I survived the Mutual Aid meeting on Thursday, although I guess since I'm writing this and you are reading it, you didn't need me to tell you that. In my last entry I compared a Mutual Aid meeting to a drive to Thunder Bay . . . arduous with some benefit. This last meeting was more like a drive to the Sault, minus the scenery. The meeting didn't actually last nine hours, but it seemed like it. My agenda sheet was covered with artwork of various descriptions, none worth including here.
Mutual Aid meetings are usually run using Robert's Rules of Order as a rough guide. The chair asks for a motion, someone makes it, someone seconds it, we haggle and hash it to death, then either vote it in or out. Democracy in one of it's purer forms. The problem is that pure democracy is time consuming. A motion is made to accept the last motion, which nullified a previous motion . . . pretty soon, we need Gravol to stave off motion sickness. A little dictatorship, judiciously sprinkled in, might not be a bad thing. You can read about Roberts Rules here.
The English language reportedly welcomed its one millionth word recently. I think we used them all several times on Thursday. While a million words might not be good news for a Mutual Aid meeting, it is for us writers. With all those nouns, verbs and adjectives to choose from, it shouldn't be too hard to put together a few thousand into an interesting book, but I haven't had much luck. It has something to do with not sitting down and starting I guess. I have drafts for a few dozen short kid's stories, but they are as rough as a Northern Ontario bush road. It will take some major construction to get them paved enough to where folks don't get flat tires trying to read them. To read about the million words, click here.
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