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At the start of Nineteen Ninety-One, with my returning health and my
new lease on life, I could see myself returning to the work force
and, thus, would not have the same amount of time to devote to
running the science fiction club as I had during the previous three
years. As a coincidence, we were having an organizational meeting
for the club so it seemed like the perfect time to mention it. What
could possibly go wrong?
I hosted the gathering at my apartment in January and spent some time
cleaning up the place to make it as presentable as possible for the
largest group of visitors I would ever have there: Elizabeth,
the last remaining original core member who had acted as my fount of
wisdom about how the club could be run and what could be done with
it, Suzi, the former founder of the now defunct writers' group
and current desktop publisher of the club's monthly two-sheet, Daina,
the editor of the club's fiction quarterly 'zine and author visit
coordinator. And then there was me, the head of the club, acting
treasurer, non-author event coordinator, and all around text
contributor to all of our publications. As it turned out, Elizabeth
brought another friend with her as he was curious about it and what
we did.
As we gathered in my little living room area and drinks were handed
out, there was a happy atmosphere and given the modest success of the
art auction the previous year and the club's overall improvement in
reputation and notoriety, the general expectation was we might be
organizing a full out science fiction convention this year to
take place early in the next year. I was game for that and the other
people there were willing to explore that next step, too.
Also discussed were our options for rounding up subsequent local
author short stories now that our main source of fiction from the
writers' group was drying up as it had disbanded. Three of us there
had been the main contributors to the Quarterly, anyhow, so it was
simply a question of finding a little bit of additional material to
fill the rest of the issues over the course of the year. Perhaps
we could get some of our author contacts to donate a story or two for
us? Often authors are cranking out more stories than
they can sell and might be willing to allow us to publish one of
their more obscure short works in return for bringing attention to
their current work and upcoming books. Also, we could host a
fiction writing competition in town and recruit new local want to be
science fiction & fantasy writers, as part of the competition
we would feature their work in the Quarterly. This idea also
went over well and since I had hosted a fiction page on Jeff's online
site in the early Nineteen Eighties, I knew there were always a
number of budding writers wanting to have their work featured
somewhere.
There was a discussion of our meeting place problem. As the
Savings & Loan bank we had the meetings at for the prior
five years had gone out of business as part of the national savings &
loan crisis of the late nineteen eighties, the community room that
they offered had gone away with it. After finding a temporary home
to host the art auction, I had called everywhere I could think of in
search of a new meeting place but the free ones no longer existed as
the tax break for them had been discontinued. Finally, I had found a
meeting room at the local Community College we could use, the only
problem with it was the complex was at the extreme south end of town.
Though our original meeting place had been at the south end of town
as well, having to take the interstate highway for two additional
exits was, as it turned out, a bridge too far for a number of the
club members and attendance had fallen by about twenty percent.
Also, unlike the previous space, this new room was filled with tables
facing a desk without us having the moveable walls to disguise the
empty half of the room; the energy level of the meetings had declined
and the best trick we could figure was to take the chairs behind the
back tables out of the room to at least force the remaining attendees
to sit more closely to the visiting guest. Everyone agreed we needed
a better meeting place, but none of us had a clue where else to look
for one.
As an associated side note, there was a beautiful little log
cabin in the center of town that had been unoccupied for years as
I had seen it time and again as one of my regular buses drove passed
it. I had actually taken the step of going to the county office to
look up who owned it and wrote them a letter asking about the
property and offering to clean up & maintain the grounds if, in
return, we could use it once a month as our meeting place. My letter
went unanswered and that property has remained largely untouched in
the decades since. A bit of a shame really as it is a great looking
little cabin.
With all the other official topics discussed and put aside, I then
broached the subject of my dramatic regaining of my health and my
expectation that I would reduce my role in the club as I pursued work
opportunities as the year progressed. Rather than happy faces at the
news of my health returning, I instead found faces of dismay and
concern. I assured them I would be remaining with the club and
helping to manage it, it was just that I would find a new general
manager for it. Nothing
to worry about...!
Within two weeks after the meeting ended, Elizabeth cut all contact
with the club. She said it seemed like a good time to leave as the
club had reached a high, but I suspected she feared being the one
fingered as the new general manager or at least having to help more
as I began to do less. Two months later Suzi pulled out, too,
returning the job of publishing the club's monthly two-sheet back to
my lap as well as the other bits she did for us. With the loss of
them, more of our contributing writers were gone from the group and
thus sources of material for the Quarterly. Daina & I faced the
prospect of either having to write twice as much to fill the gap
while pursuing new submissions, or close down the quarterly
'zine all together. With regret, we mutually agreed we couldn't
handle that additional load and used the last stories left over from
the defunct writers' group to fill the final issue, though it was
still a few pages short which we disguised by printing its final
cover on thick card stock.
While my goal was to reduce my workload with the club, I was now
handling far more of it and to compensate, we reduced the number of
meetings for the year as well as abandoned any thought of organizing
a convention. I finally found a new guy to head the club and even
wrote and co-produced our first television advertisement using him to
round up new members. But it turned out while he liked the idea of
'being in charge of the club', he really didn't have the energy level
or interest in helping to keep it going. After Daina and I organized
the first few meetings of his year to give him time to organize the
next few, he dropped all contact with us. By the Summer of Nineteen
Ninety-Two the club was truly over, even if not on paper.
It took me two times to learn this lesson during my life:
While no one would ever think I would make a good leader given my
stuttering, once I was in charge of something I somehow made people
feel comfortable helping out. But once I would step aside, all those
same people would flee in short order. Somehow they liked helping
me out more than working for the cause. I've since had on
my 'To Do List' figuring out how to lead something and then
transition away from it without it falling apart...
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