Some changes to the PBC

I've been offline since February 24, when we held the first meeting of the Philanthropy Book Club. It was a wonderful conversation and I'm grateful to all who came. But it took a whole lot out of me - not just 48 hours to recover, more like 10 days.

So, I've been thinking about the PBC along with some other professional commitments I hope I can make. I'm going to make some changes to the PBC that I hope will enable me to keep doing it.

First, I'm going to put out a schedule for several months with a focus on fiction. There are a few reasons for this. My health is such that I only want to prioritize reading things I really want to read - and that's mostly fiction. Art brings me joy, it asks us to look and look again, it inspires me, and it fires my imagination - all things I need now as ever. There are a few nonfiction philanthropy-specific books that people recommended that I have not yet read. I'll fold those in to the calendar, trying to avoid books only out in hardcover to keep costs down. If this doesn't scratch your itch, I'll be sorry to see you go and wish you the best.

The first two fiction choices - so you can get ahead in your reading - will be

Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune 2052-2072 by Eman Abdelhadi and M. E. O'Brien 

How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

Second, time zones are nuts so I hope to be able to hold two conversations for each books, selected to ease the late nights/early mornings of trying to fit everyone into one. I've got a lot of medical stuff to deal with, so I hope the next dates will be sometime in late April.

Third, it's more work than I can "just" do.

Fourth, I'm looking ahead to a level of personal precarity with which many others are familiar and for which I'm trying to prepare. I'm one of "those" people who started saving for retirement when I was 16. I clearly remember econ professors during my college years (2025 is my 40th reunion) telling my class not to count on social security. Of course, their predictions were premised on maths, not political madness and the pure greed of the already wealthy, but regardless, here we are. And my predictions were based on (naïvely) the excellent health of a lifelong athlete. If I am able to retire in the next few years it will be as a disabled person and into an economic environment beyond credible prediction. Is the President deliberately tanking the economy, breaking government, and bankrupting entire public services and assets so they can be sold off at fire sale prices? Sure seems possible.

So, I'm asking again for help and money for the book club. If you already joined, don't worry, these changes will only affect you if you want to help out. I need help preparing the conversations, sending emails and dial in information for each meeting, reaching out to authors to join us, and thanking people afterwards. I will repeat these requests in the PBC email for the next meeting. If you can't or don't want to help, and can help cover the costs of the infrastructure (zoom, website, time), you can do so by becoming a paid subscriber (or member, in Ghost terminology).

Stand by for a schedule of PBC meetings.

Consider this a fewmore actions in my ongoing role as disability advocate.