Java Talk to take to the road throughout county

Lou Marzeles
News Editor     

     Java Talk, The Sentinel's weekly community discussion meeting, is unquestionably successful on several levels. Attendance most weeks is between 15 and 20 people. A core group tends to show up, but additionally there are fresh faces fairly often. Conversation topics most often change regularly, though clearly some hit nerves that keep them in the forefront for some time. That reflects the sensibilities of the group and its concerns; the group talks about what the group wants to talk about.
     The idea of a newspaper hosting a weekly discussion group is not commonplace. In fact, it's so uncommon that the idea has drawn notice from professional organizations, and other newspapers have undertaken similar programs directly as a result of seeing the program work so well here.
     Yes, that's right: something going on here in this area is impacting and drawing the interest of others in far-flung areas. Get used to it. There's more of that kind of thing coming.
     But I digress. My primary point here today is that we want to take Java Talk out into Klickitat County. We want to hold community discussion meetings with those of you in Bickleton, Lyle, Glenwood, Wishram, Roosevelt, Klickitat, Trout Lake, White Salmon-any place in the county where people can gather around a table and say what's on their minds.
     With that in mind, we want to invite readers in the county to contact our office, to set up a Java Talk meeting in your communities. The meetings don't have to follow the schedule that they do here in Goldendale, which is Friday mornings; we'll work with what works for you.
     As The Monkees used to say, "So you better get ready, we may be coming to your town." If you don't recognize that reference, put it on our discussion agenda for when I get there