active in the United States choose their members carefully and require their participation. They all emphasize that an essay club is not a lecture service, dinner club, or random intellectual discussion group.”

While Dr. Cruciger’s essay is not quite ready for posting, it will be shortly, and I recommend it to you, along with that of Dr. Jay.