Drinking Liberally

I heard about the group "Drinking Liberally" on a couple of blogs I read regularly; I don't remember which ones offhand, but they're based in Philadelphia and Seattle. I liked the pun, and I liked the idea. Not political activism, just people with similar attitudes getting together and discussing matters of mutual interest and concern.

So I did the Google thing, and found this site, which allows you to look up chapters in your state. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Corvallis has a chapter. I'm not much of one for the bar scene, and I'm definitely uncomfortable going into a situation with a bunch of people I don't know, so even though I found the info six weeks ago, I hadn't gone to one of the meetings until yesterday.

Actually, I wouldn't have looked up the info at all, but one of my friends here at my favorite coffee shop seemed really interested after I described it. So when C. came in yesterday, I explained that there was a meeting. We ended up going downtown to Squirrel's at 5:00.

It was pretty informal, in the sense that the conversation wandered without any discernible direction or purpose. I have a very hard time making sense out of conversation when there is much background noise; this is one of the big reasons I don't really care for bars. So I was struggling to catch enough to interpret what people were saying, then trying to infer enough to fill the holes that hadn't made sense. There were topics that were more interesting, topics less so. The two topics I remember chiming in on were Jared Diamond's Collapse and cement manufacturing as a major component of CO2 emissions. (I include the link so you can look at reviews, not to recommend you buy it; any library is likely to have one or more copies.)

Overall, despite the downsides I seem to have emphasized above, it was a pleasant experience, and I expect I'll go again from time to time. The Corvallis chapter meets on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month from 5:00 to 7:00; you can sign up for a reminder e-mail at the link above. There are other Oregon Chapters in Portland, Salem and St. Helens.