Been on the road for a few days, so haven't had a chance to report on the gathering on Wednesday night at the Varsity. So the report is: we had a rousting good time. About a dozen folks showed up, including people from all over the campus. Good job. The rest of you need to make it next time. We talked a little about possibilities for the Spring, but mostly we just talked among ourselves. One of the issues was whether it mattered what portion of the semester most of the activities took place in. In the end, it probably doesn't matter, since folks will be reading with their classes at various times. April is always a very crowded month, so we'll probably do lots of things early on. We definitely want to blend the discussion groups so that community readers are interacting with students and faculty.
We also talked a bit about how to approach Charles Portis, which must be done with caution. We don't want to scare him.
We also talked about lots of interfacing we need to do: with the city, with the Marshall's museum people, with the library. Guess we'll have to get to work on that.
In the meantime, it's been a great week. The newspaper coverage was a real shot in the arm and the project moves forward.