It's Happening!
...what we are up to, plus 'Lonni's Link'
One of our participants from last year cannot attend because she is undergoing chemotherapy treatment. I have created a Zoom link for her to join us during the opening introduction. Lonni's Link is listed below if you want to join us from 7:45 to 9:00 a.m. via live stream. I have no idea what kind of connection or production value this will have, but you are welcome to drop in if you can. This replaces our Monday Zoom lunch call and is open to all subscribers.
What do a couple of Pulitzer Prize winners, a Poet Laurette, a top Detroit Free Press auto reporter, twin sister playwrights, a professor from Texas A&M, the editorial page editor for the Cedar Rapids Gazette, a bunch of columnists from The Des Moines Register (including the editor) and 200 + equally fascinating people have in common? They/we are gathering on 147 acres of land adjacent to West Lake Okoboji for the second Okoboji Writers’ Retreat, starting this Sunday.
Our group will fill five hotels and inject welcome revenue into this off-season time of year.
Shhh. Don’t tell anyone, but the little towns of Milford, Wahpeton, Arnolds Park, Okoboji, and Spirit Lake cut their population by about 85% after Labor Day. And that’s what I hope to keep a secret because it’s a magnificent time of year in this northwest Iowa resort community.
Richard and I are in the last minute throes of organizing the Okoboji Writers’ Retreat. He is the ‘CFO’ of this enterprise, and he informed me last night, after I gave him a $500+ invoice for signage, that we just might, MIGHT, break even. Yea! We shall see.
He hasn’t seen the invoice for the 250-capacity tent yet.
The idea for the first retreat, held in 2021, came about shortly after the Covid vaccine became available, and we were craving real-time human contact. I called a few writer friends and asked if they’d be up for coming to a retreat in Okoboji, and every one of them said ‘yes’ no matter where they lived in the country. So, we had a nice little retreat, where I expected 40 and 125 showed up. More would have come, but I capped it at that.
Eighty-five percent of our attendees indicated they would come back if we held it again, and since we had to turn people away for the first one, we looked for a bigger venue. There are plenty of conference facilities in newer hotels around the area, but we wanted visitors to experience Okoboji.
The event generated many excellent columns and stories (writers Rekha Basu called it magical, and Lonni Meyer Hoffman dubbed it spiritual), so we moved this year’s retreat to the campus of Lakeside Labs. It’s a walk back in time for those old enough to remember what Iowa’s Great Lakes area was like before megamansions or condo buildings replaced summer cabins. There are walking trails, old buildings, a few stone structures built during the WPA, and a team of some of the most helpful, gracious staff. Thank you, Mary Skopec, Matt Fairchild, Kassie Cherry, and all the others who make Lakeside Labs so special.
Monday is the day of the Okoboji Writers’ Retreat.
Topic: Lonni's Link
Time: Sep 19, 2022 07:45 to 9:00 a.m. Central Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81686128345
Amazing growth of an idea into fruition. Congratulations Julie, et.al.