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Articles about our conversation salons
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CHAT ROOM:
Guests share a laugh at the Hamill-Slater home. |
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[As featured in MY GENERATION September–October
2002] In 1998, Kathy Hamill and her boyfriend, Robin
Slater, of Elgin, Illinois, placed a classified ad in a local newspaper.
Calling themselves “suburban unconventional thinkers starving for
imaginative, intelligent conversation,” they invited like-minded souls
to their home the following Saturday. Nineteen people showed up. Four
years later, some 25 people–about half of them regulars–attend the
monthly Saturday-night conversation salon that grew out of that ad. Attendees aren't looking for therapeutic talk, but
rather a chance to engage in serious discussions about ideas. They're also
looking for friends. The hosts cook up conversation topics that invite
people to think big: “What is God?–an intelligence, a force, a system
or a trickster with a lousy sense of humor?” The decor of the couple's home sets the tone.
“We're hard-core old hippies,” says lawyer Hamill, 50. (Slater, 59, is
a self-described computer geek.) “The place just drips with lava [lamps]
and posters, black lights and Day-Glo.” The chats have never turned ugly or confrontational.
During one memorable evening that coincided with the emergence of the
Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, the topic was “Truths, Lies and Secrets.” An
attendee said that when his daughter was a teenager, he often read the
diary she hid under her mattress, but never told her. Years later, when
she confessed her teen adventures, he admitted to his prying. She thanked
him, he said, for his watchful eye. Though some salonistas were outraged
by his behavior, he said, “I couldn't afford to lose my only daughter to
some stupid behavior.” The biggest surprise? After four years of opening
their home to strangers, Slater says, “We're not missing a thing.” For more on starting your own conversation salon, visit www.elginsalon.org or Socrates Cafe, www.philosopher.org. © 2002 by AARP. |
