Central Valley Haiku Club Meeting - Saturday, April 14, 2012
Outside the windows, a mallard pair and their twelve yellow ducklings swam on cloud darkened water, when the Central Valley Haiku Club held their first spring meeting on Saturday, April 14, at the Gekkeikan Sake Factory in Folsom. Attending were Yvonne Cabalona, Ricado de Bernardi, Bill Owen and Leslie Rose.
This was primarily a “tech” session, with the goal of bringing everyone up to speed so that, in the future, we can begin to conduct some of our meetings via “Skype”. Skype names were exchanged and a time set for a trial run.
This settled, we discussed this year’s Jerry Kilbride English Language Haibun contest which is currently underway. In an effort to allow entrants time to send in multiple submissions, the deadline for the contest has been set as December 1st this year. (Full information about the contest may be found at our website: www.blinkhaiku.blogspot.com as well as on page 26 of the HSA March Newsletter.) We are anticipating another set of extraordinary submissions.
Congratulations were in order for Yvonne who will have several previously published haiku appearing in an anthology of poems, “The Temple Bell Stops”, collected by Robert Epstein, on the theme grief and loss.
With these bits of business out of the way, the group then conducted a tan renga workshop, and created several poems before closing time, when we adjourned with the promise of meeting on-line in the evening to test the “Skype” conference call system.
The evening “Skype” test had its “trial and error” moments. And in the end we were unable to do a video conference, but the audio conference worked well. Enthused, we have set our next meeting for June 16th at 1:30, and it will be our first official “Skype” club meeting. In preparation for that, members will be upgrading and checking out other on-line alternatives.
We are feeling quite technologically accomplished.
