Invitation to MonSFFA’s 2023 CHRISTMAS Luncheon!

The club invites all of its members and friends, and their families, to an in-person, buffet-style Christmas Luncheon on Saturday afternoon, December 9, from 2:00PM-6:00PM. 

(A note of clarification: an initial e-mail distributed to all members and special guests included an erroneous date, Saturday, December 16. The correct date of our Christmas Luncheon is, in fact, this Saturday, December 9!)

Sandwiches, snacks, and refreshments will be provided by MonSFFA!

We will also hold our traditional Christmas Fund-Raising Raffle, proceeds to benefit the club. So bring your loonies and folding money, and may the odds be ever in your favour!

Raffle tickets are $1.00 each; note that Platinum-Level members benefit from a two-for-the-price-of-one special!

Many wrapped gift prizes of cool sci-fi/holiday items will be arrayed under the tree from which winners may chose!

Our ground-floor event venue is the very same as last year’s, located on the West Island. Because this is a private residence which the club is employing by special arrangement, we are curtailing publication of the specific address online for reasons of privacy.

The locale is accessible by car, commuter rail, or bus, and is between a 5- and 15-minute walk from the several public transit stops nearby. Commuter train stops: either Gare Pointe-Claire or Gare Cedar Park; bus: 201, 203, or 211 (check STM route schedules).

All members and special guests have been e-mailed, in advance of the Luncheon date, the means to access the specific address, plus travel directions, public transit routes, and local parking information. By following THIS LINK, you will be directed to those details.

Club members who have not yet received this e-mail may contact president@monsffa.ca to request it.

THEN…               

Out-of-town members, and any who couldn’t make it to the Luncheon, will have opportunity to participate in the club’s seasonal celebrations, too! We are hosting an online get-together the following weekend, specifically on Sunday, December 17. This casual ZOOM-chat will run from 1:00PM to 4:00PM, allowing everyone the opportunity to exchange best wishes for the Holiday Season! So join us for our “Holiday ZOOM-Chat” and enjoy conversation and good cheer with friends!

The club’s Website (www.MonSFFA.ca) will provide, on the day-of, a link allowing folk to join this ZOOM-chat.

Finally, MonSFFA wishes all of its members and friends, and their families, a very Merry Christmas, a Joyful Holiday, and a Happy New Year!

9) THANK YOU

We thank for their contributions to this afternoon’s agenda Danny Sichel, Carly Terreault, L. E. Moir, and Joe Aspler, as well as all of our contributing participants. And, of course, we thank you who attended, both here online, and physically in the meeting hall; don’t forget to comment on today’s get-together.

10) NEXT MONTH’S CLUB EVENTS, AND BEYOND

December

MonSFFen will next gather on Saturday, December 9 for an in-person Christmas Luncheon, and again, online, the following weekend, Sunday, December 17, for a Holiday ZOOM-Chat.

The Luncheon locale is not set up for WiFi, and so live-streaming won’t be possible, unfortunately. Because we won’t be able to connect with our out-of-town members on this occasion, we have, therefore, scheduled the Holiday ZOOM-Chat on the following weekend (Sunday, the 17th) so as to allow our out-of-towners—and indeed, all MonSFFen—to touch base online before the Holidays. This casual ZOOM-chat—no formal programing is planned—will run from 1:00PM to 4:00PM, allowing everyone the opportunity to drop in for a chinwag and exchange best wishes for the festive season.

The Christmas Luncheon the weekend before (Saturday, the 9th) is set to take place from 2:00PM to 6:00PM, and will offer a buffet and our traditional MonSFFA Christmas Raffle—lots of gift-wrapped prizes to be won! This raffle serves as a fund-raiser benefitting the club. Raffle tickets are $1.00 each; Platinum-level members enjoy a two-for-the-price-of-one bargain! So bring your loonies and folding money, and may the odds be ever in your favour!

We are returning to the same West-Island locale in which was held last year’s Luncheon. Members and special guests will receive an official invitation, either via e-mail or postal mail, in advance of the event. Said invitation will include directions for those driving to the party, as well as for those travelling by public transit.

Post-Luncheon, those wanting to continue the celebrations will relocate a short distance to a local pub!

2024

MonSFFA’s regular schedule of programmed meetings will resume in the New Year. Our first get-together of 2024 will unfold on Saturday, January 13 from 1:00PM to 4:30PM. Fans of astronomy will want to mark their calendars as we will welcome special guests David Shuman and Paul Simard, who will present their short documentary film, ShadowChasers, and speak on the topic of April 2024’s solar eclipse!

11) SIGN-OFF

Online participants, were you able to clearly see and hear today’s meeting? Please take a moment before departing to leave a comment as to how well, or not, this live-stream/ZOOM-chat worked from your perspective. Your input will help us to assess the experience, pinpoint any problem areas, and where possible, continue to make improvements.

To all, enjoy the rest of your day, and with the festive season in the offing, may we proffer early wishes to MonSFFA’s members, their families, and all friends of the club for a Merry Christmas, a Joyful Holiday Season, and a Happy New Year! Until next we gather, keep well and safe!

7) BREAK!

Time for our mid-meeting break!

Get yourself a snack and a drink; we’ll resume proceedings in a moment, including our usual raffle. And, we’ll briefly update our membership on the latest club business!

Programming continues in about 15 minutes with a presentation/gallery on air shows and aviation museums. The aviation industry has developed, over the years, many technologically advanced experimental and production aircraft, akin to the imagined airplanes and spacecraft of the future so prevalent in early science fiction. Thus are many SF fans also fans of aviation!

This afternoon’s e-meeting is a continuing experiment. If the local technology is performing properly and all has gone well, you are viewing a live-stream of this MonSFFA meeting, now underway. Those joining us online may follow along, and participate, by way of our ZOOM-chat.

Are you able to clearly see and hear today’s meeting? We are testing our technical set-ups to ascertain which delivers the best results for our online participants. Please take a moment to leave a comment as to how well this live-stream/ZOOM-chat is working from your perspective. It is our aim to live-stream future club meetings, thereby creating hybrid events in which participation may take place both in-person and virtually.

6) A DEEPER DIVE: MADELEINE L’ENGLE’S A WRINKLE IN TIME

We’ll take a deeper dive on the previously introduced topic of Madeleine L’Engle’s novel, A Wrinkle in Time, focusing on the various adaptations of the book in other media, and author L’Engle herself.

This afternoon’s e-meeting is a continuing experiment. If the local technology is performing properly and all has gone well, you are viewing a live-stream of this MonSFFA meeting, now underway. Those joining us online may follow along, and participate, by way of our ZOOM-chat.

Are you able to clearly see and hear today’s meeting? We are testing our technical set-ups to ascertain which delivers the best results for our online participants. Please take a moment to leave a comment as to how well this live-stream/ZOOM-chat is working from your perspective. It is our aim to live-stream future club meetings, thereby creating hybrid events in which participation may take place both in-person and virtually.

5) PRESENTATION: SUPERPOWERS—THE KIND YOU DON’T WANT!

Many of us dreamed of having superpowers, like the colourful, costumed comic-book superheroes whose adventures we followed as kids (and continue to follow as adults!)—x-ray vision, invulnerability, super-strength, super-speed, the ability to fly, breathe underwater, or shoot energy beams from our eyes or fingers!

But this afternoon, we’ll be talking about superpowers that you definitely would not want!

This afternoon’s e-meeting is a continuing experiment. If the local technology is performing properly and all has gone well, you are viewing a live-stream of this MonSFFA meeting, now underway. Those joining us online may follow along, and participate, by way of our ZOOM-chat.

Are you able to clearly see and hear today’s meeting? We are testing our technical set-ups to ascertain which delivers the best results for our online participants. Please take a moment to leave a comment as to how well this live-stream/ZOOM-chat is working from your perspective. It is our aim to live-stream future club meetings, thereby creating hybrid events in which participation may take place both in-person and virtually.

2) INTRODUCTION

Welcome everyone, both those present here in our meeting hall and those participating from home via ZOOM, to MonSFFA’s November 2023 meeting! This will be our last such gathering of the calendar year—next month will see the club host both a Christmas Luncheon on December 9, and a Holiday ZOOM-Chat on December 17! More about both of these events in our closing post at 4:30PM.

This afternoon we have a busy agenda which will include a talk on superpowers—the kind you don’t want!—a continuing examination of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, focusing on its adaptations in other media, and a presentation/gallery on air shows and aviation museums, aviation often being a parallel interest of SF fans!

So, let’s get right to it…

3) JOIN THIS AFTERNOON’S VIDEO-CHAT ON ZOOM!

To join our ZOOM video-chat, which will run throughout the next few hours, simply click here and follow the prompts: This Afternoon’s MonSFFA e-Meeting on ZOOM

If you’re not fully equipped to ZOOM, you can also take part by phone (voice only); in the Montreal area, the toll-free number to call is: 1-438-809-7799. From out of town? No problem; find your ZOOM call-in number here: Call-In Numbers

Also, have this information on hand as you may be asked to enter it:

Meeting ID: 811 9458 0956
Passcode: 226371

4) TODAY’S AGENDA

Please note that, while we strive to keep on schedule, we do, sometimes, fall behind a little, or find ourselves having to reshuffle the order of items on the agenda. Please also note that all programming is subject to change!

This afternoon’s e-meeting is a continuing experiment. If the local technology is performing properly and all has gone well, you are viewing a live-stream of this MonSFFA meeting, now underway. Those joining us online may follow along, and participate, by way of our ZOOM-chat.

Are you able to clearly see and hear today’s meeting? We are testing our technical set-ups to ascertain which delivers the best results for our online participants. Please take a moment to leave a comment as to how well this live-stream/ZOOM-chat is working from your perspective. It is our aim to live-stream future club meetings, thereby creating hybrid events in which participation may take place both in-person and virtually.

1) PRE-MEETING TECH CHECK

As club members all know, during the pandemic isolation protocols dictated that we suspend our in-person meetings for a time, a hiatus that stretched into some three years, as it turned out, a dramatically longer period than anyone had anticipated! So as to allow MonSFFen to continue meeting, the club instituted a series of virtual get-togethers. These “e-meetings,” as we dubbed them, proved successful and popular with most MonSFFen.

When the pandemic ended and post-COVID-19 anxiety faded, and it became feasible to once again meet in person, we nevertheless wanted to continue to offer this online option, particularly to our out-of-town members. We elected to experiment with live-streaming our in-person meetings, which has largely met with success. But, in that some of our equipment is a tad antiquated, and we are at the mercy of the available WiFi at our physical meeting locale, the effort has not been without a few technical glitches. Last month’s “Halloween” meeting, for instance, proved particularly gremlin-plagued, predictably perhaps, given the meeting’s theme!

In any case, the experiment continues this month, and if all has gone well, you are now viewing a live-stream of MonSFFA’s November 2023 Meeting. It is our aim to live-stream this and future club meetings, thereby creating hybrid events in which participation may take place both in-person and virtually.

This afternoon’s proceedings are shortly to get underway. Those of you joining us online may follow along, and participate, by way of our ZOOM-chat (See item “3,” next post, for instructions on how to do so).

Please take note that MonSFFA’s upcoming November Club Meeting is taking place later in the month than usual, and on a Sunday, not our customary Saturday!

As the Lachine Legion Hall was unavailable to  us on any Saturday in November, we have therefore booked the room for Sunday, November 26.

That’s this upcoming Sunday, folks; please mark your calendars accordingly, and we’ll see you at the meeting!

Our agenda includes a presentation on superpowers—the kind you don’t want!—and a further examination of Madeleine L’ Engle’s novel A Wrinkle in Time, its adaptations in other media, and the author herself.

Plus, for SF/F fans who are, often, also fans of aviation we have a presentation/gallery on air shows and aviation museums! The aviation industry has developed, over the years, many then-technologically advanced aircraft, akin to the imagined airplanes and spacecraft of the future so prevalent in early science fiction.

All of this and more…at the next MonSFFA meeting!