What inspired or motivated you to create your SIG?
In the summer of 2003 ( twenty one years ago) another OLLI member and I talked after class about starting a Nonfiction Book Club. Someone in the OLLI office had made a list of everyone who had expressed interest, Steve Benson gave me the list, and Karl and I started telephoning. We set a date, time, and place for a meeting.
More than twenty arrived for that meeting. We set out the guidelines, dates to meet, and generated a list for the first six months of reading and discussion.
We have met every month since that first meeting at the Washburn Library in August 2003. Even during the pandemic, for two months we met by emailing back and forth, and then by May of 2020 we moved to meeting on Zoom.
Every six months a new selection committee chooses books from a list generated by members, and discussion facilitators are selected for each meeting. We try to rotate among seven categories as we select titles.
Over these 21 years, membership has been relatively stable, even though many have come and gone. Some members have been participating for twenty years, some for 15, some for six, some for two. Currently twenty members are active participants.
