We discussed some other ideas.

1. Next Sunday we will be taking a field trip to Ithaca Paint and Decorating to pore over some paint color ideas for our room.  We will not sit with Meeting for the first 15 minutes but will set out by bike promptly at 10:30.  We will have car transport for those who don’t want to bike.  We plan to go no matter what the weather, so come prepared with gloves and with rain gear if it’s rainy.

2.  Our date for painting the Peace Room [our room] is Saturday, December 10th between 10 and 2.  If we have only a few people, we will all paint together.  The space is not that large, so if more folks want to paint we’ll organize shifts.

3.  The Hospitality Committee is  looking for ways to make our meetinghouse more warm and welcoming.  The pancake breakfasts were great!  We talked about other ways to create a warm welcome and came up with  the idea that we could prepare a simple soup for a Meeting lunch once a month.  Talking while while chopping and cooking would be fun, and we could entice the Meeting with good smells from the kitchen.  We’ll be talking more about this idea, but we’d like to try doing this the first weekend in December to see how it works for us.

4.  We also talked about the idea of having some time set aside only for fun.  This might happen during Meeting for Business.  We decided we would want to avoid scheduling fun for another time, which means being transported to the meetinghouse and trying to fit one more activity into busy schedules.  We’ll be discussing this further.

“The Third Street Meetinghouse Committee recommends exterior paint colors as shown: the main building is ‘San Clemente Rose’ [a quiet earth tone in the peach/pink range] and the window trim is ‘Opal.’ We considered many factors in selecting these colors. As a designer I [Larry Clarkberg] choose colors every day; I was disappointed to discover that buildings have a very limited color palette; anything outside certain norms makes a building look too unusual. One of the biggest constraints for our particular building is that the color scheme must work well with the color of the brick walls. Also the colors must work well with our stucco building style, which could be considered either southwestern or Italian. Finally the colors must express well the adjectives selected by the meeting: ‘Contemplative, Caring, Peaceful, Truthful, Genuine, Engaged/Committed, Plain/Simple, Passionate.’

“We used a Photoshop file to test various color schemes. We eliminated schemes that were primarily gray, blue, yellow or green. Warm or sandy tans seemed to work well. However, tan with darker window trim didn’t look ‘contemplative’ or ‘plain.’ Then we tried tan with a *lighter* trim and we realized, ‘that’s it!’

“We’ve painted a patch of San Clemente Rose on the Madison St. wall as a test.”

The ideas we discussed are below.  One other idea for adding more structure to our meetings is for the Meeting to buy a First Day School set of lessons for us to use.  The Power Qs present on Sunday preferred the idea of a structured series of discussion topics.

Bringing more structure to the Power Quaker meetings

The Power Quakers present at Sunday’s meeting would like to follow the format  below for the coming year.  Please note that this is a proposal and has not been discussed by the entire Power Quaker group.
Each Power Quaker to choose a serious topic for discussion and lead that discussion.
The topics would be chosen at the beginning of the First Day year in the fall.
If the Power Quaker responsible for the upcoming discussion cannot be present, s/he would ask another Power Quaker to step forward.

Every 4th meeting, we would have a more spontaneous discussion.  Each person present would put a discussion topic into a bowl and we would pull one to be the topic of the day.  ITts not yet clear who would lead that discussion; this might the the adult presence, but that has not been determined.

We would still continue to have “off” Sundays where Power Quakers would not meet and where an adult presence would be needed.

If there is a 5th Sunday in a given month, this would be a “pot luck” meeting and we would bring snacks and have social time together.

Things the Power Quakers might incorporate into their First Day room

Painting [we would do our own painting]:
Painting each wall a different pastel color
Painting each wall in more than one color, one color gradually fading into the other for a sort of “rainbow” effect
Painting most walls in a pastel color, but having one wall be in a bolder color
Painting the walls white or off-white and adding color and interest in other ways
Having a “graffiti wall” on the small, north-facing wall.
Having one wall entirely covered in corkboard to make a giant bulletin board
Making T-shirt flags or a wall hanging
Curtains [I would sew these]
Posters
Thoughtful sayings stenciled around the tops of the walls
Large pieces of paper [newsprint or art paper] for jotting down pithy sayings that come up.  These would be typed up every so often so all could have copies and a new paper would be posted.
Tissue-paper stained glass on the lower window panels
Prisms hanging in the windows to create rainbows
A book case with a lending library
A sofa
A table [not clear what sort of table]
An end table with a lamp

At their last meeting the Garden Committee decided to poll the meeting to find out what plants and tools people would be willing to donate. Do you have anything to donate? If so contact Emily Murphy, recording clerk of the Garden Committee.

Here’s a list of things people have pledged:

Sue Ruff: plants, bulbs
Carolyn Kenyon: pots for plants of all sizes
Wendy Wolfe: hostas
Kelly Moreland: trowel and wildflower seeds
Chuck Mohler: chicken manure
Marilyn Ray: dahlias
Larry Clarkberg: garden cart