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Etenne, I'll shoot you an email. I don't seem to be able to get into my old account after so many years of disuse. That's how badly I split the whole fucking scene (Captain Kurtz reference from "Apocalypse Now") after things blew-up with a certain someone. So, it will be coming from a new address. Anything like this (the in-person, social gatherings) is going to have to be rules-driven, which will strike many as intolerable and wrong - especially younger men - and who could blame them - but, as you and I have learned from long experience and with a wisdom gained from unmitigated catastrophes and, perhaps, ever-diminishing libidos, the only way it can possibly work. Gone will be the days when we organized outings that were equal part boys-to-men to go whale-watching or hot air balloon-riding or Yosemite camping in numbers that required five or six cars - all ill-advised and ludicrous and ultimately doomed. What is possible has been radically trimmed-down to a near-peer minyan of the faithful selected for their lack of dangerous stupidity and ability to buy alcohol, tobacco, (but probably not firearms) in all fifty states. Yeah, sounds like fun:) I think anything that involves formal membership and "lists" are tricky. That would definitely require rules and rigid protocols and encryption. Not only that, you have to convince people that you have such a system in place and they have to be satisfied with the rigor of that system. That's actually the hard part. The technical secrecy, today, is the easy part but the human element will always be the greatest point of vulnerability. For myself, I've more-or-less contented with existing as an, almost entirely, virtualized person who very rarely meets anyone in-person, anymore. Not just the faithful but anyone. No doubt, that has exacted a personal cost but it is a condition that has always prevailed when doing any preliminary risk/reward benefit calculation. There something about the horrors of hard-time that changes a guy... For one thing, it makes you prefer your own company and to keep your own counsel and to long for a modicum of privacy in a place that has none. At least, for me. So, I'm not sure I would be a good candidate for this but I would certainly like to see it as an opportunity for others, if not myself. |