meeting minutes

Dear Attendees,

We sure had a full agenda at yesterday’s inaugural meeting.

Some of the topics we touched on:

• the veal of vegetables: tiny corn in tiny cages
• squirrels, Eichhörnchen, chipmunks, and other assorted Sciuridae
• the number of fondue sets in our households
• uncle jokes, which are similar but not identical to dad jokes

We also covered in a bit more detail:

• LSD, TMS, and psilocybin as described in Michael Pollan’s book “How to Change your Mind”
• Did you know that Nicolas Cage has acted in more than 100 movies? And that I have a region-free DVD player in case you need to watch any films that are not available on your streaming services? And that justwatch.com can tell you what’s available where?
• Can Matthew Broderick never go to Ireland ever again because he killed a woman and child? Has Mark Wahlberg nearly beat a Vietnamese woman to death? Is Christopher Walken really Natalie Wood in disguise? What other atrocious celebrity conspiracy theories do we need to investigate?
• the merits and demerits of Jägermeister and Becherovka, and the cheeky Seventies Jägermeister advertising like this one: “I’m drinking Jägermeister because Roland really only showed me his stamp collection.”
• Over The Rhine, a band hailing from the Cincinnati neighborhood of the same name

Action items for attendees:

• Bill, to tell me more about that hanging system that might work for my big mirror
• Mary, to tell me about that Filipino place nearby
• Mary to watch Revenge, on Shudder
• me, to watch Mandy, which is also available on Shudder
• Someone – anyone? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? to act as a mule and make a pastry or cake delivery from HahDough, the German bakery in San Francisco. I hear their Black Forest Cake is really good.
• and me, to schedule the next meeting, in a month or two.

Last but not least, the action item that is already completed:

I brought my grandpa Karl Ortenau along to the meeting. The back of the image had an inscription that none of us could decipher because it was written in Sütterlin.

But my siblings came through – I sent them a photo of the inscription, and within an hour I had the wording:

“M/l Mutter,

zum Zeichen treuen Geden-

kens auch beim Vergnügen,

von ihrem Karl

Greifenberg i.Pom. 18.I.30″

This translates as: “To my dear Mother,

as a sign of my faithful remem-

brance, even in times of pleasure,

from her Karl

Greifenberg in Pomerania, January 18, 1930.”