if women ruled the world…(for my bookgroup. I love you all anyway)
Posted on February 27, 2007
Filed Under suburban joys |
Madeline Albright has said, “People who think that ‘if women ruled the world, things would be different’ must not remember high school.”
I’d like to concur and second that notion with, “People who think that ‘if women ruled the world, things would be different’ have never seen my book group in action.”
I ask myself, how can a group of ten educated women have such a hard time with compromise and capitulation? I mean, this is extracurricular, completely volunteer novel reading. Nothing at stake here but an evening with hummus and few glasses of wine.
The members are all women with children, with husbands, with mortgages. Young children, young-ish husbands, young mortgages. Without a doubt, these are complicated times for all of us. So it follows that there’s a lot of scheduling conflicts, e-mailing back and forth with changes of venue and date. That is until last Fall when several meetings in a row were canceled or juggled. The first time was a collective decision…lots of traveling spouses, sick children and, well frankly, people who hadn’t read the book. However, the intended host had already bought the spread, I suspect pastries and wine and a wheel of brie. There were hurt feelings, cross words, a divided book group populace, the Israelis versus the Palestinians, Shiites versus the Sunnis. Good thing we only possess personal copies of The Namesake rather than rocket propelled grenades.
Anyway, the group suffered a second set back when I had to cancel the next book group meeting due to my father’s unexpected and very serious illness. (He’s fine now but was in serious bad straits there for awhile, I was not in the mood to host book group.) Someone took up the torch and hosted for me. Apparently all was civil and complaints about the change of plans were spare or at least whispered.
But things have fallen off the cliff since then. Book group negotiations have derailed. There were some controversial e-mails sent about the following month’s selected date and a final shout out that we were all too damn compromising and considerate to actually get a date on the calendar. There were several hundred exclamation points in this e-mail. Tensions flared.
I pushed away from the negotiation table, bitter, confused, declaring diplomatic sanctions against all book members until further notice. Others seemed to be doing the same. All chances for an accord seemed unlikely until the Jimmy Carter of the group made some phone calls and suggested a strategy that involved printed schedules made months in advance and a clearly outlined back up plan to address the contingency of a sick or unavailable host. After these senior-level talks, all parties were back in-line, egos soothed, tempers calmed. It remains to be seen whether said talks will actually restore the framework of book group dialogue and restart The Namesake discussion. But we thank our Jimmy Carter for her honest efforts towards peace and better book group.
Comments
WordPress database error: [Can't open file: 'wp_comments.MYI' (errno: 144)]
SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_ID = '23' AND comment_approved = '1' ORDER BY comment_date
Leave a Reply
