2 Weeks Before August 14th, 2013 - INVITATION TO The FIRST Helping Friendly Book Club Gathering

Dear Questers,

I’m feeling inspired.

In honor of Helping Friend Book Club’s 10th Anniversary I’m going to go back to the beginning and start posting our original communications in sequential order here. The intention is to edify and entertain, to improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer as we remember how our Quest for the Secrets to Eternal Joy and Never Ending Splendor has unfolded. I’m also going to reread Helping Friendly Book 1 “Another Roadside Attraction” by Tom Robbins, and I’m also going to make a pilgrimage to the Fontana della Pigna, the 1st century Roman fountain that’s in the Court of the Pinecone in Vatican City, otherwise known as the famous Giant Pinecone Statue.

What Would Plucky Purcell Do? He would follow his pinecone…

Watch this space in the days and weeks to come. We’ve got a lot to do before April 8, 2024.

-Sole Cuttle

The First Helping Friendly Book Club Invite, 2 weeks before August 14, 2013:

Fellow Questers!

We are going to have our first gathering in two weeks on Wednesday, August 14th at Boxwood T+G in Uptown. Hopefully most of us will have read through Part II of ‘Another Roadside Attraction’ by Tom Robbins by then, but if some of us have only made it through Part I, that will be fine. This book can be a bit confusing at first, so I want to make sure nobody is getting discouraged if you haven’t put all the pieces together yet, you aren’t meant to. It’s designed that way, but trust me, it will all make sense. Just keep reading.

To quote fellow HFB Club Member Don Bueno, “Please do not forget that a typical Tom Robbins book may take about 125 pages or so until it hits you that this is the greatest book you ever read.”

For the good people who don’t live in Dallas but would still like to participate, please feel free to submit any discussion questions you may have and we will be sure to bring them up. Hopefully we will get our AV and IT teams running a virtual linkup for future meetings, but in the meantime we can nominate a scribe to keep you updated that way.

The only thing you need to bring is your book and an innate sense of curiosity and wonder. If you’ve been highlighting passages as you go that will be great as well, along with any questions you would like us to discuss. We can get pitchers of Sangria or whatever y’all prefer and talk about what we think is happening so far to Amanda and her wild companions. The running theme is of course, “Are there any secrets to eternal joy and never ending splendor in here that we can incorporate into our own lives?”

Since it is so hot I am thinking we will begin between 7 and 7:30 to give the patio a chance to cool off, or we can always meet inside. I will shoot to get there about 6:45 and we can begin with a few rounds of ‘Apples to Apples’ to break the ice and get our telekinetic powers up and running.

I’m very excited to get folks together and get this going. Please don’t be intimidated if you haven’t read as far as you would like to. The whole point of all this is just to walk away thinking, “Damn, that was some really great conversation we just had.”

Please be so kind as to RSVP via this event invite so I will know if I need to reserve a big table. And as always please let me know if you have any questions or ideas for how we can make this better. This is a self-evolving group and I can’t wait to see where it goes. Thank you in advance for your participation.

Sincerely,

Sole Cuttle