where to meet -- aaaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhh!

A couple weeks ago I posted about the troubles I'm having scheduling the next meeting of the Jamaica Estates Association Gardening Club.

Well, the trouble continued, but at least we have a meeting place for this weekend's meeting. My house.

St. John's University agreed to let use space in their residence hall on Henley Road for our meetings. Initially this seemed like a perfect solution, both for this meeting and future meetings. But there's a fly in the ointment. Security. Because it's a residence hall, they understandably have a need for tight security. We'd have to provide a list of attendees before each meeting, and no one who is not on the list gets in. Now, I can easily provide a full membership list before each meeting. But then, anyone new who wants to attend would have to let me know in advance. No one could simply decide at the last minute that they want to check it out. Unless, of course, they let me know in advance that it's a possibility. I don't think that's conducive to getting new members. I understand the need for tight security in a residence hall, so I don't begrudge SJU this need. But it does make their residence hall a suboptimal option.

But having the meetings at my house -- or, similarly, at other members' houses on a rotating basis -- does not work as a long term solution.

Fortunately, there are a few possible solutions (some, obviously better than others):

• We may end up having meetings at the residence hall even though it is suboptimal. We;ll just have to make sure all meeting announcements indicate that anyone who intends to come or might even be considering it needs to contact me in advance to get on the list.
• In my email exchanges with the facilities representative of SJU, I floated the idea of using a location on the SJU campus. Surely there are unused classrooms on Sundays, and security won't be as tight. By the time I thought of this, it was too late to make it work for this weekend's  meeting. But the next meeting will be on March 4. We have time to mwork out the details before then.
• The UN School can give us space. But only on weekday evenings. THat's going to be a hard sell, since a lot of members work during the day and may not be eager to rush home for an evening meeting.

These ideas, and whatever else anyone thinks of, will be one of the first orders of business. I hope it's not too chaotic.