CAIROCkstars,

Thursday's meeting was a good one: em, J, E, and R brought the fire.

Staci Haines will be with us this coming Tuesday 1/25 in Namaste Hall
at CIIS. The room is ours starting at 6.00, doors open at 6.30, and
the event will begin at 7.00.

My notes for the event have a cryptic "Danni has AV stuff" - Danni,
does this make sense to you? Do you need any help with this AV stuff
if so?

Setup of the space will begin at 6: Liz, Kathy, Jacks and Gesine have
volunteered to come pitch in.

emiko will bring a laptop for Staci to show some slides.

Food will be picked up and paid for by Jacks. Plates, cups and
utensils will be picked up by Heath.

*** We have yet to apply for any student funding for this event. That
means that Jacks and Heath will be fronting the money, which I will
reimburse from the icarus stash. I will not be at the event ***

As for icarus literature, we have not recieved any more from the
Icarus office in NYC. Apparently the person in charge of distro there
is out of touch -- more on this later. In the meanwhile, Jacks and
emiko have a few books to bring, and Jacks has offered to bring some
nice icarus cards. Also, anyone interested in making their own copies
of the 'friends make the best medicine' zine, Jacks has the master
prints for that and we can use them to make zines.

Introductions to Bay Area Icarus and Staci will be tackled by Jacks and Gesine.

Donations will not be solicited at the door -- this time we're gonna
try something new, and pass the hat with some kind of announcement.
It's not clear to me if we'll be getting Student Alliance funding for
this event - please correct me - but even if we do, we may be paying
for some aspects of the event in the future out of our own Icarus
stash, ie food advertising, speakers' fees and travel costs (?). More
on Student Alliance funding later.

Anyway one reason for this is Student Alliance has made some noise
about Icarus shouldn't charge admission to an event held at CIIS, to
the students or anybody. As a diplomatic response, we're going to
refrain from hustling donations at the door for this event, which is a
high-profile event in the CIIS community, because so many students and
faculty are into Staci and her work. We feel it's reasonable to still
'Pass the Hat' however... and consider retaking our post at the door
on future events.

Breakdown after the event - emiko has volunteered to help clean up
after. The building closes at 9.45 so its up to us how much time we
want to linger after the event.

**

What's the deal with Student Alliance funding? Some objections have
been raised within the CIIS staff as to the necessity of giving Icarus
money to do our events, specifically as much money as we've been
recieving. Apparently BA Icarus gets more money than any of the other
groups, and we have the additional distinction of not being purely a
student group.

The next Student Alliance meeting is next week, and emiko plans on
attending at delivering our message. emiko, what is the date for that
meeting? This is the reminder where you send the date and time to
Jacks, who will relay it to Gesine who can possibly join you for that
meeting.

It seems reasonable to us the continue to request money for speaker
fees and travel costs for the speaker. Next in our priorities will be
food stuff, because we are making a nice event for the CIIS community
with food for everybody. It does seem that Icarus can pay for its own
literature, and we decided it would make sense to leave that off of
our future budget requests. emiko will rock that meeting.

**

Jacks updated us on National Icarus bizness. Angel, alleged 'distro
guy' has disappeared from icarus' radar, which is partly why we don't
have any new lit. Sascha and J will be going to NYC next month for the
reel-abilities festival, at which point we're just going to bust into
the freaking office and take as much icarus material as we can.

The Reel-abilities film fest is happening, and there will be a
workshop at Bluestockings radical nonprofit bookstore in the LES of
NYC. Much Northeast Icarus peoples will be converging on this event.

There is a new Icarus group in White River, Vermont, that is building
a steady fire of Icarismo... there is much interest and excitement in
speaking to other icarus groups, and anyone interested in being a pen
pal or making a connection with this group can contact Jacks who has
their info. I for one would like to send an email out...

The hardcore icarus geek squadron is working on a site re-vamp that
will be launched in the coming months. I guess they're still working
for free... that's mad love.

Voices of compassion were raised in the meeting for Eric, who has been
and continues to bust ass for Icarus national... and is continuting to
work for no pay. Can we contribute to him getting paid for what he's
doing?

Another idea that came up is an icarus internship. Apparently this has
been successful at NYU -- a student gets internship credit to do
icarus work, and they can do stuff like, help coordinate events, and
some other stuff that I neglected to write.

++

Icarus Retreat. We agreed it would be a good idea to have a meeting
specifically for this retreat. Perhaps at the next CAIROC meeting we
can focus on this specifically - in addition to unpacking from Staci's
event. Some issues to tackle -

Why are we doing it? What kind of facilitator do we want? What can we
afford? When are we gonna do it.

--

emiko set up a "doodle" web site to help us determine the next CAIROC
meeting, so far 5 people have responded. This way, everyone can
participate in deciding when they can come. It's a nice little script.
Check it out: http://doodle.com/f3qnqsttz7pgcwv8

If anyone is having trouble using this, I can help you figure it out.
This is an experiment so we don't just end up excluding peops who
didn't make the last meeting from setting up the next one.

++

Berlin film - This is this film delivered to Jacks, basically a
documentary shot over 10 years by a German person grappling with the
psychiatric instituations in Berlin. For various reasons it doesn't
feel like something to put Icarus' name on as a co-sponsor, however we
can send out their invitation to the upcoming screening, which is
March 11 at ATA on Valencia st. in SF. The woman in the film will be
coming.

Josh Walters - similarly, we can send out his invite for his monologue
thing to our people. We can meet him and maybe see the show to decide
if we want to work with him more closely in the future.

**

This is a good idea -- can we make sure someone in Icarus is at the
Sunday meeting after the Staci Haines event? In fact, can we make sure
someone is at every sunday meeting? I tentatively agreed to be at
tomorrow's meeting. There is a good weight behind the idea that we
have a seasoned icarista at each sunday meeting, to help things run
smooth and provide info for anyone who wants - icarus in the Bay Area
is growing and has grown to a substantial weight, and our presence at
the open sunday meetings lends continuity to our events, and allows us
to follow through with new connections made, and with potential people
attracted to the group.

It seems to me that this is some kind of new direction for our group -
I remember about a year ago flaking on a meeting I had agreed to
facilitate. The consequences of that would be deeper reaching today.
We are continuing to explore our relationships to and within Icarus,
as well what we have been referring to as 'capacity' -- the energy and
time we, as individual people, can realistically commit to the Icarus
project in the context of our lives. Let us also be conscious of the
commitments we have made and continue to make to the community we are
building around us.

**

Thanks for reading. In solidarity

Evan