September 2016 Ritual for Business Minutes

Minutes Ritual For Business 9/24/2016

Present: David, Kimberly, Devin, Barbara, Rosemary, Matt, Katie

  • Roles: Matt as Parliamentarian, Katie as Devil’s Advocate, Devin as Vibes Watcher, and Kimberly wielded the Spatula.
  • Chalice: Barbara pointed at her shirt, which is covered in a rainbow chalice, in fact.
  • Agenda: approved as constructed.
  • Minutes: approved as read.
  • Treasurer’s Report: Devin brought numbers: $2,600 in pledges contributed, $34.01 in Greening the Basket, $60 in Social Justice donations. $75 in contributions from the bonfire; no other income numbers have changed significantly. The rent has been paid as per usual arrangements. We paid $101 to the Vonage phone. The UUA has started asking for their fair share portions as well. At the moment we have $6889.29 in the main account, and then the other accounts are unchanged due to zero interest accrual and no debits/deposits.
  • Committees:
    • Ritual Teams: we planned a cycle of rituals through Imbolc again, and critiques are caught up. Via may be able to come down and conduct a class on theater mid-winter (we will revisit the schedule to try to get it arranged while Chicago is freezing over).
    • NomCom: they stand ready for action.
    • Membership: Lena will get her yellow ribbon tomorrow, as she has joined Greeter’s Table, and Katie deserves one as well. Cathy Combs wants to ensure that she is noted as a member for purposes of getting the UU World; David will investigate what the process will be to do that for everyone at once.
    • Welcoming: Barbara and others are still looking for further signage for the bathrooms.
    • Stewardship: the bonfire made $75, and there will be another one on October 22nd with a Samhain/spooky stories theme.
      Barbara reported that Lyn is willing to arrange a percentage-take payment for our tabling at First Fridays, so October can be easy.
    • KidSpace: several more weeks of no kids most of the time. Ritualists still plan to have a Children’s Church if there happen to be any. Barbara was curious if anyone was getting a lesson or prep bag from Linda, which did not seem to be true. She will run a couple of coloring sheets at a minimum.
    • Communications: EH was snarled last week because Kinko’s failed to give us both print batches. The brochure has been updated and printed. There will be an open Communications Committee meeting on October 10th at David’s house at 7pm.
    • Liaisons – Lyn has been out of town for a couple of weeks due to family emergencies. No glitches or disasters seem to be happening, though Danny suspects some of the folding chairs may have disappeared. Barbara is concerned that no money is flowing into the LLC except from Gaia, Oasis, and Vicky’s emergency contributions. She will try to arrange a physical meeting soon.
      David went to Manheim’s meeting in September. John Hoffman from Urban Core Builders (the owners of 4325) was present and introduced himself; they have plans for remodeling and renewal of several lots, building houses with local labor. They have experience working in other neighborhoods of the city. Bill has known him since he operated in the Crossroads. There was much discussion of the disposition of the RUN:mp grant money, which is the bulk of their flush bank account. They actually have about $675 in unrestricted funds.
    • Social Justice: the final Cooked episode was shown last month; five people were in attendance. The next coming movies will probably be a little lighter focus; October 6th there will be a documentary about Chinese-American culture and restaurants, called In Search of General Tso.
      Also we will be trying to get a lane for $200 for Anti-Violence Project’s Brunch and Bowl fundraising event, on November 12th; that would allow us to have six people all in one lane together.

      Pagan Pride Day happened, but the passport project fizzled due to lack of vendor/tabling participation. The event itself was pretty successful; we got a lot of passerby traffic at our info table. The labyrinth was set out, and the discussion groups were held to mixed effect (one had no attendees, but it was against several bigger things). Workshops generally got 4-5 times as many people in attendance as the discussion groups.
      Sam has a vision of PPD being an outreach event that non-pagans will come to, but the vast majority of attendees are pagan or family of pagans, or sometimes pagan-questioning. Barbara suggested that maybe we and another group can go in together on an information booth at Table of Faiths or some similar event, which is expensive but full of welcoming people. The next one will be May 9, 2017 and for once it will be in the evening. Matt went to Circle of Fountains’ group ritual, and noted that their diversity is largely amongst various flavors of witches; he would like to see if we can coordinate with them. Kimberly wants to explore the idea of getting an ‘open house’ public event ritual cycle amongst us and the Heathen group, Circle of Fountains, etc.

  • Old Business:
    • Time: Kimberly brought the survey results; 16 people participated, 15 of which attend Gaia at least some of the time (one geographically inconvenienced person). There was a strong trend in the responses to prefer 4pm than 3pm (almost doubling the ‘Very Convenient’ responses). A couple of people specifically said that they would be more able to come at 4pm.
      Consensed to move our meeting time back to 4pm as of November 6th, 2016.
    • Closet: Barbara reiterated that we need to make another door’s worth of space; she thinks we can still make more space in the angled-roof space at the west side, and consolidate/remove more of our lesser-used things.
  • New Business:
    • Stephan Bland memorial: Barbara has arranged that tentatively with the family for the evening of October 23rd about 7pm.
    • Wall Hanging: Erin, David, and Kimberly met at Craft Circle to kick around ideas for a wall hanging that could permanently live on the south wall. Several ideas were sketched, but nothing has stuck out as particularly impressive yet. Part of that is we don’t know what sort of thing Lyn wants to put up.